Clearing Disinformation on Electric Vehicles

My newest column in the Midland Daily News.

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In 2023, electric vehicle sales increased 50 percent over the previous year.

But you’d never know it from the steady drumbeat of negative press coverage about EVs.

Let’s take a look at the reasons why we are well into the EV transition, and there is no going back.

First of all, it’s worth noting that internal combustion engines will be banned or restricted in nearly 50 countries, starting with Norway in 2025, and including China, the European Union, and, so far, 9 US states, most by 2040.

Major automakers like GM have committed to moving awayfrom Internal combustion (ICE) engines in the coming decade, including Volkswagen, BMW, and Stellantis.

A big part of the transition is market driven, as recent polling of prospective car buyers globally now shows for the first time a majority expecting their next car to be electric or hybrid, including 69% in China, the world’s largest auto market.

The US lagged in the survey, with 29%, no doubt at least partially due to a concerted misinformation campaign.

Environmental concerns topped the list of reasons, but the Russian Invasion of Ukraine and concerns about oil and supply chains were also mentioned.

Major carmakers the world over, of course, recognize that climate change is the definitive challenge of the century, and they can’t run from it.

None of this has stopped fossil fuel funded “think tanks” and social media sites from conducting a misinformation campaign against electric vehicles, and the energy transition writ large.

Most recently, it’s been stories about electric cars failing to start in last month’s frigid weather.

As a lifelong midwesterner accustomed to keeping  jumper cables at the ready, car trouble in cold weather hardly seems like headline news, but it’s a clickbait story that the media loved.

In fact, one country that has had very rapid uptake of electric vehicles has been Norway, where roadway assistance data showed that internal combustion vehicles required help at a higher rate than EVs, which are, by the way, 80 percent of new car sales in that bitter cold country.

EV experts advise “pre-conditioning” EVs in cold weather to head off problems. Check your owner’s manual.

Much has been made of purported shortages of critical materials like Lithium for EV batteries, but the fact is, we are now seeing a glut of Lithium, and prices are plunging globally.

That has already lead to dramatic drops in prices for batteries – and at least one major manufacturer is projecting yet another 50 percent drop this year.

I’ve heard fossil fuel spokespeople feign concern for workers in the Congo who mine cobalt for EV batteries. Curiously, I do not recall similar angst during the decades that cobalt has been sourced for computers, cellphones, cameras and laptops, as well as refining gasoline. Faux outrage about child labor arose only when Oil majors noticed that they now have a serious threat to their business model.

In fact, major auto makers are moving away from that mineral with Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries that contain no cobalt, – or nickel, another problematic metal – and a new generation sodium ion batteries will need no Lithium, either.

Contrary to oft repeated Facebook myths, the transition to clean energy will require 500 to 1000 times less mining than continued fossil fuel dependence.

Over the past year, growth in EV sales have slowed, it is true, but less well reported is that ICE sales peaked in 2017, and have since dropped 23%, as EV sales continue to rise.

The coming year will be pivotal, as the “easy” part of the EV growth curve, early adopters, are waning, and sales may hit an “air pocket” as more traditional buyers make their decisions. 

Here is where we may see where major US carmaker’s blind spot comes back to fatally bite them.

In the 1990s, GM famously pioneered the EV-1, the first modern full-on electric vehicle, which quickly developed the kind of rabid following we associate with Tesla today.  For reasons known only to them, GM management never allowed the car to be sold, only leased.

In the early 2000s, they repossessed all of those pioneering vehicles, and sent them to the desert to be crushed.

Imagine where GM would be today, had they the vision to build on that technology.

Momentously, EVs will soon reach price parity with ICE vehicles.  Tesla is promising a new compact crossover vehicle to be priced in the 25K range, which may be a game changer.

Many more competitors are on the way, including low price Chinese manufacturers currently seeking to set up shop in Mexico and circumvent US tariff protections.

US carmakers, by contrast, are saddled with an expensive legacy of ICE products, even as moving to EVs becomes an existential requirement for survival.

If US auto majors find themselves on the ropes in the coming decade, they will have only themselves, and the toxic fossil fuel disinformation machine, to blame.

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I was trying to keep to 800 words, so couldn’t fit in some additional points from Rob Meyer’s Heatmap:

But are sales even slowing? Has federal policy failed to spark the EV transition? Is there any cause for panic? The data shows none of that is true.

The best (and only) quantitative evidence presented for the dominant media narrative is data from Cox Automotive, as presented in a recent Wall Street Journal article, showing that dealers are taking more time and resorting to bigger discounts to move EVs off their lots. That’s true, but does it really indicate that EV sales are “slowing”? 

First, this data excludes the space’s biggest player by far — Tesla — as well as other EV-only makers like Rivian who don’t use dealer networks, so this is really a story about traditional automakers (Ford, GM, Volkswagen, etc). And with high interest rates making a new car more costly to finance or lease, dealer discounts are trending steadily upwards for all vehicles in recent months, not just electric models, according to the Cox data.

Second, if we take a look at actual sales data, there’s no sign the growth in EVs is flagging. In fact, sales of battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in the third quarter of 2023 exhibited the strongest year-on-year growth since the fourth quarter of 2021.

Putting aside plug-in hybrids, which have shorter electric range and retain a gasoline engine, sales of purely electric vehicles have been steadily increasing at a roughly 60 percent annual growth rate for each of the last six quarters. That’s fast enough to double EV sales every 14 months!

RMI:

EVs to surpass two-thirds of global car sales by 2030, putting at risk nearly half of oil demand, new research finds

• Exponential growth in electric vehicle (EV) sales is transforming the auto sector faster than currently predicted, with EVs set to dominate global car sales by the end of the decade, putting at risk nearly half of worldwide oil demand, according to new analysis by RMI.
• Later-adopting countries, such as India and Israel, are now accelerating EV deployment at faster rates than the global average, meaning they have a chance to catch up with the front-runners, such as China, according to a separate analysis by Systems Change Lab.
• Leading markets have already crossed a tipping point, with the EU and China seeing battery electric vehicles cheaper to own than petrol and diesel cars in the small and medium-sized car segments, according to new research from the EEIST project.
• Battery electric vehicles are likely to cross a second tipping point, where their purchase price falls below that of an equivalent petrol or diesel car, as early as 2024 in Europe, 2025 in China, 2026 in the US, and 2027 in India, the EEIST analysis shows.