Seems like the headlines and articles are pretty clear. I don't see anything saying EVs will be directly required, even if EVs are the only way to hit those goals. :iono:

I think every industry is being overhauled off fossil fuels. There isn't much that that is off the table. Most of it is happening behind the scenes. The biggest thing that is in your face would be cars and food, but both of those are harder to sell to consumers than whether they get their electricity from coal or wind. Currently the focus is on cars because they are more likely to change that behavior than diet behavior, but that will come eventually too.

What scarce natural resources would limit EV sales?

Different prospective I guess. Headlines, to which I was referring, always have some level of slant to them for the most part so no real surprise. I agree the articles for the most part lay it out correctly.

I'm pretty sure there isn't enough lithium on the planet to supply enough EVs for everyone. However I don't think that will matter as by the time there's widespread adoption (10+ years from now) battery tech will have moved on and other elements will be required.

The silver bullet is a next gen battery that relies only on common elements, making it thus easy to acquire and won't require massive habitat destruction to source.

I was thinking a massive potato battery until I did the math. :)

There is enough lithium on the planet to fulfill all the energy storage and vehicle needs several times over. The question is extracting it at a profitable price (1). The oceans alone contain over 200 billion tons of lithium. The US has 4% of known lithium reserves, which is second only to South America, and is about 4% of the world's population.


Lithium use in EV batteries can vary dramatically depending on the chemistry and size of the batteries from ten pounds to over a hundred pounds, but Tesla's newer Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries tend to use less lithium. There are sodium-sulfur batteries, aluminum-sulfur, sodium-ion, etc all in the works or in production right now. Like driving giant trucks, we don't really need giant batteries for most daily driving. This is mostly an infrastructure and charging speed problem that will be resolved in time with more infrastructure, faster charging, battery swapping and so on. I don't really see this as an issue, especially once battery recycling takes off where companies have proven capable of extracting up to 95% of the battery contents (2).

lithium, neodymium, and copper to name a few.

battery swapping is likely never going to happen under the current vehicle ownership model. we already argue over parking spots, and those have very little intrinsic value. 'motor swapping' a car, and ensuring that every available swap is just as good as the previous one is just not cost effective. either people with 10 year old ev's are getting new batteries and people with 1 year old ev's are getting 10 year old batteries, or the auto maker would be going broke constantly re-stocking the changing stations with new battery stock, which could never be properly amortized unless there's a rather large fee attached to it.

i've also got some rather large concerns about electric grid capacity if everyone is running electric cars, electric ovens, and electric cooling/heat...

Again, see the previous post about lithium.

Tesla doesn't use neodymium or rare earth elements in its AC motors, and it cut the use of them 25% in its DC motors, but at the last investor's day they announced a permanent magnetic motor without the use of rare earth elements (1). Sweden recently found the largest deposit of rare earth elements, so it begs to be seen what is or isn't available (2). Regardless, it seems like Tesla is showing that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too with their new engines.

Tesla is switching to 48v, and I'm sure the rest of the industry will too, but that should save on copper (3). Aluminum can be used for wiring too. It is probably lighter, even if the wiring had to be bigger.


Nio has already done 20 million battery swaps (4)(5). It sells three versions of their cars: people can buy a car without a battery and do battery swapping; people can buy a car and lease the battery with an option to buy the battery or renew; people can buy the car with a battery. Part of the advantage of this business model is that an EV can be purchased for around $20k and have a subscription service for the battery, making the entry price a little more attainable.

It is lighter and more efficient to integrate the battery into the structure of the car like Tesla, but battery swapping might be appealing to many people who want to quickly swap instead of sitting at a supercharger, and it is also far more efficient to drive a 35kWh battery and do quick swaps on a trip, or drive a 35kWh battery daily and swap to a 75kWh battery for a holiday trip, than to drive around with a big battery all the time. Supercharging decreases the longevity of the batteries, so slow charging and swapping is smarter.

I'm more a fan of this business model, and I would be a fan of standardizing the battery dimensions for swapping, so third parties could sell batteries and provide swapping. Unless battery tech improves with charging, swapping will likely become a business model for many companies.

Are you saying the US doesn't have the ability to grow electricity production fast enough to meet the scale of EV and other electronic growth? I've already posted an Engineering Explained breakdown on this topic, and the US has already grown the grid much faster than what it is doing now, so it is all about investment. We don't lack the time, recourses, capital, etc. It is just a commitment/demand issue.

The big red herring is the misinterpretation of the timeline of EV adoption. The article stated 67% of new sales by 2032, so in nine years, 67% of new cars sales will be EVs most likely. Considering only 6% of vehicles on the road are new at any given time, this means maybe 4% of vehicles on the road will be new EVs, and that will be added to the existing mix of old EVs. In 2022, 4.6% of new vehicles were EVs; that is 4.6% of the “6% of new vehicles”, which is 0.24% of all registered vehicles on the road were new EVs, and Biden wants that 0.24% to grow fifteen to twenty fold to 4% by 2032 (6).

Currently, less than 1% of all vehicles on the road are EVs. In ten years, if that number was 5% of all registered vehicles, we would be increasing it by 4% per year until we got to 100% of new vehicle sales, which would be replacing 6% of old vehicles with EVs. Some of that will be replacing wrecked and old EVs with EVs. Unless the government does a cash-for-clunkers program or creates even more attractive incentives like Norway that replaces older vehicles with new cars faster than the historic, and slowing, average of around 6% per year then it is going to take decades to replace all the cars in the US with EVs. Given his targets of 67% in ten years, we are talking probably thirty years at the soonest to get to 80%+ EV adoption of all cars on the road, but it probably is more like fifty years. There is more than enough time to build the grid in thirty to fifty years.

I’m waiting to see what happens to the infrastructure required to support petro/fueled cars and trucks as the demand for those services declines. As the numbers of vehicles declines the profitability of supporting the remaining one will too. As the number of charging stations increases it makes sense that the number of gas stations (and refineries) will drop. Availability and price of gasoline may well contribute to the replacement of petro-cars. I haven’t seen any well done studies of this. Bueller?

Ultimately, if the trajectory continues, the refueling infrastructures will cross where "liquid" stations become more rare and you have to plan, but "electron" stations exist in enough frequency we don't think about it when we travel.

Also, EV fueling stations will likely be more travel route oriented rather than fueling stations which are everywhere. On my current 40 mile one-way commute there are are over 50 different places I could by gas. and less than a dozen of them are along a major travel route. (I cross one Interstate, and one major state road where most these stations are).

Circle K is already testing EV stations at their stores. RaceTrac and QT are both in the planning stages. Buc-ees also already has some charging stations. I noticed the Georgia Welcome Center on I85 coming from Alabama also has a DCFC charger.

When I was in the research business, I found inflection points and transitions of particular interest. Shifting equilibria and the associated instability are fascinating. This one has my attention.

Interesting thing about the GA border welcome center. I don’t expect to see a charging station on public property in Texas - Ever. I’m waiting for the state legislature to pass a bill prohibiting EVs. :lol:

I've always wondered why Welcome Stations weren't more like the Travel Plazas you see in Europe and on the Florida Turnpike. Probably local business interests keep that from happening.

I saw the EV station when traveling by the Welcome Center on the highway so dug into it later. Apparently it's part of some type of funded experiment sponsored by GA DOT, Kia (whose plant is just past this exit) and a privately funded think tank, the Ray Andersen Foundation.

https://theray.org/tech/solar-powered-vehicle-charging/

I believe there will be an arms race to install EV charging stations at work and businesses, and obviously more people will be charging at home. If your choice is to charge for eight hours or one hour at Walmart or not charging somewhere else then people are that much more likely to work or shop, respectively, at Walmart.

Walmart will add thousands of EV charging stations to stores by 2030
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/06/walm...ork-plans.html

Supercharging and swapping stations might need to be just as abundant for people who can’t charge at home and because the charging time will exceed refueling time until things improve. And I agree the locations will change from traditional locations to shopping hubs.

Since EVs are being pushed unnaturally, there might need to be more carbon taxes on fossil fuels to keep gas prices artificially high or something or people could get grumpy if gas prices plummeted. What is most likely is that other third world countries will buy fuel, assuming supply/refining doesn’t drop.

All for no reason