The Damn Inconvenience of those pernicious, insidious facts.
Two Different Breakthroughs Will Radically Improve Electric Vehicle Acceptance and Penetration in the Automotive Market – Regardless of Our Unwillingness to Change
Improvements in electric vehicles and their acceptance has been incremental ever since the first electric vehicle came onto the North American market in 2010. The Nissan Leaf, being the first electric vehicle for sale, didn’t particularly set the market on fire. In fact, most of us who love ICE vehicles, both two and four wheeled, probably ignored it, willfully. We love the smells, the feel, vibration and the mechanical sounds and the exhaust note. So rather than adapt, which is central to change, we like keeping something we fear from getting too close, too real.
With the first electric car, it was easy to do. It only developed 110 horsepower, would only travel 110 miles on a charge, and it took 16 hours if using a 110 volt charger. It also didn’t appeal to senses in a way that was invigorating. It had zero macho appeal.
But irrespective of our personal proclivities, Mother Earth, the little blue orb that is our veritable spaceship, has reached its adaptive limits. Species are being eradicated, the atmosphere is heating, the oceans too, and with it, drought, famines, monsoons and flash flooding, tidal surges, hurricanes and wildfires are all worsening rapidly.
Even when scientists, I mean real scientists, not the ones meant to misinform, supplied by the oil and gas industry itself, stood up and told all of us that the risks were real, that storms would worsen, flooding and drought was actually being caused by global warming, and that the oceans were beginning to be damaged by both the CO2 in the air, now saturating the oceans and beginning to heat those massive bodies of water, did we believe them.
Hell, we were even willing to ignore the men in white coats when the polar ice caps began to melt incredibly fast, glaciers started to disappear, and the current that provides Europe, so far north in the Northern Hemisphere, milder weather, slowed measurably, possibly stopping sometime in the very near future.
All it took was one other person to say, “Fake News”, and you were on board. Yup. You probably told yourself, “Yeah, nothing’s going to change, besides, I like it the way it is.” Well, today, billions of people who chose to ignore that message, and who are still listening to those fewer, but equally strident voices, are asking themselves, ”Was my flash flood caused by climate change?” Was my hurricane more powerful and damaging because of global warming?”
And when they, those affected, went to get insurance and the company they went to either won’t pay them, or tells them, “You can’t rebuild on a flood plain”, or “You can’t rebuild in a tidal surge area,” and then you have to tell your kids and wife that, “I think we were lied to, they say climate change is real, and if we rebuild here, – no one is going to insure us again.”
What happened? You ignored the facts, because you didn’t want to change. Well, the one thing in life that is guaranteed, is change. But you still equivocate, right?
So, you go to another company, and they tell you the same thing. “No, we won’t insure you if you rebuild there.” And another and then another. Suddenly, you realize, “It must be real, because no one will touch our property.”
So it suddenly dawns on you. “ I, We, believed a lie, and now it’s going to burn us.”
“Houston, we have a problem,” is resonating in millions of ears across the western world today, and it isn’t about Apollo 13. The insurance industry is now either leaving town, limiting coverage, refusing to pay, and/or increasing rates stratospherically. Actuarial tables are being discarded, because they no longer are predictive. Insurance companies are leaving the industry, as investors can see they won’t be making money from those they’ve insured in the past, anymore.
So, what the hell does this have to do with the discussion about electric vehicles?
Everything.
But it just isn’t vehicles obviously, it’s power generation, heavy transportation, the aviation industry, heavy industries and manufacturing. It’s virtually every facet of a modern global economy.
The facts are that while we may not want to drive an electric vehicle, especially one of those Chi-nees ones, – we are headed for that inevitably being the case. While China and India, Thailand, Vietnam and Japan, all countries with burgeoning populations where pollution, coal and fossil fuel use are destroying the air quality, worsening the weather and displacing millions due to either drought or flash flooding, are changing, – America, and Canada, (though to a lesser degree), have essentially ignored the problem.
And while America is bearing what appears to be the brunt of the problem with hurricanes, flash flooding, tidal surge, wildfires and forests consuming small towns every so often, there are those who will still say, ”To hell with it, I don’t live there, not my circus not my monkey.”
So, for these people, even massive amounts of data, validated, replicated and tested for veracity, continues to get ignored. Why? Because, we don’t want to change, and someone, with all the motivation in the world; mind you to lie, said, “Fake News”.
But I have to ask, “Qui Bono”, who benefits from continuing the lie? Oh I wonder who. Could it be the same autocrats and will be dictators who are invested in fossil fuels, or the 1% richest friends of theirs who are willing to put hundreds of millions of dollars into their pockets and other politicians pockets, in order to maintain the ‘ruse of the rubes’?
No, they wouldn’t do that would they? He tells us we are his favourite people.
Uh…huh. But I digress.
Which brings us back to subject at hand, zero emission vehicles, particularly in this case, electric vehicles.
So, while new, more efficient electric motors and faster chargers have constantly improved, the one mainstay of the electric car that has only seen incremental change has been the battery, which now is commonly a Lithium Ion design, typically providing 300-350 miles of range, with longer ranges available on larger vehicles that possess larger battery enclosures.
It has allowed all those unwilling to change to say, “They don’t have the range, or, it takes too long to charge, or those batteries, they don’t last long enough, and they’re too expensive.” So, we, all who aren’t driving zero emission, or vehicles designed to put us on the road to zero emissions, PHEV’s or HEV’s, get to say, “See, I told you it wouldn’t work.”
What the world has been waiting for was a breakthrough in battery technology that would see greater energy density and batteries that also used safer materials (non-combustible) as well as elements that were not harmful to the environment. The third factor that has impacted acceptance of electric vehicles was obviously price and battery longevity.
Well, battery technology has made quantum leaps in 2023-24 with new material designs and anode designs, that allow batteries to be much more energy dense, completely safe, will last for 20 years with minimal degradation, and whose cost will be a fraction of the Lithium and Lithium-ion batteries currently in use.
In fact, these batteries may revolutionize the motorcycle market as well, as battery size and weight was highly problematic when it came to providing adequate range and a minimal charge time. The major improvements recently discovered will boost both the range and battery life to where they are completely competitive with ICE motorcycles.
The first breakthrough revolves around new battery designs that dramatically increases battery energy density. As stated in the brighter side.news,
“The key to understanding battery function lies in the anode, the component responsible for storing power during charging and then releasing it when the battery is in use. In most modern lithium batteries, graphite is the predominant material used for anodes.
However, materials like silicon offer much greater energy capacity than graphite, making them highly desirable for more efficient battery designs. The challenge, however, has always been in stabilizing a battery that uses a silicon anode. Silicon tends to expand during internal reactions within the battery, which can compromise its stability and safety.
Professors Soojin Park and Youn Soo Kim of POSTECH, in collaboration with Professor Jaegeon Ryu of Sogang University, have developed a groundbreaking solution to this long-standing issue. They have engineered a special binding material that prevents a high-capacity silicon anode from expanding. The result is a lithium batterywith ten times the capacity of those with graphite anodes.”
(www.brighterside.news , Joseph Shavit, Dec. 8, 2024)
The second breakthrough relates to existing lithium batteries and their charging time. Lithium ion batteries have long been favoured for powering electric vehicles and smartphones due to their lightweight nature, reliability, and energy efficiency. The drawback has been their slow charging times and limited capacity to handle high currents. A key innovation using indium, a soft metal commonly used for making touch-screen displays and solar panels, exhibited two crucial characteristics as a battery anode.
“The key innovation is we’ve discovered a design principle that allows metal ions at a battery anode to freely move around, find the right configuration, and only then participate in the charge storage reaction.” This discovery ensures that the electrode remains in a stable morphological state throughout each charging cycle, enabling the new fast-charging batteries to be recharged and discharged thousands of times without degradation.”
In combination with wireless induction charging on roadways, and wireless induction pads, installed in parking stalls for compatible electric vehicles also are in testing, one test roadway is in Detroit, Michigan already. (Joseph Shavit, “Groundbreaking lithium battery charges in under 5 minutes – eliminates EV range anxiety”. July, 5, 2024.)
In relation to zero emission vehicles and the near future, one need only look at the number of western nations that have already passed legislation that will require manufacturers to build and owners to be able to only register zero emission vehicles after 2035. While there will still be ICE engined vehicles on the road, the next major policy change will likely be to make fossil fuels so expensive, that no one will be able to rationally not convert to a zero emission car or truck, and at some point, these innovations in smaller, more densely energy efficient batteries will arrive for motorcycles as well.
In fact, they are already being tested and will enable a motorcycle to have the same range as ICE motorcycles, with actually improved performance and five minute charge times. (More on this in a future article.)
These improvements are not at all unique to one country or isolated by breakthroughs that only one company holds patent on. Virtually every major ICE manufacturer on earth is now heavily invested in zero emission vehicles, and some are involved in all of the alternative technologies, (Hydrogen, CNG, Fuel Cells) especially the Japanese, Korean and Chinese manufacturers of vehicles.
In fact, there is so much data and research being developed at the moment, that this article would need to be massive in order to discuss it all.
The final complaint/justification for not buying an EV or Zero Emission vehicle has also been overcome in 2023, longevity of EV batteries and their cost. Bloomberg recently published the following;
And of course, we all know how much the Donald loves CHI-NA, right? If he does, to spite the pocket books of Americans, decide to undo the Inflation Reduction Act and to ignore the benefits that a green economy conveys for the future, America, and more importantly its taxpayers will see costs escalate rapidly, while their own industries and manufacturing companies become less competitive. How long will either taxpayers or the 1% support losing investments or lowering their purchasing power?
Not long I suspect.
If one, who disbelieves, or refuses to avail himself of the facts, were to simply inquire on the internet as to what new battery technologies have not only been discovered, but information related to how many are actually in production as we speak, it would be beyond obvious that the reasons for eschewing electric or zero emissions vehicles no longer have any credibility.
By the end of 2026, people who deny the facts will simply be paying more for their ignorance, and by that I mean their unwillingness to face facts.
But you can still scream ‘fake news’ while the sales of ICE vehicles plunge and the world turns its back on fossil fuels. Someone will still be yelling, “Drill baby, drill,” while more people in the U.S. lose their livelihoods and the rest of world turns their backs on fossil fuels, and move on.
Science doesn’t equivocate, and science doesn’t lie, it simply learns incrementally, validating new data, analyzing it, testing it, validating it, verifying it, and replicating it for veracity. So if one then suggests, “Fake News”, you can simply smile and say,
“Face Facts”.
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