The world’s shift from gasoline-powered vehicles to electric-powered ones is under way. But there’s a long way to go, and there are significant hurdles to overcome before a majority of new-vehicle sales are electric models.
A story in The Washington Post listed four big challenges. Any one of them, if not met, would prevent the country from meeting ambitious electric vehicle goals being developed by the Biden administration:
• Can the nation’s power grid deliver the extra juice required to charge electric vehicles?
This conversation involves providing reliable energy for tens of millions of vehicles — the way convenience stores and their gasoline sales do today. To do this, the Department of Energy estimated that electric transmission systems may need to be expanded by 60 percent by 2030, and their capacity may need to triple by 2050.
“That expansion is not on track,” the Post reported. “Fights over where utility lines should be located, who should build them and who should pay for them continue to create major bottlenecks.” Along with that, it now takes an average of four years to add a wind or solar power project to a regional electricity grid.
• Will enough charging stations be available for the growing number of electric vehicles?
The Post described the present electric charging network as “dysfunctional and inadequate. The ones that do exist are often broken. The stations are often a money loser for their owners, and acquiring the real estate is a daunting task.”
The U.S. now has 140,000 charging stations, and the federal government is putting up money to build more. There should be a uniform design, the way there are for gas pumps, for maximum efficiency and convenience. But first you must start at the beginning: Who’s going to operate a charging station if it loses money?
• Can the U.S. obtain enough scarce minerals for electric vehicle batteries?
Automakers who are jumping into electric vehicle manufacturing are seeking stable supplies of cobalt, nickel, manganese and lithium. Congress is trying to help. It has included subsidies and restrictions to ensure that electric vehicle batteries are built with supplies from the United States or its trading partners.
One problem is that it can take up to 10 years to start a new mine, due to environmental concerns and local opposition. If that timeline continues, it will be 2033 before any new U.S. mines start delivering these battery minerals.
• What about the probable legal challenges?
Some critics say the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed mileage and emissions standards for non-electric vehicles are a disguised attempt to ban the use of gasoline and diesel fuels, even though the higher standards wouldn’t take effect until at least 2027.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the EPA’s authority on climate change, saying the agency didn’t have authority to impose sweeping changes on the electric power industry, or other major sectors, without explicit permission from Congress. It is not farfetched to envision the court saying the same thing about gasoline-based mileage and emission standards.
Put it all together and it’s clear that a lot of work needs to be done if the country is serious about reducing its carbon generation by phasing out gasoline vehicles. Any skeptic of this change could make a coherent argument that the benefits may not be worth the cost.
That argument, though, ignores the creativity and ingenuity that has powered the American economy for more than two centuries. It also ignores that countries from China to Norway are well ahead of us on this transition.
Our culture always has been willing to try new ideas, even the big ones. That willingness is going to be tested over the next decade.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
