Electric vehicles are silent but deadly...for the gas car industry

Sometimes the future shows up sooner than I expect.

Usually that happens when I hit my favorite Koreatown sauna and then fall asleep on the hot stone slab and wake up without knowing what time it is. But it also happens when inventions arrive earlier than I expected. 

Like electric trucks—probably not a real thing for at least five years, right? Maybe ten? But it turns out Volvo already built an electric truck. I know because I raced one around a NASCAR track out by San Bernardino. That 40-footer was zippy enough to make you want a commercial truck license already.

What about wireless electric car charging, which promises to fill up the battery by beaming electricity through the air? Very Star Trekky. But the other day I saw Army veteran and startup founder Jeremy McCool demonstrate his fully functional wireless charger over Zoom from his mom’s garage in New Mexico. His company HEVO Power starts manufacturing in Austin later this year—see my latest story for details.

I bring up these examples because this week, I’m going to talk about the rise of electric vehicles. In most places, electric cars or trucks remain nonexistent or a rare luxury, unless you’re in Palo Alto and they look at you funny if you’re not driving a Tesla. But, much like the wireless charger, electric vehicles will arrive before most people realize it.

Electric cars started off with customers who were happy to spend money on the cleaner type of car, either because it was cool or they saw it as the moral choice. The problem is, only so many people will pay extra for that. Mass adoption of electric vehicles will happen not through some shared moral conviction, but because they’ll improve on the gas-powered paradigm in multiple dimensions. 

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One more time, with less killing

I’m a journalist, not a moral theologian, but I can still formulate a wholly original, groundbreaking ethical postulation for energy usage and other life choices: Do what you need to do without killing anyone, if possible.

It can be hard to visualize the effects of our actions, but the literature on public health impacts of air pollution is very robust, and vehicle exhaust is a prime contributor. Imagine grabbing an aerosol can of lavender-scented poison when you run errands, and spritzing a little bit at whoever you drive by. It’s not killing anyone right now, but it adds up.

As it happens, we don’t as a society account for the physical injury incurred by driving around (or generating power from coal and gas, for that matter). But if we were able to run those errands and not spritz a little poison-pourri all the time, wouldn’t that be better?

Electric cars today in many ways fall short of fully replacing the experience of burning gas to move your body. They’re more expensive, their range isn’t long enough, charging stations are inadequately sited or broken when you get there.

But don’t dwell on this moment. This moment will pass. Battery range will never be as short as it is now, and charging stations will never be as scarce. One day, electric cars won’t just do the job of driving without incrementally killing people, they’ll do the job better. The socially beneficial action will help the individual, too; how often does that happen?

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Electric cars will take over because they’re:

• Cheaper: They’re pricy now, but the battery drives the cost. The battery industry is popping up giant new “gigafactories” all the time, drastically increasing the amount made each year. That pulls the price steadily lower. Plus you pay less for fuel, and the radically smaller number of moving parts yields less wear and tear than conventional vehicles. Electric cars will soon cost less up front and less to own than their gas-powered counterparts.

• Cleaner: That not killing people thing! No emissions stinking up the neighborhood. Less smog. In especially polluted places, this is a huge driver for boosting electric vehicles; see Shenzhen, China, which has switched its transit entirely to electric.

• Quieter: More a benefit for heavy duty vehicles, like garbage trucks, delivery trucks, buses. Imagine that mind-numbing rumbling sound, banished forever. Having the same vehicle without the noise from managing controlled explosions would be better. 

• Easier to fill up: The charging situation seems like a hassle right now, but we’ve barely gotten started. Volkswagen is paying for a nationwide network of fast chargers as recompense for lying about diesel emissions, and dozens of other companies are building chargers, too. But if Jeremy McCool succeeds, charging will soon go wireless, with chargers embedded in the ground. You can park over a charger and walk away without touching anything while your car powers up. The systems could even end up in roadbeds, so you charge while idling at a red light. Can’t do that with gas!

The electric car situation will look radically different within a decade. Battery-powered cars will cross over to cheaper than their gas-powered counterparts. Research firm BNEF expects 10 percent of global new car sales to be electric in 2025, and more than half in 2040, but there’s room for that to speed up if batteries beat expectations, which they tend to do.

If you look up one day and see a wireless charging sign, you’ll know what shifted under your feet.

The Energy Stream

Did anyone make the garbage broth from last week? 

If you’re still saving up onion ends, this week’s entry is a little more accessible. I just caught up on a New York Magazine feature from March that offers an inside look at how Royal Dutch Shell really thinks about the rise of clean energy. 

The author, Malcolm Harris, got invited to present at Shell’s long term planning retreat, no non-disclosure agreement required. So he spills the beans on how the brainy folks at this oil and gas giant hope to maximize profits from fossil fuel investments while society pushes toward a cleaner energy future. 

“We’re going to get as much out of [oil and gas] for as long as we can,” one Shell leader tells Harris.

As a companion piece, check out a feature I wrote last year on Shell’s New Energies division, in which I ask a bunch of clean energy veterans why they decided to work for a massive oil company. Shell is making a bet on clean energy, and the people staffing that section really want to make an impact.

The New York article puts that in context with how the top corporate deciders look at things, and they’re far more interested in continuity than disruption. Excellent fodder for thinking about what role these big energy companies should play in the transition.