{"id":81430,"date":"2022-04-06T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81430"},"modified":"2022-04-06T09:46:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T14:46:54","slug":"the-tesla-my-friend-is-blowing-in-the-wind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81430","title":{"rendered":"The Tesla, my friend, is blowing in the wind…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Leftism is all about harnessing the power of pixie dust and expeller pressed unicorn horn oil. I wish the laws of economics and of nature to be different, therefore they are. One way magical thinking manifests itself is the sun-dappled dream that we can get rid of fossil fuels, switch to electric vehicles, the changeover will be painless, and we won’t notice any change in our standard of living.

An electric car is, well, electric, and electric is easy because I can just plug in my Vitamix blender at home to make my artisanal kale smoothie and it just turns on and couldn’t be simpler. So having an electric car will be just as easy!

Michael Lind has a good article in Tablet<\/a> outlining the difficulties in putting an electric car in every garage. Never mind how we’re going to “cleanly” produce all the electricity these vehicles would consume. Electric vehicles, and especially the batteries that power them, require the kinds of natural resources that don’t grow on trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But according to experts on global mineral production who belong to SoS Minerals, in a letter delivered to the British Committee on Climate Change:<\/p>

The metal resource needed to make all cars and vans electric by 2050 and all sales to be purely battery electric [in the UK] by 2035. To replace all UK-based vehicles today with electric vehicles (not including the LGV and HGV fleets), assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation NMC 811 batteries, would take 207,900 tonnes cobalt, 264,600 tonnes of lithium carbonate (LCE), at least 7,200 tonnes of neodymium and dysprosium, in addition to 2,362,500 tonnes copper. This represents, just under two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world\u2019s lithium production and 12% of the world\u2019s copper production during 2018. Even ensuring the annual supply of electric vehicles only, from 2035 as pledged, will require the UK to annually import the equivalent of the entire annual cobalt needs of European industry. \u2026<\/p>

Challenges of using \u2018green energy\u2019 to power electric cars: If wind farms are chosen to generate the power for the projected two billion cars at UK average usage, this requires the equivalent of a further years\u2019 worth of total global copper supply and 10 years\u2019 worth of global neodymium and dysprosium production to build the windfarms.<\/p>

There is not enough cobalt, neodymium, or lithium being mined and refined in the entire world today for Britain to meet its green transition goals in the next generation. And Britain has only 67 million people. The United States has 330 million. The world has nearly 8 billion. Do the math.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n


What’s more, of the supply of ores that does exist, where are they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For its part, China dominates global production of many essential minerals, both directly\u2014producing 63% of rare earths and 45% of molybdenum\u2014and indirectly, by investing in lithium mines in Australia, platinum mines in South Africa, and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>

A few decades ago, the United States mined and refined many of the minerals it now imports. But thanks to cheap labor abroad, excessive environmental regulations at home, and the fantasy of the post-material \u201cinformation economy,\u201d the U.S. government allowed corporations to shut down many American mines even as other firms shuttered American factories.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The article links to this Manhattan Institute report<\/a> by Mark Mills, which makes for interesting reading. One tidbit is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lithium EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. While there are dozens of variations, such a battery typically contains about 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper, about 400 pounds of steel, aluminum, and various plastic components.<\/p>

In total then, acquiring just these five elements to produce the 1,000-pound EV battery requires mining about 90,000 pounds of ore\u2026 This means that accessing about 90,000 pounds of ore requires digging and moving between 200,000 and over 1,500,000 pounds of earth\u2014a rough average of more than 500,000 pounds per battery.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And what is moving all this earth? Elves? Oh no. We’re digging all this out of the ground with glorious carbon-munching smoke-belching machines that run on liquid dinosaur.

Mills says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As recently as 1990, the U.S. was the world\u2019s number-one producer of minerals. Today, it is in seventh place.<\/p>

More relevant, as the United States Geological Survey (USGS) notes, are strategic dependencies on specific critical minerals. In 1954, the U.S. was 100% dependent on imports for eight minerals. Today, the U.S. is 100% reliant on imports for 17 minerals and depends on imports for over 50% of 29 widely used minerals. China is a significant source for half of those 29 minerals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Last year, Minnesota Governor\/Dear Leader Walz decreed<\/a> in the State Register<\/a> (democracy!) new “clean car” standards<\/a> that push for more electric vehicles. From MPR<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minnesota officially adopted regulations championed by Gov. Tim Walz on Monday to encourage the switchover to electric vehicles.<\/p>

The \u201cclean car\u201d rules published in the State Register take effect in 2024 with the 2025 model year. They’ll require manufacturers and dealers to supply more electric vehicles for the Minnesota marketplace.<\/p>

The Walz administration said the rules will lead to cleaner air and help combat climate change by increasing the choices Minnesotans have for purchasing electric cars. It said the changes will protect public health and save Minnesotans money at the pump.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

How willing do you think a hostile China will be to play nice and bend over backwards to supply all the scarce resources we want? And at what price? Never mind electric cars, some day we might need to hitch a unicorn up to our buggy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leftism is all about harnessing the power of pixie dust and expeller pressed unicorn horn oil. I wish the laws of economics and of nature to be different, therefore they are. One way magical thinking manifests itself is the sun-dappled dream that we can get rid of fossil fuels, switch to electric vehicles, the changeover […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273926,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trains-and-automobiles","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/273926"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81430"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81471,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81430\/revisions\/81471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}