?Have you heard the shocking news about electric vehicles
.According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 58 percent of new passenger vehicle sales in 2040 will be EVs
That’s an astonishing number considering only three percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the world today are electric. Just imagine, in only 18 years a large percentage of us are going to be zipping around in our spiffy EVs wondering why it took so long to finally ditch that archaic internal combustion engine.
.But there’s only one problem… It’s not going to happen
7 Main Reasons
To be accurate, there are actually a large number of reasons why EV sales aren’t going to be anywhere near the numbers being projected by those who should know better. Here are the seven biggest reasons why:
1. Raw Materials for Batteries
There are not nearly enough mines to produce the rare earth minerals and critical metals necessary to manufacture the hundreds of millions of batteries that will be needed.
Processing and refinement are also limited. One automotive CEO has admitted a materials deficit of 90 percent over the next decade.
2. Refined Materials Needed Elsewhere
EVs are only one piece of the economy demanding the mining and processing of REs and Critical Metals. Every electronic device in the world now requires these elements, including the other big energy technology fantasies, wind turbines & solar panels.
3. China Monopoly
China produces 70 percent of EV batteries and has secured a virtual 100 percent monopoly at the high end of raw material processing. Battery assembly plants in other parts of the world are completely beholden to China for the refined materials and magnets they need.
4. China Subsides Will End
China has been massively subsidizing Rare Earth and Critical Metal supply chains for decades to create its monopoly in the battery market. The CCP cannot afford to continue this giant loss. Sometime soon, it won’t need to. That’s when the price of batteries will climb significantly, slowing growth in the EV sector.
5. Immoral Car Subsidies – For many years now the US and other western nations have been heavily subsidizing EV purchases (a federal subsidy of $7,500 in the US) and charging infrastructure.
The vast majority of these vehicles are purchased by wealthy buyers. Therefore, poor people are subsidizing the rich. At a time of historic inflation how long will the public allow this regressive punishment to continue?
6. Battery Problems
Lithium-ion batteries still have stability issues. When they catch fire, they are extremely difficult to extinguish. For example, in February of 2022 a fire started on the Felicity Ace transport ship as it attempted to cross the Atlantic.
There were approximately 4,000 luxury EVs on board. The fire spread from EV to EV until they were all ablaze. The fire could not be extinguished. The crippled ship eventually sank.
7. Degraded Electric Grids
The fantasy that we are going to run our electric grids on sunshine and breezes has significantly degraded the reliability of electricity delivery in the US, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere.
This comes at the same time that these aging grids are in need of extremely costly upgrades. Substantially increasing demand on electric systems that are already under great stress is not going to end well. Blackouts have a way of refocusing the priorities of politicians.
Other Obstacles
There are many other obstacles that will expose the EV fantasy soon enough. As current EVs begin to age out we’ll be faced with a massive battery disposal problem that nobody seems to have thought through in any serious way. Budget busting inflation is going to test the ability of governments to impose unnecessary and unfair financial burdens on their citizens. At some point the poor are going to find out that EVs may produce even more CO2 emissions than gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles. They aren’t going to be happy that they are paying an outsized share of the costs of putting more EVs on the road—a giant virtue signal that doesn’t even address the issue that climate alarmists claim that EVs will mitigate. And the list goes on.
The good news is that constraints on EV battery production should force western nations to finally wake up to the fact that China has the rest of the world in a technological choke hold. As our “leaders” are forced to confront energy reality, internal combustion engines by the hundreds of millions will keep the transportation system humming along.
* Speaker, documentary filmmaker, video producer, and author in energy.
