On EV's

As is the custom, I have thoughts... This has been percolating in my mind for several months, but the transition to an emission-free transportation future will continue unabated.

[Editor’s Note: I started drafting this in March, 2024, and it laid fallow in my drafts folder until July 2024]

While I do not drive an Electric Vehicle (or BEV in the parlance) I do live in the epicenter of the Tesla phenomenon (Silicon Valley - seriously, they are akin to cockroaches here they are so thick on the streets here) as well as having 2.5 decades in tech, so I have some thoughts on the adoption of BEV’s in the general, and I have some points about all the naysayers who are looking at some of the struggles for the legacy car makers growth in this space.

I want to add that this is an outside in view, and that I am a mere observer, and avid consumer of the transition to a battery driven transportation future.

I am also addicted to Youtube, and where the algo’s take me. One trend that has been accelerating in the last 6 months or so is a general belief that EV’s are failing, and that it is inevitable that traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles will remain the bulk of the fleet.

This is predicated on trends that EV sales are declining, combined with an increased interest in hybrid cars¹ that have slowed the adoption of EV’s.

But this is masking a more serious issue. Much of the softness in numbers is due to falling sales of Tesla’s. Prior to the Inflation Recovery Act that re-instituted subsides for Tesla’s models, they had exhausted the incentives. That, coupled with an aging fleet of models (the Model 3 has had a recent update, but visually it is almost impossible to tell that it changed, and people expect a new car design every 5 years) and for good measure, the jackassery of Elon Musk and his latest shiny bauble, Twitter², the audience for Tesla’s has been clipped.

Tesla just reported its second consecutive quarter of declining deliveries. That is a huge fucking deal. Turns out that much of the softness in the market can be tied to Tesla’s stumbles.

But there remain a few wrinkles to talk about. In order, I will discuss the Hybrid/EV tradeoff, the long haul freight conundrum, and the real bugbear, Charging infrastructure.

Before I dive in, I will say that I do not drive an EV, and we do not own a Hybrid. My wife’s car is a 2004 Toyota Rav4, and I currently drive a 2020 Acura RDX. While we may replace my wife’s car with an EV when it finally dies, it currently has 160k miles, and we should easily get to 225K or more before it gets too expensive to keep on the road. I currently put about 3K miles per year on it, and with maintenance, it will likely be the last car I own before I get too old to drive.

So, with that caveat out of the way, let’s dive in!

The hybrid compromise…

Many of the coal rollers on Youtube bleat about how rational people are avoiding EV’s and buying Hybrids instead. And that does seem to be reflected in the data. The anxiety about EV range is real, and causes people to either overspend to buy more range than they need (that leads to bigger and heavier RV’s with batteries that are often not necessary).

Yet, the vast majority of people drive less than 70 miles per day, even those with serious commutes. But they often will not consider an EV with less than 300 miles of range. Whilst I would not fault them for not buying something with sub 100 mile range, the difference in cost to pad that range unnecessarily is high. All for piece of mind.

Look, when I built my current gaming PC, I loaded it up with 64G of RAM. Do I really need it? No, 16G would have been plenty, but it wasn’t that much more money to max it out. And there are benefits for it, but am I realizing them?

No.

However overbuying the range on an EV has knock on effects. First, you are financing more cost. When interest rates were near 0%, that wasn’t such a big deal, but now that we are in “normal” regimes for interest rates, that is a pretty big accelerator of monthly payments.

Add to that that batteries are heavy, and you begin to recognize that this leads to increased wear and tear on tires and brakes (although EV’s do a lot of regenerative braking that minimizes wear on brake components), and they do more damage to roads. Guess what? We pay for road building and upkeep with gas taxes, where big, heavy vehicles to incur more wear and tear on roads and highways consume more gas, and thus those vehicle drivers end up paying more of the upkeep. But EV’s currently aren’t contributing to the building and maintenance of roadways.

That was a diversion, but in my mind, sooner rather than later we will need to adopt a framework to apportion taxing miles driven by EV’s for an annual road fee charge. Now that near 9% of all new cars sold are EV’s this is close to a tipping point to drive that change.

Back to the Hybrid gambit. Hybrids offer the best of both worlds, especially the newer “plug-in hybrids” that yield 60 or so miles of fully EV travel before needing the ICE power plant to kick in. Furthermore, these ICE power plants often use ultra efficient operating modes that would make for a terrible direct drive experience, but function fine to back up a hybrid driveline.

Yet, hybrids are a compromise. They often deliver outstanding efficiency numbers (original Chevrolet Volt owners, one of the first plug in hybrids, often reported 200+ effective MPG) as long as they were charging consistently. That said, one of the benefits of EV’s is the great reduction of the complexity of the ICE power plant. No valves, pistons, bearings, etc that can fail. A big motor (or two), a pile of batteries, and electronics to control the flow of electrons/current to the batteries. A hybrid has that, and a fiddly ICE.

Fun fact, a lot of 3rd generation Prius’ have engine failure, not because it was a poor design, or a bad Toyota, but because they become very lackadaisical with their maintenance. You still need to check oil levels, and do oil changes every few thousand miles, or those engines will bo BANG. And they can fail spectacularly.

At this point, I would definitely NOT buy a Hybrid vehicle from any maker, due to this risk. Because it is pretty easy to get lax in the maintenance department, and that can get super expensive to repair in a hurry.

If I was commuting to the office 3 or 4 days a week, I would either return to riding the train, or I would buy a used Nissan Leaf³ (EPA range ~ 150 miles), as its range is perfect for an around towner, and with free EV charging at my office (a perk!) it would be very economical.

And that seems like a good thing.

That all said, there is a huge uptick in Hybrids on offer, and being purchased. I guess that is OK as a stepping stone, but it really is like slowly pulling a band-aid off, and this is because a lot of people are unsure of the viability of EV’s⁴.

Long haul freight

Look, I know that Musk wants to usher in an era of Tesla Semi’s caravanning across the nation’s highways, upending the trucking market.

I just don’t see it. Long haul trucking lives and dies by the economics, and frankly, the Tesla Semi is terrible by the numbers. Too much of the GVW (gross vehicle weight) is tied up in batteries, and even with an allowance to haul more weight on the roads (this is bad because it increases the wear and tear on the roadways) they get crushed by the good old diesel truck.

Hell, when Frito Lays⁵ did a run between LA and Phoenix distribution centers, they had to tow a second cab to swap with mainly because there are no suitable chargers along the way. Towed by a diesel rig.

That is a faceplant right there.

Unless we get a factor of two improvement in the energy density to mass ratio of battery storage, as well as a breakthrough in charging technology to reduce the turn around time at charging stations, the diesel trucks will remain king of the road.

Now, local or last mile delivery? That is a sweet spot for EV’s. Hell, here in the SF Bay Area, we get the Rivian delivery truck that Amazon uses for the customer deliveries, and they work great. Even the drivers — people who spent 8+ hours a day trawling through city streets, dropping packages at your door — greatly prefer the quieter, less stinky, and more agreeable electric driven delivery vans.

But for long distance haulage, I just don’t see it happening. What we really need is electrified freight rail akin to what is common in Japan and in Europe. I just wish I could believe our politicians would push for, and fund this infrastructure.

Ah, a man can dream!

The diesel/gas conundrum

The prior section reminded me of another trend. As more EV’s are inserted into the fleet, demand for gasoline will plummet. It is already beginning to have an effect on supply and demand. But the fact that more EV’s will lead to less demand for automotive grade gasoline, you would think that would mean a lower demand for refined petroleum products.

Yet, because diesel fuel will remain dominant in long haul freight for the foreseeable future, that demand for diesel fuel will mean a glut of gasoline will be pulled off the refractory.

And when supply goes up and demand flags, that means one thing to the immutable rules of economics, the price will fall like a stone.

And, if I know my fellow ‘Murican’s, this crash in Gasoline price will mean an increase in demand for ICE powered vehicles, and the majors will fill that demand with ginormous gas-guzzling SUV’s and pick up trucks that are all kinds of ridiculous.

Mark my words, this will be a thing in 5 years or so, a final spasm for gas powered transportation.

Yay.

Charging Infrastructure

One area that is having a noticeable effect on the adoption of EV’s is the pathetic state of the charging infrastructure. There are many vendors, each with their own smartphone app, and chargers that are not well laid out, and often poorly maintained.

That means that many times you will pull into a charger and it will fail to work. Or there will be glitches in the app. Or meth-heads will have stolen the charging cables (cut off) to sell to scuzzy recyclers for the copper. Or not enough level 3 chargers that can top up your juice in a reasonable time frame.

And if you don’t own your own house, you likely will not be able to charge at home, so you are at the mercy of the public charging infrastructure.

Tesla avoided this by building out an (formerly) exclusive network, intelligently located, with seamless, “idiot proof” charging. Plug and go, and it just worked. It is possible to traverse the country in your Tesla using just Tesla superchargers, and life is good.

But if you find yourself with not enough range, and too far from a reliable (or any) charger, well, a tow driver can’t top you up and get you on your way.

This is why I believe that range anxiety, and people buying far more battery than they really need is a thing. Because our balkanized charging infrastructure is a goddamn mess.

There is hope though. The IRA has plenty of funding to build out charging infrastructure, and Tesla (in order to qualify for some of he sweet government dollars) has agreed to open up their charging network to other EV makers (Ford et. al) to share in the goodness of the Tesla experience.

And this is all helping. But unlike (or like) the original proliferation of petrol fueled cars in the early 20th century, there is a bit of a chicken and egg. Back then there was a race to build out the fueling infrastructure, and that is occurring once again. Of course, we don’t have the scummy Rockefeller building an empire with his vertically integrated business in Standard Oil. But the various standards and shifting requirements of EV’s will make it a patchwork quilt that drivers will need to navigate, and that will drive frustrations. Frustrations that you can find well documented on the internet and in YouTube videos. This is partly FUD⁶, but there is enough truth to the frustrations experienced by EV drivers.

Of course, I do take some glee in watching the Tesla-stans getting outraged by Ford lightning trucks and Mustang Mach-E’s being charged at their rightful slots at the superchargers. That does make my icy cold heart warm ever so slightly.

Summary

To wrap this long post up, I would caution everyone to not fall for the “EV’s are failing, ICE forever” bandwagon that I see in my feed on YouTube. The truth is, that Tesla proved that there’s a viable market, the majors are all making credible vehicles, and if we ever get our heads out of our asses and stop trying to protect our legacy automakers from Chinese made EV’s the transition will happen so fast it will make your head spin.

As for me, when my wife’s Rav4 finally expires, a 150 mile range EV would fit the bill for about 90% of all our transportation needs.

There will likely be a hard political cohort that will fight this transition, but like the gay marriage dead-enders, they will become the exception, not the rule, and over the next 2 decades we will see the transition accelerate. It will not be without hiccups, as the continued reliance on diesel for long haul transport will lead to a glut of gasoline, that will be merely a blip on the transition.

The world will be a better place. Embrace it.

1. n.b. this is a US centric view, Europe and Asia are buying an ever increasing ratio of electric vehicles, and incentivizing the adoption. We used to do a lot of this in the US, but that has been nibbled away. Also, Americans in general suffer from range anxiety, and hybrids assuage that concern.

2. I will never stop calling it Twitter

3. A brand new Leaf with the 40KWH battery will set you back $29,820 before any incentives and tax credits. That is a pretty fucking great price! With the discounts baked in, you can’t touch a Tesla Model 3 for less than $40K (Tesla uses plenty of sketchy gimmicks on their page to make it seem cheaper than it is, using “expected cost savings of electricity over gasoline” costs and other shady as fuck shit)

4. There is also a partisan divide, where the Republicans are vehemently against EV’s and even go out of their way to sabotage efficient use of chargers by illegally parking in charging stalls to block them. Yes, I have seen these assholes at Supercharger sites on my travels.

5. That is the first customer for Tesla Semi, Frito Lays. To ship mostly air (i mean potato chips).

6. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt - a classic Marketing tactic.

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