The rush to "transition" to EV's is outpacing common sense
Traffic deaths will soar, roads will deteriorate and costs will escalate as battery metal shortages deepen
In my, electric vehicles (EV’s) are a better technology that internal combustion engines (ICE) for personal transportation. They are faster, quieter, have better acceleration and are simpler to build and to maintain. They are also a lot heavier.
A typical ICE Ford F-150 pickup weighs in at about 4,000 pounds. An F-150 Lightning EV pickup weighs in at about 6,000 pounds. Road surfaces will deteriorate quite quickly if the weight travelling over them rises by 50% as the world’s fleet goes all-electric, the dream of the left wing who are deluded into thinking CO2 causes climate change and EV’s will help eliminate the CO2 emissions which (as it turns out) are necessary for life on Earth. Leave that aside.
The average life of an asphalt road is about 15 years. Road life deteriorates with overweight vehicles. A 30% increase in weight compels a 50% reduction in road life based on studies with overweight trucks.
It is not the attraction of EV technology I decry, but the rush of leftist governments to promote their use at all costs despite the need for appropriate infrastructure including not only charging stations, a reliable grid and permitting of new mines for nickel, cobalt, lithium, graphite etc. needed to build the EV’s, but also development of a larger number of crematoria, funeral parlours, and trauma centers to deal with the carnage EV’s will create as heavier vehicles crash into one another at no greater rates than current ICE vehicles. It is the weight that increases the carnage.
Here is a clip from Energy Minute, a site that monitors developments in the EV industry and in the Green Revolution and more often than not promotes the climate change narrative. It is not a “conservative” site.
There are about 6.3 million car accidents annually in the United States causing some 3 million injuries and 40,000 deaths. Hospital admissions run about 36 million a year so as it stands about 8% of those are likely related to car accidents. Increase the rate of injury and death by 50% to 100% solely from vehicle collisions and the 3 million injuries rises to between 4.5 million and 6 million and hospital emergency rooms become crowded.
Adding 20,000 to 40,000 deaths may seem small when you consdier about 2.8 million Americans die every year from all causes, but that number is pretty stable and more funeral homes will be needed to accomodate the rise in traffic deaths. There are about 21,000 funeral homes in America right now and each home deals with about 130 funerals per year. Add 40,000 funerals and you need another 300 funeral homes. COVID showed us how ill-equipped existing funeral homes and cremation sites were to deal with a rapid rise in mortality with Democrats claiming bodies were piling up in refrigerated trailers in New York City.
Shortages of battery metals such as nickel, cobalt, copper, graphite, etc. will deepen driving commodity prices to record levels and adding to inflation already a multiple of the rate central banks think desirable. Policies that pretend to be based on protecting the environment cause enormous delays between finding a minable deposit and getting permitted for production. Major deposits like Western Copper’s Casino project; Northern Dynasty’s Pebble project; and, the enormous Dumont deposit in Quebec (which is permitted, to be fair) are years away from production but the spike in demand is present now. This is great for producing mines, mostly in Latin America and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and will transfer wealth to these countries and lessen growth in North America. Maybe that is the goal.
I think EV’s are becoming mainstream and will keep attracting buyers as costs come down, range improves and infrastructure develops. But our leaders need to calm down and let markets work. Putting external pressure on a free market to achieve a political goal has unintended consequences largely an outcome of not thinking through consequences which requires little more than common sense.
The current path Biden and Trudeau are on will yield power outages, potholes, long lines at charging stations, deteriorating roads and needless death and injury. That won’t stop the progressives - they only care about peddling their specious climate change theory to scare enough voters to retain power.
A Kimberly Strassel WSJ Tweet
“ The company for the first time broke out financial results. . . Ford lost more than $60,000 per electric vehicle sold in the first quarter. Its combustion-vehicle business, Ford Blue, averaged pretax profit of $3,715 a vehicle, while the Ford Pro commercial business earned $4,053 per vehicle."
The latest moves by Tesla on price drops (and followed by Ford I’ll assume reluctantly) are a welcomed element on the progression of EVs- fine example of market forces controlling this evolution versus governments deploying our tax funds for a cause and hopeful outcome- although they are dominant and likely to strengthen as this moves further along