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An Inconvenient Truth (About Electric Vehicles)
Why your petrol-powered vehicle will be worth more in 2033 than it is today
From the outset I should say that I believe electric personal transportation vehicles will be mostly all-electric by 2050, by which time (we hope…) most electricity being fed into the national grid will be generated by renewable means and so EVs won’t simply be moving pollution from one place to another and not actually providing any climate benefit whatsoever.
I also believe that engineers and materials scientists will continue to develop battery technologies so as to reduce dependency on very scarce rare Earth metals and simultaneously improve storage capacity while reducing recharge times. Moreover, we’re seeing new discoveries of rare Earth metals in stable nations like Australia, Sweden, Norway, and elsewhere, so shortages won’t be a problem even when most new cars and SUVs sold are EVs.
I don’t think electric trucks will replace Macks and Peterbilts because the economics are never going to work and the climate benefit simply isn’t worth the cost — not even close. Likewise electric planes are an astonishingly stupid idea and a lot of people will lose a lot of money investing in companies that attempt to deliver such a ludicrously inefficient and meaningless product. If most of the…
