Photo: Jeso Carneiro/Creative Commons
When I started covering electric cars, I was sure it would be the future. We would all be driving computers on wheels that would be safe, convenient, efficient, environmentally neutral, and economically feasible. But that was not what I found out after years of investigating new companies, wondering about their shortcomings, and realizing we may be betting on a solution like lemmings theoretically bet on cliffs. What if we are wrong about EVs? Well, it will be a scorched earth scenario.
First of all, think about all the brands and carmakers that are committing to becoming BEV companies in increasingly tighter schedules. Renault sold its combustion-engined business to Geely to get rid of the liability. Engine factories are being converted into battery plants. If massive batteries are not the right solution, these guys are doomed.
The automotive industry is highly complex and works on long-term projects. If any carmaker changes its plans right now, we will only see the results in three years or more. It is like betting everything you have on cards that may prove to be insufficient to win the game.
Hugo Spowers made a webinar on June 11, 2021, in which he talked precisely about that. According to the Riversimple founder, legacy automakers and startups keep telling you that battery electric vehicles are the only solution for two main reasons.
The first one is that battery electric cars rely on something that is already available (cells), and that seems to work. According to Spowers, automakers do not have enough money to develop fuel cells in the way they want them to work. Just compare the Toyota Mirai and the Riversimple Rasa to understand what I am talking about.
The second and probably most important reason for carmakers to tell you hydrogen has no future and battery electric vehicles are the way to go is because they need you to buy them. If you are not convinced that they are the best solution, you will wait for a better one, which may kill all current efforts we are seeing today.
Try to imagine what will happen to charging networks if people realize they will prefer hydrogen to give their cars more range. They will probably work with the EVs that are currently around until their battery packs fail. After that, people will not need these stalls anymore. That’s billions and billions thrown into the garbage bin.
Most battery manufacturers will be just fine. If cars do not need more batteries, they will find other customers who need them. Still, the demand will fall drastically, reducing prices and eventually making current and planned factories take more time to pay off or even completely fail to do so. That will be a financial hit, but it will not take them out of business.
For mining companies, the problem will be very similar. Less demand will make raw material prices drop dramatically, but you cannot just make a mine disappear. If prices get too low, it may not be worth producing at a fast pace, but the world will eventually need the nickel, copper, graphite, and all other minerals these guys are extracting. Smaller companies may bite the dust.
Right now, automakers are simply following what politicians want them to do while bracing for impact or hoping for a technological miracle. Some of them try to warn about the consequences, such as Akio Toyoda or Carlos Tavares. Others just swear EVs are the future and hope everybody believes them while buying cars with battery packs that will eventually cost more than their entire vehicles.
For EVs to rely on battery packs, these components must be much cheaper than they currently are, as I already discussed in another text of this series. Otherwise, turning cars exclusively into battery electric vehicles will restrict them to rich folks. This is why startups such as Lucid and Rivian are focusing on expensive EVs. It is not only to make more money with lower volumes: it is to have $20,000 battery packs in $80,000 cars. If these components fail, it still makes sense to fix the vehicle. Try that in a $40,000 EV.
With the current battery tech, used ones will never be an option: if their battery packs fail when the warranty is over, they may be more expensive to replace than the entire car. I already discussed that, remember?
The truth is that the current EV model presents many flaws. Insisting on them may jeopardize not electric cars themselves but personal mobility as a whole for a simple reason: EV advocates think all vehicles should be replaced by computers on wheels powered by batteries. They are managing to steer the automotive industry in that direction. Without a technological breakthrough, that will be ruinous. If they succeed and are wrong – which seems pretty much to be the case – wave goodbye to the automobile.
The automotive industry is highly complex and works on long-term projects. If any carmaker changes its plans right now, we will only see the results in three years or more. It is like betting everything you have on cards that may prove to be insufficient to win the game.
Hugo Spowers made a webinar on June 11, 2021, in which he talked precisely about that. According to the Riversimple founder, legacy automakers and startups keep telling you that battery electric vehicles are the only solution for two main reasons.
The first one is that battery electric cars rely on something that is already available (cells), and that seems to work. According to Spowers, automakers do not have enough money to develop fuel cells in the way they want them to work. Just compare the Toyota Mirai and the Riversimple Rasa to understand what I am talking about.
The second and probably most important reason for carmakers to tell you hydrogen has no future and battery electric vehicles are the way to go is because they need you to buy them. If you are not convinced that they are the best solution, you will wait for a better one, which may kill all current efforts we are seeing today.
Try to imagine what will happen to charging networks if people realize they will prefer hydrogen to give their cars more range. They will probably work with the EVs that are currently around until their battery packs fail. After that, people will not need these stalls anymore. That’s billions and billions thrown into the garbage bin.
Most battery manufacturers will be just fine. If cars do not need more batteries, they will find other customers who need them. Still, the demand will fall drastically, reducing prices and eventually making current and planned factories take more time to pay off or even completely fail to do so. That will be a financial hit, but it will not take them out of business.
For mining companies, the problem will be very similar. Less demand will make raw material prices drop dramatically, but you cannot just make a mine disappear. If prices get too low, it may not be worth producing at a fast pace, but the world will eventually need the nickel, copper, graphite, and all other minerals these guys are extracting. Smaller companies may bite the dust.
Right now, automakers are simply following what politicians want them to do while bracing for impact or hoping for a technological miracle. Some of them try to warn about the consequences, such as Akio Toyoda or Carlos Tavares. Others just swear EVs are the future and hope everybody believes them while buying cars with battery packs that will eventually cost more than their entire vehicles.
For EVs to rely on battery packs, these components must be much cheaper than they currently are, as I already discussed in another text of this series. Otherwise, turning cars exclusively into battery electric vehicles will restrict them to rich folks. This is why startups such as Lucid and Rivian are focusing on expensive EVs. It is not only to make more money with lower volumes: it is to have $20,000 battery packs in $80,000 cars. If these components fail, it still makes sense to fix the vehicle. Try that in a $40,000 EV.
With the current battery tech, used ones will never be an option: if their battery packs fail when the warranty is over, they may be more expensive to replace than the entire car. I already discussed that, remember?
The truth is that the current EV model presents many flaws. Insisting on them may jeopardize not electric cars themselves but personal mobility as a whole for a simple reason: EV advocates think all vehicles should be replaced by computers on wheels powered by batteries. They are managing to steer the automotive industry in that direction. Without a technological breakthrough, that will be ruinous. If they succeed and are wrong – which seems pretty much to be the case – wave goodbye to the automobile.
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