While vehicles that plug in for electric power comprise just more than 1 percent of vehicles sold in the United States, electric vehicles may not remain such niche products for much longer. According to a new survey from AAA, as many as 20 percent of consumers want their next car to be electric, which is up five percent from this time last year. The reasons why 80 percent remain disinterested are obvious and well covered – from range anxiety to lack of infrastructure to the fact that batteries are a new technology that haven’t yet been optimized – but those interested in EVs say that the benefit to the environment outweighs the concerns.

But is that even accurate? In China, the government has been offering huge subsidies to encourage automakers to build and sell electric vehicles and the country has the highest adoption rate of EVs of any in the world except Norway. The problem is, their smog problem isn’t going away. In China, 72 percent of the country’s electric power is generated from coal, which, regardless of what conservative talk radio may tell you, is not clean and cannot be made to be clean. You can merely capture and store the carbon byproduct of burning coal to create power. They’re not doing that in China though, and oil company CNPC found that electric vehicles emitted more than double the toxic PM2.5 particles that generate China’s smog than do standard internal combustion vehicles. And, if you like your statistics not brought to you by an oil company whose interests may be somewhat skewed, a University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute paper found that cars that achieved greater than 40 miles per gallon were actually more environmentally friendly than the electric vehicles being made in China. And that’s just when it comes to operating the vehicles.

Add to that a Harvard and Tsinghua Universities study that reported that China’s production of EVs, PHEVs and fuel-cell vehicles generated 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than production of internal combustion cars, it’s hard to make the case that electric cars are the more environmentally friendly solution.

And speaking of production, that’s looking like it’s going to get harder before it gets easier. I’ve discussed this a bit before, but the situation is only worsening when it comes to the global supply of cobalt, which right now is a critical part of the lithium-ion batteries that power most electric vehicles. About 60 percent of the world’s cobalt supply is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country with a humanitarian rap sheet as long as the receipt you get from CVS when you go in just to get some gum. High taxes, the use of child labor and an unstable government all contribute to huge volatility in the cobalt market, which has gotten analysts revising their figures about when they think a shortage is going to hit. The answer is sooner than later. Though the CEO of Cobalt 27 Capital, the owner of the world’s largest stockpile of cobalt, ensures that there won’t be any supply shortages, he does not go on to say just how much companies will have to pay for that supply – costs that would undoubtedly be passed on to consumers and therefore delay adoption of EVs because they’re too expensive. Non-cobalt-company-CEOs are less optimistic, with Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Darlton Commodities both predicting shortages as soon as 2021. Prices have already spiked 300 percent over where they were in 2016 and capacity is not expanding as quickly as demand, which is a recipe for higher prices.

Fortunately, several companies are getting off their asses and doing something about this. Panasonic announced this week that they are working towards lithium-ion batteries that achieve zero cobalt usage in the near future and have been already reducing its content in the batteries that they supply, primarily to Tesla. Samsung too has been working to reduce cobalt content below the 5% of batteries it currently achieves, and they are hoping to expand recycling programs that will recover cobalt from used cell phone, computer and other lithium-ion battery sources. Currently recycling rates are somewhere between 25 and 50 percent, so there’s a lot of potential for improvement there. Chinese automaker BYD is also developing batteries with a nickel-manganese-cobalt ration that reduces the amount of cobalt, which, in addition to lowering prices, apparently extends the life of the battery, which is a win-win for companies and consumers.

For even more bad news, cars aren’t the only things using lithium-ion batteries. Companies and utilities are expanding the use of modular energy storage systems to better utilize distributed energy resources like solar and wind farms and even hydroelectric generation, so there’s another force working to increase demand for cobalt and other precious metals. Full disclosure- I work for a company that makes those big battery storage units and they are flying off the shelf, so companies will have to both ramp up cobalt production and R&D into technology that uses less of it if there’s any hope of averting a shortage or at least a price spike.

But back to the cars – what does all this mean for those of us who just want a Jeep Wrangler plug-in hybrid? The truth is somewhere in between everything. While 20 percent of people would love an electric vehicle as their next car, not that many will take up the technology, especially with 80 percent of such vehicles being leased right now. It shows that public trust isn’t there that we’ve really mastered electric cars yet and nobody wants to be locked into technology that’ll be obsolete in a couple years. Cobalt demand will cause prices to remain high but the price of gas was high and look what that did – it spurred investment into the research and development of electric vehicles, which have lowered demand and prices have eased up, if only just a bit. The market will adapt, companies will continue to innovate and while EVs aren’t optimized right now and the electrical grid (especially in China) isn’t well suited to provide clean energy for them, it won’t always stay that way. Nor does it mean that EVs are destroying the planet, it just means they’re maybe not as green as we want them to be yet. We’re on a good path right now and have unprecedented choice in vehicles. At least until companies start thinking like Ford, but I don’t think it’s going to become too widespread.

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Authored by
Devlin Riggs

Leafs Light Up Japan

One of the primary questions facing the electric vehicle industry is what happens to the lithium ion batteries after the vehicle has either crashed or it’s met the end of its useful life. Lithium Ion batteries are far more impressive than their Nickel-metal-hydride predecessors, but after 10,000 cycles or so, they will start to see some capacity loss due to general wear and tear. You’ll know from having a cell phone that batteries don’t last forever, but Nissan is preparing for the future by partnering with a company called 4R Energy Corporation. They are recycling used Nissan Leaf batteries in street lights, which utilize a combination of solar generation and storage (in the former Leaf battery cells) to provide illumination to roads not served by the electrical grid. They’re starting this program in Namie, Japan, which was hit hard by and is still recovering from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. Pilots are under testing now and the company plans to install lights throughout the town later this year. One can see this being especially useful in other disaster zones like Puerto Rico after Maria, New York after Sandy or the city of New Orleans after a weekend night.

Lincoln Launches Subscription Service

If you’ve ever wanted to drive a used Lincoln, but the thought of owning one just put you off too much, there’s great news. The company is following in the footsteps of Volvo, Cadillac and Porsche and offering a subscription service. No, not for the new Continental or Navigator. For its used cars. That means you can pay just over $400 a month to drive New York’s finest fleet taxi vehicle, the MKX. If that price doesn’t sound appealing, consider that that price also pays for insurance, maintenance, warranty and the ability to swap into a slightly smaller but no more enjoyable MKC at any time. If it still doesn’t sound appealing, than consider yourself in the same boat as me.

California Self-Driving Registration Deadline Update

April 2nd was the first day self-driving cars could legally hit the roads in California. Being home to more than 50 companies testing autonomous systems, it was slated to be a truly historic day for the state. And then only one company applied for a permit. So on the first day, zero self-driving cars hit the road. The timing, perhaps, was not excellent, coming on the heels of Uber’s fatal wreck and a general cringing of other companies as they look to perfect technology before pushing it out to the public. Nevertheless, it’s a good sign that California is regulating it, and that companies were honest enough with their self-assessments that nobody is putting unsafe hardware out on the streets.

Thumbs Down to BMW

Thumbs are great – they’re one of the best things about being human and allow us to grab things and compete in sports like baseball and tennis without accidentally flinging rackets and bats everywhere. We all like our thumbs, and so does BMW, but perhaps not in the right way. According to a law suit filed in New York, a software developer named Godwin Boateng was waiting for a friend, posted up with his hand on the pillar of his front driver’s door, acting casual, as you do. This BMW X5, however, was equipped with the company’s Soft Closing Automatic Doors (unfortunately abbreviated SCAD), which casually closed on Godwin’s thumb, causing it to then separate from his body. After taking his BMW and his thumb to the hospital, doctors were unable to attach the latter, which has caused Godwin considerable consternation about the former, leading to the lawsuit alleging BMW knew that the sensors in the SCAD system were faulty and didn’t do anything to fix them. I don’t have to tell you listeners that, regardless of your car or features, it’s not a great idea to dangle any phalanges in places where there’s even the possibility that they may be involuntarily amputated, nor was I aware BMW even had a feature that would close doors on you, which is slightly creepy. In any case, who’s got two thumbs and chose the right German car? This guuyyyyyyy.

Florida Civic Takes Short Trip, Long Dip

Source: Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office — Source: Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office

I don’t have a pool, mostly because I’m lazy and the maintenance sounds absolutely dreadful, but if I did, and I didn’t have to work on a Tuesday afternoon, I’d totally take a quick splash to unwind. But I don’t think that’s what was planned earlier this month when a Florida resident left her car without placing it in park, causing the vehicle to roll into a nearby pool. Making matters worse, her husband and daughter were inside and were subjected to an unexpected plunging. They both made it out safely, but the same cannot be said for the bright blue civic, which looked positively serene at the bottom of a no doubt pissed off neighbor’s pool. The jokes here are obvious – gives a whole new meaning to carpool, go for a drive, not a dive, for sale with slight water damage, etc. etc. Please feel free to write your own as I enjoy not picking leaves out of my pool.

Cheetah Thinks Land Rovers are Purrfect

Big cats are noble creatures, and that’s probably why Jaguar chose one as its mascot. Even Mercury had the Cougar, which started out as a muscle car and developed into something, well, bad. But every once in a while we’re reminded that big cats are essentially just gigantic versions of the little assholes who go around knocking cups off the counter tops and destroying the legs of couches in homes across the world. Recently, wildlife photographer Peter Heistein was touring the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania when he paused in his Land Rover for lunch while observing a group of cheetahs. As they are wont, one of the curious cats approached and then jumped into Heistein’s car, sampling the fine interior head rests and gaining a commanding view of the surrounding plains. Heistein did the opposite of what you see on most YouTube Fail videos and remained calm, respected the animal’s space and allowed it to leave once it inevitably got bored. Next time the cat pukes on my pillow, I’m going to tell myself “at least it didn’t devour my interior.”

Not Stock Nissan Outruns All

If having a car with a ridiculously high top speed that you’ll never achieve on public roads or basically anywhere but an air strip or a salt flat is what you are looking for, you have several very expensive cars to select from. The McLaren P1, the LaFerrari, Lamborghini Aventador, you get it. Or you could get a Nissan Rogue Sport and beat all of those, because that’s just what some English guys did. British speed shop Severn Valley Motorsports made some slight tweaks to their Nissan, which is for sale in Europe as the awkwardly-named Qashqai, and hit a blistering 237 miles per hour, making it the world’s fastest SUV, though unofficially because it didn’t make two runs in opposing directions. What sort of tweaks did they make, you ask? Well, actually quite big tweaks. They threw out the absolute shit 2.5 litre four and CVT and tucked in the 3.8 litre twin turbo V6 from the Nissan GT-R, lowered it and provided a bunch of bespoke bodywork to streamline the otherwise boxy thing. So while sure, this is neat and it’s great that people are having fun in Nissan Rogues, this does absolutely not change my opinion that they are cars for people who would rather be doing anything but driving.