Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) have not been meeting expectations in some markets of late. There are plenty of explanations for this, but the underlying responsibility lies with the central planners guiding climate policy and their attempts to force mass market acceptance for a niche product not yet ready for primetime. In the U.K., the Green Alliance, a thinktank, decided to cast some blame instead on the actor, Rowan Atkinson, or, if you prefer, Mr. Bean or, as I’d prefer, Blackadder.
The Daily Telegraph (February 6):
Rowan Atkinson has been blamed for poor sales of electric cars in a report by the House of Lords…
The Lords’ environment and climate change committee was told that the actor, 69, was partly at fault for “damaging” public perceptions of electric vehicles (EVs).
New petrol and diesel cars are set to be banned from 2035 under the Prime Minister’s net zero strategy. That ban is supposed to encourage motorists to start buying EVs, but adoption has been slower than the strategy’s advocates have hoped.
“One of the most damaging articles was a comment piece written by Rowan Atkinson in the Guardian which has been roundly debunked,” the Green Alliance pressure group told peers…
Atkinson, who has degrees in electrical engineering and control systems, described EVs in a June 2023 opinion article as “a bit soulless” but “wonderful mechanisms”. He wrote: “But increasingly, I feel a little duped … I’m feeling that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end, and that’s no bad thing.”
What did this monster who bought his first hybrid and “pure” EV 18 years and nine years respectively before writing that article actually have to say? The full article can be found here (and a rebuttal here), but here are some extracts:
When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be.
A heretic has entered the room.
Atkinson (my emphasis added):
Electric cars, of course, have zero exhaust emissions, which is a welcome development, particularly in respect of the air quality in city centres. But if you zoom out a bit and look at a bigger picture that includes the car’s manufacture, the situation is very different. In advance of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, Volvo released figures claiming that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are nearly 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one. How so? The problem lies with the lithium-ion batteries fitted currently to nearly all electric vehicles: they’re absurdly heavy, huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they are estimated to last only upwards of 10 years. It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis.
Note the reference to the climate “crisis.” Atkinson is no (to use that obnoxious term) “denier.”
Atkinson:
Unsurprisingly, a lot of effort is going into finding something better. New, so-called solid-state batteries are being developed that should charge more quickly and could be about a third of the weight of the current ones – but they are years away from being on sale, by which time, of course, we will have made millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries. Hydrogen is emerging as an interesting alternative fuel, even though we are slow in developing a truly “green” way of manufacturing it. It can be used in one of two ways. It can power a hydrogen fuel cell (essentially, a kind of battery); the car manufacturer Toyota has poured a lot of money into the development of these. Such a system weighs half of an equivalent lithium-ion battery and a car can be refuelled with hydrogen at a filling station as fast as with petrol.
But let’s zoom out even further and consider the whole life cycle of an automobile. The biggest problem we need to address in society’s relationship with the car is the “fast fashion” sales culture that has been the commercial template of the car industry for decades. Currently, on average we keep our new cars for only three years before selling them on, driven mainly by the ubiquitous three-year leasing model. This seems an outrageously profligate use of the world’s natural resources when you consider what great condition a three-year-old car is in. When I was a child, any car that was five years old was a bucket of rust and halfway through the gate of the scrapyard. Not any longer. You can now make a car for £15,000 that, with tender loving care, will last for 30 years. It’s sobering to think that if the first owners of new cars just kept them for five years, on average, instead of the current three, then car production and the CO2 emissions associated with it, would be vastly reduced. Yet we’d be enjoying the same mobility, just driving slightly older cars.
We need also to acknowledge what a great asset we have in the cars that currently exist (there are nearly 1.5bn of them worldwide). In terms of manufacture, these cars have paid their environmental dues and, although it is sensible to reduce our reliance on them, it would seem right to look carefully at ways of retaining them while lowering their polluting effect. Fairly obviously, we could use them less. As an environmentalist once said to me, if you really need a car, buy an old one and use it as little as possible. A sensible thing to do would be to speed up the development of synthetic fuel, which is already being used in motor racing; it’s a product based on two simple notions: one, the environmental problem with a petrol engine is the petrol, not the engine and, two, there’s nothing in a barrel of oil that can’t be replicated by other means. Formula One is going to use synthetic fuel from 2026. There are many interpretations of the idea but the German car company Porsche is developing a fuel in Chile using wind to power a process whose main ingredients are water and carbon dioxide. With more development, it should be usable in all petrol-engine cars, rendering their use virtually CO2-neutral.
There’s a reason that Germany, keen to preserve the advantages of incumbency enjoyed by its automakers against the threat posed by Chinese EVs, insisted on securing an exemption from the EU ban on the sale of new internal combustion engine cards from 2035. This exempts internal combustion engines operating on e-fuels akin to Atkinson’s “synthetic fuels.” Only time will tell if they are a feasible alternative to gas, but it is right that those working on them have been given the chance to show what, if anything, can be achieved with such fuels. Shutting off pathways to potential technological advance is rarely the way to go.
And why did Atkinson believe that the end of the “honeymoon” with EVs was “no bad thing?”
[W]e’re realising that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created. We should keep developing hydrogen, as well as synthetic fuels to save the scrapping of older cars which still have so much to give, while simultaneously promoting a quite different business model for the car industry, in which we keep our new vehicles for longer, acknowledging their amazing but overlooked longevity..
Regardless of the merits (or demerits) of his ideas, Atkinson had trampled on a taboo by suggesting that there might be alternative, better, and more practical routes to the decarbonization of transport that both he and his critics wanted. True believers tend to reserve their worst fury for those with whom they share large areas of agreement. The heathen is the enemy, but the heretic is something worse, a traitor.
Moreover, Atkinson appeared to be looking for solutions that might be less painful than the current “transition.” But for those environmentalists whose fear of climate change has mutated into something resembling a millenarian creed, pain is a feature, not a bug, a necessary punishment to purge humanity’s sins before it can make it to a reborn green world.
On a sidenote, the environment and climate committee that heard the criticism of Atkinson has 13 members. Only two own an EV, and one owns a hybrid. Awkward!
Atkinson is not the only person to think that a “wider range of options” needs to be explored. For example, over the last year or so, I have written about the position taken by Toyota’s CEO (and now chairman), Akio Toyoda. His point of view (for which he got in trouble) has been that, as we do not know what the “right answer” is, betting everything on EVs is not the way to go. It’s hard to argue with that logic. But then the argument for “forcing” people to buy EVs owes more to a love of control than concern for the planet.
As mentioned above, the U.K. is not the only country where sales of EVs are falling below expectations. There are signs of (relative) weakness in demand elsewhere in Europe (including Germany), in the U.S., and in South Korea too. The explanations range from the local to the universal, with, say, range anxiety being one of the latter, just, incidentally, as it was in the early years of the automotive age.
Automakers are improving EVs (and will continue to do so) but the list of problems associated with them appears to be lengthening, or, more accurately, as in the case of the trouble caused by Chicago’s cold snap, is being revealed (or becoming more widely known) as the number of EVs in circulation increases.
And this (via Bloomberg, January 4) was a new one to me:
EVs had 80% more problems than cars with traditional internal combustion engines, according to the latest survey by Consumer Reports magazine. EV owners reported the most troubles with their battery and its ability to take a charge.
“This has nothing to do with the chargers in the field. This is specifically about a problem with the vehicle where it would not accept a charge,” says Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. “It’s like you can’t get gasoline into the car. That’s a problem, a big problem.”
Another problem, discussed here in the Miami Herald (February 9), is attracting more attention.
For many drivers of EVs in Florida — the nation’s second largest market for electrical vehicles — premature tire wear has become an unexpected black mark…. At EV Garage Miami, a Sweetwater repair shop that services 90 percent electric vehicles, lead technician Jonathan Sanchez said tires are the most frequent thing customers come in about — no matter what model or make of EV they’re driving. Tire mileage can vary widely of course, but he said he frequently changes EV tires at just 8,000 to 10,000 miles — a fourth or even fifth of typical tire wear on a gas-burning car.
This makes sense. EVs tend to be much heavier than conventional cars, and wear on their tires will be increased further by drivers taking advantage of EVs’ better torque (and thus superior acceleration).
[V]ehicle and tire makers and industry experts acknowledge the issue. The tire manufacturer Michelin said conventional tires on electric vehicles consume tires 20 percent faster than on a gas-powered car — a figure commonly cited by EV makers as well — but Goodyear also has said they could wear up to 50 percent faster. Automakers and the tire industry are working on improvements.
That would be good for consumers but also for the climate. To some extent, running through tires quickly may offset the reduction of damaging emissions that EVs offer. Some studies have shown that tires actually have more particle pollution than exhaust, 2,000 times as much.
Obviously, the tires used on a conventional car will also be responsible for particle pollution, but, it seems, less of it.
Here’s something else (via AP):
Electric vehicles that typically weigh more than gasoline-powered cars can easily crash through steel highway guardrails that are not designed to withstand the extra force, raising concerns about the nation’s roadside safety system, according to crash test data released Wednesday by the University of Nebraska.
Electric vehicles typically weigh 20% to 50% more than gas-powered vehicles thanks to batteries that can weigh almost as much as a small gas-powered car. And they have lower centers of gravity. Because of these differences, guardrails can do little to stop electric vehicles from pushing through barriers typically made of steel.
The Nebraska study (admittedly it was only one set of tests) involved an EV (a Rivian pickup truck) weighing some 7,000 pounds, and a Tesla 3. The truck tore through the guardrail, the much lighter (3,800-4,000 pounds) Tesla “lifted” it. There are EVs that weigh even less, and there also are conventional cars that exceed what a guardrail can generally take (about 5,000 pounds). To be sure, the average size (and thus weight) of new cars sold in the U.S. has increased in recent decades, but EVs, as mentioned above, are generally heavier than conventional cars, primarily because of the weight of the battery. With range anxiety a major factor slowing down the take-up of EVs, that’s likely to continue: As a rule, the larger the battery the greater the range. Throw in American consumers’ preference for larger cars and it looks like tough times ahead for the nation’s brave guardrails.
How many miles of guardrail are there in the U.S.? The Nebraska test was held at the state’s Midwest Roadside Safety Facility, and its assistant director, Cody Stolle, was quoted in a recent Slate story by David Zipper, giving a figure of “at least” 50,000 miles (I’ve seen suggestions of between two and four times that, but I’m not sure whether anyone really knows). Zipper runs some numbers on the basis of the 50,000-mile estimate:
Assuming a materials cost of $30 per foot, replacing all MGS guardrails could easily hit $8 billion, not including installation expenses that would drive the price tag much higher. (Retrofits could be less expensive, but Stolle said it’s too soon to know if they would be feasible.) To put that figure in perspective, $8 billion exceeds North Carolina’s entire annual transportation expenditures, and is almost six times Maryland’s transportation maintenance budget.
In a statement, a Federal Highway Administration spokesperson showed little interest in assuming responsibility for a future guardrail overhaul, saying that “states and local governments are responsible for properly selecting, installing, maintaining, and replacing roadside safety hardware, including guardrails,” and requesting that further questions be directed to them.
Reader, I laughed.
The author, Margaret Beck, of the AP report also notes that in 2023 “the National Transportation Safety Board expressed concern about the safety risks heavy electric vehicles pose if they collide with lighter vehicles.”
On the other hand, if you are in the EV:
Road safety officials and organizations say the electric vehicles themselves appear to offer superior protection to their occupants, even if they might prove dangerous to occupants of lighter vehicles. The Rivian truck tested in Nebraska showed almost no damage to the cab’s interior after slamming into the concrete barrier, Stolle said.
Beck continues:
The U.S. Federal Highway Administration declined to immediately comment on the Nebraska test results.
Reader, I laughed (again).
Beck:
The concern over the weight of electric vehicles stretches beyond vehicle-to-vehicle crashes and compatibility with guardrails, Brooks [Michael Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety] said. The extra weight will affect everything from faster wear on residential streets and driveways to vehicle tires and infrastructure like parking garages.
“A lot of these parking structures were built to hold vehicles that weighed 2,000 to 4,000 pounds — not 10,000 pounds,” he said.
That won’t delight insurers. Back in October, I wrote about the fire risk that might accompany EVs in parking garages. The problem is not that EVs catch fire more often than conventional cars (the opposite is true), but, once an EV is on fire, and the fire reaches the battery, it takes a lot longer to put it out. This increases the risk the fire will spread to other cars, especially within a closed space. And if that space is too cramped firefighters may find it hard to get the access they need. At the very least, cars may have to be parked further apart, reducing parking capacity and increasing its cost.
The whole question becomes trickier still when it comes to the question of parking garages that are parts of buildings in which people work or live. There have been reports (please see one here) of some buildings banning EVs for this reason. For its part, South Korea has prohibited the installation of chargers below the second basement level. Such fears may be exaggerated, but their consequences are real enough, and they may mean difficulties for city-dwellers who do not have a parking garage or private driveway of their own. As it is, they may already face challenges getting (or keeping) their cars charged. But even people with a parking garage or driveway of their own may face a problem. EVs can work well for those who use them for a daily commute, but what if they cannot be parked (or perhaps charged) where their owners work?
Lurking just beneath talk about the weight of EVs are long-standing complaints from the usual puritans about American “car bloat” (it’s reflected in the Slate article), now given a sharper edge by the arrival of the EV heavy brigade. Look around a bit and it doesn’t take long to discover commentary to the effect that it’s a mistake to tell Americans that their EVs will offer the same experience as their conventional autos. The “non-battery” part of the car will, we are told, will have to be smaller than is the case with conventional cars in order to compensate for the EV battery’s weight. Or perhaps the size could be left the same, but with a smaller battery (and thus less range). Or perhaps they should be smaller and have lower range, a grim little buggy fit for our carbon-paring age. These would be hard for EV manufacturers to sell for as long as they face competition with conventional cars. Then again, the idea is that they should not. This will discourage innovation, just when it is most needed.
And for what? Over time, EVs should be responsible for fewer greenhouse gases than their conventional counterparts. But, as Mark Mills reminds us in the course of a recent must-read article for City Journal, calculating that difference is not straightforward.
Meanwhile, the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority has banned EV manufacturers from referring to their cars as “zero emission” unless it is made clear that the cars are only zero emission while being driven. The reason for this is the substantial greenhouse gas emissions generated in the manufacture of an EV. Additionally, some of the electricity that powers EVs will have been generated by fossil fuels.
Inconvenient truths….
The Capital Record
We released the latest of our series of podcasts, the Capital Record. Follow the link to see how to subscribe (it’s free!). The Capital Record, which appears weekly, is designed to make use of another medium to deliver Capital Matters’ defense of free markets. Financier and National Review Institute trustee, David L. Bahnsen hosts discussions on economics and finance in this National Review Capital Matters podcast, sponsored by the National Review Institute. Episodes feature interviews with the nation’s top business leaders, entrepreneurs, investment professionals, and financial commentators.
In the 156th episode, David walks through the connection of his new book on work in this latest episode. He discusses why production as the driver of economic activity is crucial to our understanding of economic theory, and to the peace of mankind’s soul.
The Capital Matters week that was . . .
Nuclear energy
Nuclear has been sworn off by so many, stigmatized as being a dangerous and even deadly source of energy. Yet it has proven to be the most reliable and clean, and certainly more affordable than renewables. System costs, for example, are much lower for nuclear since the cost for intermittent renewables to meet baseload demand is significant. Some estimate that the cost per kilowatt of nuclear is about half that of wind and a third of solar…
Regulation
The proportion of people who say they have flown in the past year is way higher than it was before the industry was economically deregulated in 1978. Between 1971 and 1977, the average proportion of Americans who reported flying in the past year was only 24 percent, according to the Airlines for America survey. In 2020, during the Covid pandemic, it was 22 percent. It takes a once-in-a-century pandemic to get today’s air-travel numbers back to what they were under federal micromanagement.
Deregulation drove lower fares through competition and was supported across the political spectrum (Stephen Breyer was a major force behind it, and Jimmy Carter signed it into law). It made air travel accessible to non-business, middle-class travelers. But it didn’t change the fact that, for many Americans, there isn’t much reason to fly…
A new lawsuit by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce against the California Air Resources Board illustrates the carelessness of the Golden State’s legislative process. Pioneering legislation that promised to compel companies to report their greenhouse-gas emissions may ultimately accomplish nothing at all due to defects in its drafting…
The Debt
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has finally called for deficit reduction, in a 60 Minutes interview.
“We mostly try very hard not to comment on fiscal policy and instruct Congress on how to do their job, when actually they have oversight over us,” he said…
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its annual “Budget and Economic Outlook” on February 7, 2024. I figured it is never too late to let you know that we will be drowning in deficit and debt for the next ten years…
The Fed
The Fed isn’t going to cut rates in May. Wages are growing and productivity is growing, too. But it may not be able to cut rates anytime soon.
Electric Vehicles
Makers of heavy trucks — scoundrels, allegedly — have come under fire from environmentalist groups for not doing more to sell electric heavy trucks, of which there are only about a thousand on the road at the moment.
Economics
Neoliberalism’s critics typically denounce stagnating incomes, the declining availability of middle-class jobs especially for blue-collar men in manufacturing, and increasing inequality. This last is questioned in recent work by U.S.-government economists, but even their refined data find some increased pre-tax inequality. Even if we accept the neoliberalism critics’ description of the problem, their prescriptions are horribly wrong…
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