1301: Electric Vehicles | Skeptical Sunday

1301: Electric Vehicles | Skeptical Sunday

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher Nick Pell. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life.

And those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, though, it's Skeptical Sunday, where a rotating guest, co-host and I breakdown a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic such as astrology, acupuncture, the wedding industry, the death industry, homeopathy, hypnosis, and more.

And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode Starter Packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion, negotiation, psychology, disinformation, junk science, crime, and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit [00:01:00] Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, electric vehicles aren't exactly new, but something about them still feels futuristic. You see one glide by and it's silent, sleek, often with that signature blue glow. It's one of the few examples we have today of feeling like you're looking at the future, and if it's a Tesla cyber truck, you can't help but stare.

Whether you think it's brilliant or a Samsung refrigerator on wheels, it's hard to ignore. For all their high tech promise, a growing number of people are asking uncomfortable questions. Are EVs really the clean Green Revolution we've been promised, or are they just the next chapter in a century? Long story of selling us salvation through consumption.

Because here's the thing, electric cars aren't a new invention. They've been around almost as long as the automobile itself. The idea of battery powered transportation predates the Model T. So what changed? How did we go from early experiments and abandoned prototypes to a world where Tesla, Ford Hyundai, and even luxury automakers like BMW are [00:02:00] locked in an electric arms race?

And maybe most importantly, are modern EVs actually better for the planet, or have we simply swapped out one set of environmental problems for another? Mining, manufacturing and electricity all come with costs. The question is whether those costs are worth it. Here today to help me go under the hood or whatever EVs have instead of one of those is writer and researcher.

Nick, Pell. Nick, do you own an ev?

Nick Pell: Not until they make a car truck.

Jordan Harbinger: Did you know the very first cars were battery driven?

Nick Pell: Yes. Duh. Everybody knows that.

Jordan Harbinger: I actually know a little bit about this 'cause my dad worked in the automotive industry in Detroit, but you couldn't recharge the batteries, I guess. So they were kind of a proof of concept thing versus something you could actually use as transportation.

This is of course back in the 1830s, which is crazy to think they had batteries back then for cars.

Nick Pell: It's crazy. You think they had cars back then?

Jordan Harbinger: I know. Yeah, kind of. I mean, battery powered carriage that you can't really use for anything you actually need a carriage for is kind of a better phrase than cars really, I don't think.

That they, [00:03:00] they really weren't that useful to be honest.

Nick Pell: No, they weren't. Uh, when we think of early cars, I think of, you know, these monstrosities, you had to crank by hand to get going.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. Which is sort of accurate and why a lot of people opted for electric cars. They were quieter. There was no hand cranking involved.

Everyone at the time agreed that the hand cranking sucked. Essentially.

Nick Pell: Weird aside, chauffeur comes from the French word stoker, like somebody who stokes an engine.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Nick Pell: Fun fact.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

Nick Pell: Because yeah, that's what used to have to do with. Gas powered cars to get them started.

Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of weird facts, you live in a town with an electric vehicle museum, which is kind of wild because most people probably don't even know that electric vehicles are older than the Tesla.

Nick Pell: Well, they're not totally wrong. Uh, Tesla was the first company that made electric vehicles practical for everyday use. Before Tesla hit the scene, they were kind of just toys for rich guys or car enthusiasts with significant disposable income. The electric car museum in my town is thus [00:04:00] kind of underwhelming.

You're not looking at something that can win a race or really even be driven across town.

Jordan Harbinger: They're basically sort of glorified golf carts, if I'm not mistaken.

Nick Pell: That's a decent way of putting it, except for one thing, like you said, the first cars on the road were electric vehicles. This was during an era where gas powered cars, electric cars, and steam powered cars shared the road.

It sounds like a joke, but it's not. Uh, electric cars used to be advertised as ladies cars because they were cleaner and required less maintenance.

Jordan Harbinger: So why did we get away from electric vehicles then? Like, Hey, no, I want a dirty one that breaks all the time.

Nick Pell: A lot of people chalk this up to conspiracy.

There's this idea that big oil killed the electric car, and to be fair, there's some truth to that. The oil industry did spend much of the 20th century lobbying against policies that would make EVs competitive, cheap gasoline infrastructure built around the internal combustion engine. [00:05:00] Heavy investment in oil refining all created a self-reinforcing system.

This was not exactly a level playing field, but it's also not a mustache twirling plot so much as it's a case of technological and economic inertia. Gas cars were cheaper. They were faster to refuel, they were more convenient. Early EVs were limited by lead acid batteries that sometimes barely got you across town before dying.

And when the hand crank disappeared and electric starters made gas engines easy to use, consumers overwhelmingly chose power and distance over quiet and clean. By the time lithium ion batteries arrived in the 1990s, the world had already spent nearly a century building around fossil fuels. The infrastructure, the culture of the industry, these were all locked in.

And the 2006 documentary who killed the electric car blames corporate and political collusion. And it's not wrong, but [00:06:00] the bigger story is that the technology simply wasn't ready yet. The economics didn't favor it. In other words, it wasn't just who killed the electric car, it was who failed to keep it alive.

The development of lithium ion batteries is a big reason why we have electric cars today. I doubt that lead acid batteries are practical at all for automobile transport.

Jordan Harbinger: This does make some sense because if you think about it. Yeah, maybe the automotive industries or the big or big oils sort of teamed up and other countries aren't necessarily immune to that, but I don't know.

You'd think they would've just built electric cars in Korea and then everyone would have one suddenly, but if the technology, it makes more sense. The tech was just sort of not ready for prime time. Lead acid batteries, certainly not practical at all for automobile transport. They're super heavy. They take a long time to charge.

You can't discharge them all the way down if you ever want to charge 'em up again. The Ford Model T, along with the Texas oil boom of 1901, I think that was kind of the end of electric cars. The Model T was cheap. It was mass produced, it ran on [00:07:00] gas, which as you said, was just a much more cost effective way of getting around in your car.

So for about 50 years. The only EVs that you see are these like, yeah, basically golf carts and forklifts. Neither of those are known for performance. You don't drive them long distance. So when does the comeback happen here?

Nick Pell: The comeback happens during the oil crisis of the seventies when the cheap oil part of the equation comes to an end.

Almost all of Detroit's development ends in prototypes that never get mass produced because, well, they're just glorified golf guards. You can't take them long distances. They top out at about 40 miles an hour. They're wildly impractical. You could usually get between 40 and 60 miles in them before you needed to recharge the absurdly heavy batteries.

And good luck doing that because not a lot of charging stations around during the oil crisis of the 1970s. The technology and infrastructure, it just wasn't there as a popular form of transport. Now in [00:08:00] 1990, California mandates zero emission cars. So GM makes the EV one, and Toyota makes the RAV4 ev. But again, they kind of suck.

People want to ascribe this to conspiracy, but if there's money to be made, gigantic, corporations usually want to make it, and this is not something you would want to drive. Electric vehicles didn't take off because people didn't want to buy them for good reasons. You know, there's, they weren't very attractive to the market.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. But there are companies whose entire business model is predicated on gas powered vehicles, and they support regulations that favor their business over competitors. Surprise, surprise.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I mean this is kind of like my objection to regulations in general is that they're written by people with power and influence and you know, they say what they want them to say.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So why are Teslas so hot? Now? Obviously we both remember when the Prius came out, it was a very specific type of person who bought them. Generally, shout out to all my door dashers and Uber driver homies out there. But that's basically it, right? [00:09:00] Nowadays.

Nick Pell: I mean back then like the Prius was, it was like a hair shirt for liberals.

Like nobody was buying these things 'cause they were the coolest, most practical car on the market. You bought a Prius 'cause it was this like way of performing concern for the environment.

Jordan Harbinger: I think some people bought it because it was super efficient and seemed futuristic and a lot of people just like fewer trips to the gas station.

No.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I think that's fair. Part of me just wants to make fun of a Prius, but I think that's fair. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: same.

Nick Pell: But I'm sure there's somebody out there who's going to disagree with this, but I just don't think anyone thinks a Prius is a cool car. Like Tesla's. Yeah, that's a cool car. But Prius is pri I, I don't know.

Pri pri i, yeah. Um, I just, who's the guy who's like, man, this is a cool car.

Jordan Harbinger: Prea. I'm sure the comment section and Reddit will jump to correct you on this. I don't know. We're not, we're sort of just having a laugh at the Prius owners. I mean. Sorry, I don't, I'm not the art or taste,

Nick Pell: sorry. Prius owners.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly.

Nick Pell: So what the Prius had though that [00:10:00] would prove transformative was the nickel metal hydride battery system. They're lighter, they charge faster. You can charge them all the way down, you can go further on them. They're just so superior to the lead acid battery that they're basically a totally different animal.

Then you get the Nissan Leaf, the Chevy Volt, but what Tesla really does. Is make a cool looking car. You'd actually want to be seen in the Tesla. Roadster was also the first fully electric vehicle to be highway legal and get over 200 miles of range without being prohibitively expensive. Charging stations were light years better, and Tesla took a gamble on making their own charging stations, which paid off.

You know, it helped to overcome one of the biggest hurdles to adoption, which is range anxiety.

Jordan Harbinger: Range anxiety. Tell us about that. Is that being worried that you're not going to find it charging station in time and you can get stranded somewhere?

Nick Pell: Yeah, that's exactly it. You know, people also have issues with the range in cold weather, so.

If [00:11:00] there's one charging station that you can get to on a normal day, you may not be able to get there. When it's 20 degrees out, the batteries don't give the same range. They're in the cold. Their capacity degrades over time. These are real issues. China, for what it's worth, also really wants electric vehicles to be a thing, so there's huge investment capital that just previously was not there for the electric vehicle.

I'm a little skeptical of them as a market phenomenon because they're very heavily subsidized, which gives them some degree of advantage that they wouldn't have otherwise. They might be the most single, heavily subsidized product in America. Some argue. With that said. EV's now account for between 15 and 20% of all cars on the road.

So regardless of government meddling in the market, it's a significantly growing market share.

Jordan Harbinger: I hate this argument in some ways, but the oil industry is heavily subsidized and if it wasn't a level playing field for the last hundred years, [00:12:00] then okay, do we want to sort of try to correct for that now? I don't know.

Nick Pell: It's very, very hard to apples to apples on this. Yes, they're both subsidized. The individual product of the electric vehicle is. It's very hard to apples to apples on this.

Jordan Harbinger: For the record, I drive a Tesla. I really like it. Best car I've ever had. But then again, I'm coming my car Before this was like a Ford Fusion and then and a Taurus before that.

And then before that, something called a Topaz, which let's just not even talk about that right now. 'cause that's like an early nineties piece of crap. I think it was like a 1989. Ford Topaz anyway. Whatever.

Nick Pell: What did you drive when I was like afraid to drive my car to the beach? 'cause it was going to die.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah. That would've been like a Ford Fusion possibly back then.

Nick Pell: Anyway, for the record, I drive a a a 1968 El Camino and I am polluting enough for the both of us.

Jordan Harbinger: You're like the guy eating twice as much meat to offset your vegan buddy. Or something. Except for in your case, you were the vegan guy also.

Before that

Nick Pell: I was, yeah. I'm making up for pastime by eating lots of meat.

Jordan Harbinger: That's [00:13:00] right.

Nick Pell: I drive the Camino to the gym and back, so it's like a five mile round trip.

Jordan Harbinger: So this is probably actually a good time to start talking about the various pros and cons of electric vehicles with regard to the environment, because I know that they use less fossil fuels, right?

Nick Pell: Well maybe.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Nick Pell: Let's explore that. Because otherwise, intelligent people think that the electricity coming out of an EV charging station is made out of fairy dust rather than coming from power plants. Which are often very much not a clean source of energy.

Jordan Harbinger: How much of the energy is actually coming from coal-fired power plants

Nick Pell: in the United States?

About 16% comes from coal-fired plants with an increasing amount from natural gas, which is significantly cleaner.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's definitely something that needs unpacking. Why? Why don't we start there? I know. There's more to the question of environmental impact, like rare earth minerals and shipping costs of materials.

But how do electric vehicles stack up when it comes to fossil fuel consumption and emissions?

Nick Pell: The whole debate boils [00:14:00] down to the difference between tail PIP emissions and lifecycle emissions. These are both exactly what they sound like. Tailpipe emissions are what come out of the vehicle, and lifecycle emissions are the total carbon emission cost of the vehicle for the entire time that it gets used.

Jordan Harbinger: I've heard they also have more emissions because of the tires, because of increased weight from the batteries, and that not only puts more wear and something like that, puts more wear and tear on the tires

Nick Pell: and also the roads. So tailpipe emissions for electric vehicles are super easy to calculate.

There's zero electric vehicles do not emit carbon,

Jordan Harbinger: right? Okay.

Nick Pell: There's no internal combustion happening. Thus, there is nothing to emit.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm sensing that there's going to be a very big butt dropped here at some point

Nick Pell: there is. As you mentioned, they have greater emissions because of the tires. You know, the, well, the, the emissions related to the tires are greater 'cause you need to replace the tires more.

And electric vehicles are heavier. They blow through tires more quickly [00:15:00] and there's more wear and tear on the roads. Also, as I've said, you know, earlier, electric vehicles require electricity. They get it in the form of, uh, electricity from charging stations, which are at least in part powered by coal-fired power plants.

For what it's worth, I think it would be way better if these charging stations were powered by nuclear plants. But, you know, we had one big accident in the United States once, and it was. It was decreed that henceforth we shall not use nuclear power. So

Jordan Harbinger: yes, and that big accident had killed zero people.

I've done shows on nuclear, and it's actually insane how fear-mongering by environmentalists has led to just a nutty amount of environmental destruction. The oil lobby couldn't have paid for something better. Oil and coal couldn't have paid for something better than the environmentalists who hate nuclear power.

I mean, that's their, yes. Their wet dream is these people doing their work for free and yeah, they didn't seem to get the memo in China where they're absolutely eating our lunch when it comes to nuclear [00:16:00] power plants,

Nick Pell: it's worth noting that there's a geographic element to just how environmentally destructive your electric vehicle is to drive.

This is before we get into the other factors. So if you live in West Virginia or India, you should probably stop thinking of your car as running on electricity and think of it as running on coal. If on the other hand you live in Norway or California.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I live in California.

Nick Pell: Oh, we know, uh, if you live there, a significant portion of electricity comes from nuclear power or renewables.

Thus, it's much cleaner to drive than, well, a 1968 El Camino getting about nine miles to the gallon.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: There's another phrase for this. It's called wheel to wheel emissions. It's not quite lifetime emissions because that includes everything that went into the making of your car. Certainly not tailpipe emissions because that's just what's coming out of your car.

But wheel to wheel emissions [00:17:00] is a pretty good way of gauging the total emissions created by driving an electric vehicle.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, unlike the batteries in your car, here's something that probably weren't created using child slave labor. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Quiltmind. If you're not on LinkedIn, you're probably making a mistake not 'cause it's so cool, but because it's practical.

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The moment you start posting consistently, you stand out because almost nobody does. Every time I post, I get dms from people I haven't talked to in years. Like man, that hit home suddenly on top of mind, that turns into intros, partnerships, opportunities. That's not luck. It's visibility. And that's why I use Quiltmind.

They help busy execs get LinkedIn famous. In about 30 minutes a week, I do a quick call. They pull out my stories and insights, turn 'em into short, [00:18:00] punchy posts that sound like me, and they keep me accountable because my default setting is I'll do it later. And you know how that goes. And I'll share stuff there that I don't really talk about on the podcast.

So if you're curious, look me up on LinkedIn. If you want Quiltmind, email jordanaudience@quiltmind.com. That's jordanaudience@quiltmind.com. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. March Includes International Women's Day, and it's had me thinking about how much women carry that.

Most of us don't fully see. I look at my wife Jen, she's the architect of fun in our house, birthday parties, little adventures. Special outings that make life feel bright. She's also running the behind the scenes operations schedules, school logistics, all the moving pieces that keep everything from falling apart.

There's an invisible mental load that's basically always on, and because she makes it look effortless, it's easy to forget. It still has weight. I think a lot of women operate like that. Capable, organized, steady. While quietly carrying more than anyone realizes, therapy can be a space where you don't have to hold everything together.

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Jordan Harbinger: Don't forget about our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser. It is every Wednesday, just about it is a two minute read or less.

Something highly practical that you can apply right away, that will change the way you make decisions, change your relationships, change the way you look at life. It's basically a little bite-sized gem from a past episode. From us to you, Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday.

So say that I do live in West Virginia or India and I drive a Tesla, does this mean that my car is dirtier than a traditional gas powered vehicle?

Nick Pell: It's hard to say, but probably not.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Nick Pell: You're probably producing about 70 to 80% of the carbon of the average [00:20:00] gas powered car. The problem is that your electric vehicle starts with what you might call a carbon debt because yes.

Electric vehicles are almost certainly more environmentally destructive to manufacture.

Jordan Harbinger: But won't the advantage that electric vehicles have improved over time as the grid gets cleaner?

Nick Pell: Honestly, green energy is kind of a whole other show.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: I am very skeptical that green energy is a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

I'm certainly not alone in this. Once again, we have a basically unlimited energy supply in the form of magic rocks that boil water, AKA uranium, and there are tons of countries building nuclear power plants out the wazoo, having no problems whatsoever with their nuclear powered grid. So that would maybe be the place to start looking for a replacement for dinosaur juice.

This is all without the development of fusion power that lets you create tiny little [00:21:00] suns you can harvest power from. Anyway,

Jordan Harbinger: yes, this message brought to you by the Nuclear Power Plant Association of America and Cher NOL, part two coming soon to HBO or Max, or whatever the hell it's called now.

Nick Pell: Sorry man.

It's just, it's so wild to me because you know, the only people touting nuclear like me, you and three other weirdos. Uh, I

Jordan Harbinger: know.

Nick Pell: Anyway. Go nuclear. In theory, yes. If the grid gets greener, this will make the electric vehicles greener as well. Worth mentioning, however, that the green energy boom is at the very least on hold until there's a Democrat back in the White House.

Mm-hmm. Because subsidies and tax credits, were doing a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to adoption of green energy. I wouldn't even necessarily bank on them coming back under a Democratic administration. 'cause who knows what the future will hold, but they're definitely not coming back Until then, I would, you know, so says my crystal ball.

I, you know, a younger guy [00:22:00] I know who was in solar sales changed professions entirely because his company anyway found, and you know, I live in Arizona where there's a lot of sun. They could not give solar panels away once the, the tax credits came to an end.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I've heard a lot about how electric vehicles are inherently environmentally destructive in a way that gas powered cars are not.

And I am super skeptical that this is actually true.

Nick Pell: I think it's fair to say that EVs are environmentally destructive in a way that traditional cars are not. That's not the same thing as saying that they're more environmentally destructive.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Nick Pell: they're definitely destructive in different ways, but whether that's worse or better is super complicated.

And kind of the meat of the show today,

Jordan Harbinger: what goes into an electric vehicle that doesn't go into a gas powered car batteries, but like what's, what are we talking about here?

Nick Pell: Lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and other rare earth elements are used for both [00:23:00] motors and batteries. The cobalt mostly comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There are two countries called Congo. I'm just going to say Congo for the rest of the episode. Now that I've specified, this introduces another layer of ethical considerations that we'll talk about. The lithium comes from Chile, Argentina, and Australia.

Jordan Harbinger: How is mining cobalt or lithium different from mining, I don't know, iron or some other metal?

Nick Pell: They're different in a few key ways. Starting off with the fact that iron and aluminum are among the most abundant elements on earth, iron ore in particular exists in massive high concentration deposits. It's dirty for sure, but it's also very efficient. A single large operation can produce millions of tons of iron.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I've seen some Discovery Channel documentaries on iron mining back in the day. You know, like the, why are we still awake at 3:00 AM watching in college kind [00:24:00] of stuff. And it's like, ah, iron mining. And you're like, ah, roll up another display. I'm definitely going to watch. I'm going to watch this thing. Yeah.

Nick Pell: On the other hand, lithium and cobalt are much rarer and more dispersed, meaning you have to process. Far more material to get the same usable amount, so you might need to evaporate thousands of gallons of water for a few kilograms of lithium. With cobalt, the ore grades are often very low, so extraction is much more energy intensive per unit of metal.

Short way to put this is you're spending way more energy to get way less.

Jordan Harbinger: Ah, okay. So it's a less efficient thing, period.

Nick Pell: Yes. There's also a big difference in terms of environmental impact. Iron ore mining isn't harmless. It results in massive deforestation. Tons of energy use, which almost always means carbon emissions.

This is for the smelting of the iron, which you need to do to have a useful finished product. Cobalt is typically a byproduct of [00:25:00] copper or nickel mining that requires sulfuric acid leaching and generates toxic tailings. Lithium is extracted from either hard rock SPO domine, which requires high temperature processing or brine evaporation ponds, and which pumps underground saline water to the surface to dry out.

Brine extraction consumes massive amounts of water, about 500,000 gallons per metric. Ton of lithium in some of the driest places on earth.

Jordan Harbinger: Ugh. Yeah, that all sounds just terrible. Super inefficient and really, really dirty. I'm betting. It's also, you said the driest places on earth. I'm going to go ahead and assume it's some of the poorest places on Earth as well.

Yeah,

Nick Pell: yeah. It's pretty bad. Lithium and cobalt. Can permanently damage ecosystems where they're being mined and we're just getting started. Iron and aluminum are easily recycled. [00:26:00] There's tons of infrastructure to do it. This is not true of lithium and cobalt. Part of this is just a technology and infrastructure issue.

There are definitely people who have a financial interest in seeing lithium and cobalt recycled more easily.

Jordan Harbinger: Mm-hmm.

Nick Pell: You're also looking at where the rare earth minerals are mined and what being a miner there is, like

Jordan Harbinger: you're going to say more about that at some point, right. I've heard about this. I think I've even done shows about this.

Nick Pell: Oh, I'm one step ahead of you. Uh, there are lots of hidden costs to electric vehicles on the environment and the people who make them.

Jordan Harbinger: Mm.

Nick Pell: So the mining and the effect on the people in the environment. Iron and aluminum mining is a global phenomenon, but it's pretty heavily concentrated in countries with strong labor laws.

Relatively high levels of unionization, especially in the field of mining. In other words, it sucks to be a minor just by the nature of the work, but the workers where iron and aluminum is mined tend to be [00:27:00] treated like human beings, not disposable cattle. Australia, Brazil and the United States all have large, well-regulated iron and aluminum mining industries.

The rule of law is strong in all these countries, meaning it's much harder to slip the mine inspector a bribe. Cobalt comes almost entirely from one place Congo. 70% of the world's cobalt comes from the Congo, which is one of the poorest and most politically unstable countries in the world. Lithium production is somewhat more spread out and produced in countries that are almost certainly better places to be a minor.

Mm-hmm. Chile, Argentina and Bolivia are known as the Lithium Triangle. Australia also produces a good deal of lithium. It's worth noting that iron and aluminum mining is largely mechanized, whereas with cobalt anyway, you're talking about artisanal miners, many of them children down on the ground using hand [00:28:00] tools.

Jordan Harbinger: I knew that a lot of rare earth minerals, specifically cobalt, came from the Congo, and if you want to know why that is such a bad place to be a minor beyond the fact that it's just an underdeveloped country without a lot of regulation. See episode 807 with Siddharth Kara who discusses the horrific conditions that people are mining in and like think pregnant mom with infant on her back digging with her bare hands in mines with no PPE with toxic chemicals everywhere, wading waist-deep in mercury-filled water. It's just horrible.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Sneak preview of that episode. A lot of times the mines are located in territory controlled by militias, so people working in mines are there under threat of force or debt bondage. Mm-hmm. Armed groups are known to tax the mines. It's just a giant mess. The rule of law is extremely weak.

In Congo, I talked about the artisanal miners. This is about 15 to 30% of all cobalt miners in the Congo. These are often families, including children working in [00:29:00] extremely unsafe minds without proper safety, equipment, without ventilation. Amnesty International has documented children as young as seven, geez, engaged in artisanal mining.

Tunnel collapses are sadly common as is inhalation of toxic dust because again, total lack of proper safety equipment in all too many cases, and for all this, it's very common to earn between one and $2 per 12 hour day.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, disgusting and horrifying to say the least.

Nick Pell: Acid leaching, unregulated runoff and open air tailings, contaminate rivers and farmland.

Mining waste releases, uranium, lead and arsenic exposing miners and the nearby communities. In Southern Congo, you'll find elevated levels of cobalt and other heavy metals and the residents blood and urine. There is little to no remediation or cleanup after the mining operations close. They just make a big mess and move on to the next spot.

Jordan Harbinger: Geez, I [00:30:00] want to say something about responsibly sourced cobalt, but I'm almost certain you're going to tell me that that's a huge scam, partly because you're acidic in some ways, and partly because it's probably or possibly a huge scam.

Nick Pell: You know, I actually, I don't think it's fair to say that in some cases it might be cobalt passes through a lot of hands before Elon Musk makes your car run with it.

But yeah, the supply chain is super muddy and I'm guessing that a lot of people, you look the other way, pretend they don't know what's going on. Still the cynicism around responsibly sourced cobalt can be bad. Some people boycott Congolese cobalt entirely because they assume that it's all being mined by child slaves and this is simply not true.

Jordan Harbinger: Is this kind of just the cost of doing business? In other words, it, it doesn't seem like the problem here is necessarily cobalt. It seems like there's a lot of environmental issues and human rights issues that are. Maybe more of a function of a lack of government oversight and an absence of strong rule of law.

Nick Pell: Well, I think [00:31:00] that's definitely one way of looking at it. There's nothing wrong with cobalt per se, that couldn't be fixed with safer, more responsible mining practices.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: The issue is that your Tesla is about to cost a lot more than what it already does. And I don't think it's cynical to say that the appeal of a Tesla is going to be diminished for a lot of Westerners if the price skyrockets because of, you know, responsibly source cobalt.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: So, yeah. Your Tesla comes with some serious environmental and ethical concerns. Is it worse than a gas powered car? I think it's super hard to make that call. I think it's very complex.

Jordan Harbinger: You talked earlier about the lifetime emissions of a Tesla versus a gas powered car. How does one actually stack up against the other?

Nick Pell: Okay, so before we get into the specifics, we need to break down what lifetime emissions actually means. First, there's the manufacturing element. That means mining the materials, refining the materials once they're mined and [00:32:00] building the car and its battery. Then there's operations. Basically this is wheel to wheel emissions We talked about earlier, the emissions related to the operation of the vehicle, whether it's gas in the tank or coal or natural gas or whatever.

In the power plant, one people don't normally think about is maintenance. All the replacement parts and repairs, those come with the emissions too. Tires, fluids, the works.

Jordan Harbinger: Nick's out here daily drive in a 68 El Camino that kills a forest every time he starts it. I'm over here in a Tesla pretending that that makes me a better person.

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Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. We mentioned earlier that [00:35:00] the tires are an issue because the vehicles are heavier, so what's the cost on that? Because I hear a lot of people saying this, like there's some huge cost associated with owning electric vehicles beyond what you just expect to own a gas car, but like I've got a Tesla.

I think we replaced the tires once it's been in for a minor repair of like a plastic thing Once. I mean, they came to our house and did it in like, you know, a few minutes. So it's not like the things in the shop and getting, you know, oil changes all the time. I don't, I don't really know, honestly,

Nick Pell: there's a bit of nuance here.

Per mile cost for EVs is about half that of internal combustion engine cars. Now, the bummer is that you're probably going to get slapped with big bills all at once, rather than just having to shell out for oil changes every now and again. There's also a difference between maintenance and repairs, but I just kind of want to skip right over that and count them both as the same thing.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure.

Nick Pell: Finally, there's the end of life emissions because once the car isn't [00:36:00] useful anymore, you know, it doesn't turn into a pumpkin. They need to do something with it. It might get recycled, it might get junk, it might get reclaimed, taken apart, used for its constituent parts.

Jordan Harbinger: Got it. And you mentioned earlier that electric vehicles start with a carbon deficit.

So remember that's how much carbon it takes to create the electric vehicle in the first place. But wouldn't that also be true of gas powered vehicles as well? I mean, those aren't grown in pumpkin patches either,

Nick Pell: right? It is true. And to people who like to crow about the carbon deficit of electric vehicles.

You're kind of missing this part of it. Basically, all cars start with five to six tons of carbon dioxide, you know, priced in. But remember, electric vehicles have another dimension of their carbon deficit. The gas powered cars don't, and that's the batteries. That is going to add another three or four tons of carbon dioxide to that carbon debt for the average mid-sized electric vehicle.

Jordan Harbinger: So the electric [00:37:00] vehicles start with a bigger carbon deficit than gas powered cars. But the difference in fuel source means that they make this up over time. Right. They're not creating carbon every time they run. Really?

Nick Pell: Yes, correct. So even if you do live in India or West Virginia, the electric vehicle is going to potentially be getting as much as twice the carbon efficiency of a gas power car, grain of salt there because it's the union of concerned scientists, which I would consider to be a potentially biased source, but the basic idea is correct.

You're buying your way out of that carbon debt every time you drive. They're about equal in terms of end of life carbon costs, so you don't have to worry about like a balloon payment of carbon when you're done with the ev. Again, skeptical of green energy in general, but even if we disregard that the improvements in manufacturing technologies and battery recycling technologies are probably going to increase the edge that electric vehicles have over time.

All of this math is done on the assumption that the cars are living [00:38:00] out their entire life, which is about 150,000 miles, let's say.

Jordan Harbinger: At what point do electric vehicles overtake gas powered vehicles in terms of carbon? Does that question make sense?

Nick Pell: When do they start being more efficient based on this carbon debt?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, like at what point do you drive away your carbon deficit that compared to a gas car? If you're driving an electric car?

Nick Pell: When are you out of your carbon debt? About 15 to 20,000 miles. If you live somewhere like Norway that has a super green power grid, you're looking at 5,000 to 10,000 miles. If you live in India or West Virginia or somewhere else, that's super coal intensive.

It's going to be more like 40 to 50,000. But the point is that even if you do live somewhere with a very dirty power grid, you're still coming out on top. The important thing to highlight is that no matter what, once the electric vehicle passes that threshold, every mile they drive is going to be cleaner than it would be on a gas powered car.

Gas cars never get to the point [00:39:00] where they get cleaner. In fact, the opposite might be true. If the fuel efficiency decreases as the car gets older or due to improper maintenance.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. But electric vehicles come with additional environmental destruction and other ethical issues that aren't directly related to carbon emissions.

Nick Pell: Right. There are additional issues related to mining, human rights, water pollution, chemical waste, and the manufacturing footprint. There's also a shift from petroleum states to mineral ones. One of the biggest of the mineral states is China. We're not going to get super deep into China, but there are definitely human rights issues in the People's Republic of China.

Jordan Harbinger: Thankfully, we don't have any of those human rights, those pesky human rights concerns when we're talking about where we get our oil from. Saudi Arabia. Iran, Venezuela, I'm talking about the world in general, not just the United States. Right? We get our oil from some pretty dodgy place. Russia.

Nick Pell: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Russia might even be one of the, the least bad actors when it comes to states that sell oil globally and that yes, I am including the invasion of Ukraine.

I [00:40:00] mean, you just, you can't buy a large amount of oil from most places without. Doing, getting your hands dirty unless you're buying all your oil from Norway or something like that. You're, uh, you're getting soiled in the process

Nick Pell: or Canada?

Jordan Harbinger: Canada, yes, exactly. The, the United States. Uh, well, I don't know.

Let's, people are going to be like, what?

Nick Pell: Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: there's going to be some Reddit posts about this part of the show for sure.

Nick Pell: There are end of life problems with electric vehicles that aren't carbon related. Only 5% of electric vehicle batteries are recycled these days.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Well, it's an part of, this is an infrastructure issue.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: The recycling process is very complex, and it can release toxic fumes. If the batteries aren't recycled properly, the heavy metals can end up in landfills or informal recycling centers, which is a cute turn of phrase for, you know, a dump basically. This is particularly true in poorer countries and creates additional contamination problems.

Jordan Harbinger: The other thing I think that doesn't really get talked about [00:41:00] is that electric vehicles don't get rid of some of the problems presented by gas powered cars. You know, you still need to park in the parking lots depending on where you live. That's just another carbon expenditure that's hard to calculate.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I think the main thing for people to remember is that the carbon emissions are only one of the problems presented by gas powered cars and also the only one that the electric vehicles solve and electric vehicles come with another set of problems. So our electric vehicles better, worse, the same.

Honestly, I don't think there's a clear cut answer to this. It's just kind of an individual choice People have to make. You have to evaluate how you feel about the new issues presented by electric vehicles and decide if you think that the carbon savings are worth it. Some cars might make sense for some situations and not others.

You know, trucks have become big villains in some circles, by which I mean like a Ford F-150, not a Mack truck.

Jordan Harbinger: Right?

Nick Pell: But you know, when I lived in the absolute middle of nowhere, [00:42:00] you could not survive without truck.

Jordan Harbinger: Also, air pollution, which is a big issue in cities with lots of cars like la. Improving air quality is good even if you're not super concerned about carbon emissions.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I think that's a fair way of looking at it. There are costs associated with things like asthma or allergies that result from air pollution.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm actually kind of surprised you didn't use this occasion to take a giant dump all over electric vehicles.

Nick Pell: No. Look, here's my beef with the electric vehicle phenomenon.

People frame it as this magic bullet for environmental problems and it's just not that. In general, I think people should be skeptical of panaceas because there's just no such thing in this world. You don't. You don't live in a world where you can get something for nothing. Kind of the weirdest experience of this is that I sort of want an electric vehicle now

Jordan Harbinger: what?

Nick Pell: I'm going to convert it to roll coal, of course. Ah,

Jordan Harbinger: okay. There we go. There we go. There we go.

Nick Pell: The sleek, futuristic aspect of them. That glowing [00:43:00] mono light in the front I'm into. Yeah. You know, I could drive, it's like I'm driving something from Tron.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: You know, I don't think reducing carbon emissions is a bad thing for anyone.

People probably came into this with their own ideas about electric vehicles, and I think they're probably just going to find confirmation of what they already thought. I mean, the whole topic is kind of just a cipher where people see what they want to see.

Jordan Harbinger: Are there geographical issues involved in electric vehicle adoption?

It seems like. It's probably easier to own one where I live rather than where you live. I don't know.

Nick Pell: Jordan, where do you think I live?

Jordan Harbinger: Some sort of compound in a missile silo surrounded by electrified, barbed wire. I don't know,

Nick Pell: man. I wish

Jordan Harbinger: I know you do.

Nick Pell: I live on, yeah, I live outside of Vegas. There's like two charging stations I can think of off the top of my head in my tiny little town that went like 80% Trump.

So they're all over. I suspect that owning an electric vehicle is harder if you live somewhere super [00:44:00] rural, but 64% of Americans live within two miles of an electric vehicle charging station. The kind of asterisk of this is that a lot of these could be broken if they're in super rural areas, they're not very well maintained.

95% of Americans live in a county with a charging station. That doesn't mean a heck of a lot because the county that I live in is nine times the size of the state that I grew up in.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: Some counties are huge, 60 to 80% of census tracks. These are geographic areas, not population divisions. They don't have charging stations, but no one really lives there.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Nick Pell: You know, if you live on the coast near a big city, you don't really understand how empty a lot of the middle of the country is.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: So it's complicated. Yes, I'm sure it's easier to own an electric vehicle in San Francisco than in rural Mississippi, but most Americans [00:45:00] live kind of near a charging station anyway.

What the studies don't tell us is how good those chargers are, or are they fast? Are they slow? Are they affordable?

Jordan Harbinger: Can't you just charge at home?

Nick Pell: You can, but without special equipment, it's not super efficient. A standard wall charger is going to get you 40 miles of charge in eight hours.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, wow.

Nick Pell: So I hope you live 20 miles from work.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: In installing a home charging station runs between 802,000 bucks, which could save you money in the long run, but that's a fairly significant upfront cost for a lot of people.

Jordan Harbinger: Electric vehicles solve a lot of problems while quietly creating a bunch of others that will probably bite us in the ass in a few decades, kinda like today's sponsors.

We'll be right back

now for the rest of Skeptical

Nick Pell: Sunday.

Jordan Harbinger: Are all electric vehicles equal when it comes to carbon emissions? My gut says. Yes, because they're all zero emissions, but I'm not sure.

Nick Pell: [00:46:00] Well, remember we're talking about lifecycle emissions. Yeah. In that case, the smaller ones are going to be somewhat more carbon efficient because they don't need as many batteries.

Right. Okay. And this is where the EVs really fail. There's a real technological race on right now to improve batteries by making them lighter, easier to charge, more energy efficient. So that's another place where we might start seeing improvements in EV efficiency and all EVs. Fail when you put them against mass transit or cycling everywhere, but.

Basically, no one wants to rely on either of those for their primary source of transportation unless you live somewhere super urbanized like New York or Tokyo or you know.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Yeah. I'm not giving up my car to rely on the non-existent subway here in the suburbs of San Jose.

Nick Pell: Yeah. The other thing worth mentioning briefly is that so far EVs are only an alternative for private transportation.

They are not going to replace or even [00:47:00] start taking up market share in ground air or sea shipping anytime soon, and that is where the bulk of emissions comes from. The issue is the charging bottleneck. It takes time to charge electric vehicles. And for larger vehicles like semi trucks or transport ships, that could be days.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: Fast charging is more expensive. Beyond that, there's the impact of a massively scaled up amount of electricity to power the vehicles. Can the grid handle this? These are serious questions.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Can the American electrical grid handle it? I mean, I know we couldn't, if we could even make one, you couldn't just charge like a tanker or a container ship with electricity if it were electric power.

I mean, that would just, I don't even know how you would do that. Right. Half the ship would be batteries at that point. Probably. But what about just for cars? I mean, can our grid handle this or do would we need to upgrade all of the. The wiring in the whole dang country.

Nick Pell: It's super complicated. If half the cars on the road were replaced with EVs, there would be a [00:48:00] 15 to 20% increase in electricity consumption.

That sounds like a lot, but there's seasonal swings that are bigger than this. That makes sense. So it's kind of not.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: If everyone plugs in and starts charging at 6:00 PM. That could be an issue. This is kind of a whole other episode because it gets to questions of renewable power generally, how fragile the grid is.

So I think the answer to can it handle it is sort of maybe depends on who you ask and when and where it's happening.

Jordan Harbinger: Mm. Okay. So before we wrap this up. I want to talk about the economic aspect of all of this, because I suspect for a lot of people the issue isn't, is it green? It's more like, can I even afford this?

Nick Pell: Yeah. I think very few people are martyr enough that they're going to buy a car that doesn't make economic sense for them just because it's green,

Jordan Harbinger: right?

Nick Pell: A lot of people do get sticker shock when they go to buy an ev. The average cost is about $53,000 compared to $36,000 for a gas powered compact.

That's a lot more money. Yeah. Especially if you're [00:49:00] financing the car, batteries are between 30 to 40% of that cost. Other drivers of cost are supply chain bottlenecks and limited market competition. I mean, you say electric vehicle, people automatically think Tesla.

Jordan Harbinger: Are people even doing the cost of ownership math on these things either?

Nick Pell: Well, if people could do cost of ownership math, basically no one would own a Jeep or a lifted truck with nuts on the back.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, true.

Nick Pell: Here's the crazy shock, though, the cost of ownership of an electric vehicle. Can potentially make it cheaper depending on how long you drive it, how much you get in the way of tax credits.

Really briefly on tax credits, they used to cap out at 7,500 and it's a rebate, so you had to pay that much in taxes to qualify for that high of a rebate. I also feel absolutely compelled here to mention that. The government taking your money and then giving you back some of it later. I mean, you know, it's better than a kick in the teeth, but [00:50:00] in a sense, you're, you're paying that, whether you own an EV or not.

Jordan Harbinger: Obviously don't share your perspective on taxes entirely, but you're not wrong that the government isn't handing you a check for buying an ev. They're just sort of giving you some of your own money back.

Nick Pell: Sure. The bad news is those tax credits are gone now. Wamp Wamp.

Jordan Harbinger: Yep. I also know California offers an additional rebate, and I assume other states do as well.

Maybe those are gone now too. I haven't paid attention.

Nick Pell: Colorado, New Jersey, New York, a bunch of states. You can also get reduced costs on car registration or discounts for installing a charging station in your home. I wouldn't expect those state level tax rebates or other advantages to last forever. I think we're going to see some retreat on those tax credits similar to what happened with Solar.

Jordan Harbinger: What about the resale value of EVs?

Nick Pell: EVs depreciate 15% compounding year over year. The big risk you're taking, buying a used EV is that you might have to replace the batteries, but hey, you know, I bought a truck once and had to replace the transmission a month later. So

Jordan Harbinger: yeah,

Nick Pell: there's always a risk.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:51:00] Tesla comes with battery warranties that follow the car? I think so. If you're getting one with fewer than a hundred thousand miles on. I mean, air quotes, you should be good, you know? Yeah. Not a guarantee. I do not. This is, yeah, I have no idea, but that's just kind of off the top of my head. I think they do honor that.

Nick Pell: Use coupon codeJordan@tesla.com.

Jordan Harbinger: Com. Exactly, exactly. Yes. Tell 'em Jordan sent you for your new batteries. Once the thing stops working two weeks after you buy it.

Nick Pell: Jordan Harbinger told me that you guys would give me free batteries, so

Jordan Harbinger: That's right.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Electric vehicles also suffer from range degradation, so they can't drive as far as they used to on a single charge.

Once they start aging, you know, it's like buying a used mattress, which I've done.

Jordan Harbinger: GR gross,

Nick Pell: Hey man, I was poorer than I am now. I wouldn't buy a secondhand ev, but other people might have different comfort levels.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I think the takeaway for everyone at home is that there's no such thing as a zero emissions car.

Electric vehicles may be better than gas powered cars when it comes to emissions, but they have other problems that are hard to quantify in [00:52:00] comparison to gas powered cars. Electric vehicles are cleaner than gas powered cars, but still exist as a resource intensive system. Electric vehicles are neither a panacea nor a scam.

They're a new technology that solves some problems while creating other ones. But the good thing about human ingenuity is that we're pretty good at solving problems, even the ones that we ourselves create. The real question is do EVs represent a meaningful step towards sustainable transportation or just a different version of the same old car culture?

Thanks again to Nick for helping us unplug from the rhetoric and recharge with the facts. And thank you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday directly to me, jordan@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, ways to support the show all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals.

I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and this show. It's created an association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Tadas Sidlauskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel [00:53:00] Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. And yeah, I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer.

Also, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it is fact checked. So consult a professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and wellbeing. Remember, we've rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. Imagine a world where money, religion, and nations are shifting under the rise of ai, capable of making decisions beyond human control.

JHS Trailer: Humans are very good in solving problems, but they often focus on the wrong problems.

The idea that information is truth, people will have more knowledge, everything will be okay. This is extremely naive. Most information isn't truth. It is fictions and fantasies and delusions and errors and lies and so forth. The truth is a very [00:54:00] rare and costly kind of information, which is why if you flood the world with information, the truth will not float up.

It'll sink to the bottom. Democracies all over the world are currently in crisis. They are undermined because of manipulations by ai. The one thing everybody should know is that AI is not a tool. It is an agent. AI can make decisions by itself. We already have autonomous weapon systems. It can even invent new weapons.

Social media algorithms are currently the most powerful editors in the world. They increase user engagement by manipulating billions. The easiest way to capture people's attention is by spreading outrage. I'm not saying, oh, we should stop all development of ai. No, of course there is enormous positive potential, otherwise, we wouldn't develop it.

The key question is how do we enable the positive potential of [00:55:00] AI to flower while avoiding the really existential risks this technology poses.

Jordan Harbinger: Join me on episode 1068 as Yuval Noah Harri explores the risks and responsibilities we face as AI transforms our society.