š± Oil-Free Mobility
Electric vehicles (EVs) are the future. Or at least part of it. Or a step towards it.
The transition to EV dominance will be long and bumpy (at least compared to how we prefer our change: instantaneous and pain free) but it will open up lots of possibilities along the way. Plus, we donāt have to make a wholesale switch all at once for it to succeed (unlike self-driving vehicles).
How are things changing?
Mines > Wells
Global energy supremacy and petro states are on shaky ground. Bye oil barons! (More like āoil Karensā?)
It still matters whatās under the ground, but that āwhatā is different now. And it will rewrite the balance of power for some. Battery reliance isnāt new though, so oil countries will likely suffer more than rare earth metal ones prosper from the EV shift.
But itās more than just which countries lucked into a prime location for resource extraction. New manufacturing methods mean new entrants can jump in without needing the accumulated expertise and experience of the previous paradigm (some might even see this lack as a benefit (like leapfrogging landlines for mobile)).
To that end, the Vietnamese automaker VinFast just had 999 EVs land on US shores. The company was founded in 2017.
In the past (?), this is the kind of shift that would get maps redrawn. Or at least trigger secretive (and probably sketchy) governmental foreign interventions.
EVs Go NFT
Stick with me on this one. A wholesale shift from oil extraction to battery-component extraction would be tough for a country to pull off, especially at this stage in the game and especially for a country with regulations like the US (I canāt imagine many communities signing off on a giant cobalt mine opening up next door. Oil and coal are ingrained and therefore āthe norm,ā anything new at this point is strange and other).
But, unlike oil and petroleum and their byproducts, battery and electrical components can be recycled. (Iām assuming that if we could recycle oil, etc weād all know about it by now.).
Redwood Materials just announced a $3.5 billion recycling facility in South Carolina, adding to the burgeoning Battery Belt and the CEO helped put these kinds of efforts in context:
If we recycle a battery in the U.S., it's equivalent to basically mining that material in the U.S. We can do this faster than starting a new lithium, cobalt or nickel mine.
Could we be in the early stages of ābuild-a-mineā style development and growth?
But wait, what about the NFT part? The ultimate powerāthe mintingāis held by the countries with mines, but others can capture value and fractionalize that initial creation via recycling. (I think I had a better handle on this when I first thought it up and now itās just a troll of a headline.)
End of ICE?
Internal combustion engines (ICEs) are on their deathbed if state regulations and manufacturer promises are anything to go by. Eventually the market will shift entirely to EVs, at least in many places and cases. The USPS has plans to build one of the largest EV fleets in the country by 2028.
But what about the in-between?
Not everyone will buy an EV immediately. And it will take a long time for the used market to filter out all ICE vehicles, if that even happens (you know ICE vehicles will become the next guns).
But maybe we can bridge the gap more sustainably. Porsche and partners have developed a gas-free e-fuel that make ICE vehicles almost carbon-neutral. All thatās left is that pesky engine oil, but I would bet thatās next on the list of sustainable developments.
Itād be a lot easier to replace oil products than all the mechanisms that run on them. (And probably greener since repurposing has less of an impact than replacing. And sustainable fuel sources donāt shunt the environmental burden off on developing countries that get the secondhand ICE vehicles being replaced by EVs elsewhere.)
Bold Prediction
I donāt think the ICE to EV transition will be 1-to-1.
The combination of few technological alternatives (yes, I know EVs are quite old, but they didnāt stick previously) and entrenched interests through the years meant itās been ICE or nothing since cars first started replacing horses. Now the market has cracked open.
Barring breakthroughs in battery technology, weāre likely to hit an upper limit to quantity and/or range as itās a fuel source still limited by resource extraction.
Plus, electrification isnāt necessarily the best answer for all modes of transportation. Hydrogen fuel cells are rolling bombs when installed in human-piloted cars (mesh networked AI-piloted cars would probably be fine with it), but a boat makes a lot of sense. Adding an explosion to a boat crash isnāt making things materially worse.
Weāre at an inflection point of flowering possibilities and watching the future take shape.