The Electric Revolution Has Been Shorted!

It could be rightly said that this decade is the decade of EV’s. Electric vehicles have never been more exciting or prolific. Major automakers from Mercedes to Volvo have committed to having a fully electric line by the year 2030, so this is a revolution that isn’t stopping. It’s going full steam ahead and growing exponentially every few months it seems. 

Here’s what most consumers don’t realize, EV’s aren’t exactly ‘new tech’. There were electric vehicles going all the way back to the days of the Ford Model-T. So what happened? In a word, lack of foresight. The original electric vehicles were never very popular, and no one had the ingenuity to attempt to improve them. Honestly, no one would be taking EV’s seriously if it weren’t for Tesla company and the maverick CEO, Elon Musk.

Multiple EV companies sprung up after the year 2000. Telsa came around in 2008. Truthfully there wasn’t much that Tesla had done that hadn’t been done before. What Tesla was able to do was change the perception of consumers, creating an EV that was more than just an eco-friendly way of getting around. Musk is an enigmatic individual, but he does have a knack for being able to sell products. He was able to market Tesla vehicles as something people wanted. It became a status symbol of sorts. Bear in mind Tesla vehicles weren’t necessarily more advanced than their competitors, the only thing that Tesla did differently was use a different marketing strategy. Tesla has accelerated the EV revolution by a few decades. Now every company that is currently electrifying their lineup is basically just imitating Tesla. This is highlighted by the fact automakers are now piggybacking the current Tesla supercharger network.

Tesla selling the rights to their supercharger network is huge. The Tesla company themselves may not realize just how seismic of a change this is. In the past the reason EV’s couldn’t become mainstream was lack of a national charging network. Tesla spent an exorbitant amount of money and resources to construct the biggest charging network all across the US. Up until recently this was Tesla’s primary advantage, their exclusive charging network. By selling the rights to their superchargers Tesla has accomplished two things, they have created a new revenue stream and also added a shot on of nitrous to the advancement of EV’s.

Let’s get something straight; electric vehicles are a good idea. It’s not just about cleaner energy, due to their lack of combustion engines, EV’s are infinitely cheaper to maintain than their combustion siblings. There’s only one issue, the electrical grid.

Recently in my home state of Florida, we all received a donkey kick to the teeth by hurricane Idalia. Power went out all over the state, entire counties endured a nasty blackout. Here’s the question no one wants to deal with right now, how can EV’s get past blackouts? Just in the state of Florida alone we deal with blackouts all the time, Idalia wasn’t an isolated incident. New York City regularly experiences blackouts. The simple fact is that currently the electrical grid in the United States is strained. If we attempt to flood the market with a slew of EV’s constantly charging, then this would result in even more strain to our system, resulting in more frequent blackouts.

I’m not suggesting that we should simply continue to drill and frack carelessly. That’s not the solution either. I watched the Republican Primary debate recently and was disappointed in the response from Republican candidates over the issue of energy. Every candidate on that stage either ignored the issue entirely or gave a response that only highlighted their profound ignorance of the matter. Continuing to drill and frack incessantly won’t do us any good, it would take billions of dollars,

Here’s the issue that complicates everything; while on the one hand we’re dealing with an already strained electrical grid, on the flip side, global production of oil, and gas has dropped drastically. It wasn’t long ago when Crown Prince Sheik Mohammad bin Salman announced that Saudi Arabia would be reducing its export of oil (while jacking up the price) citing an ‘over-dependance’ on a limited resource. Saudi Arabia is one of the worlds major suppliers of oil making this a major issue for combustion energy, but in a wild twist, this is also an in issue for EV’s as well.

As I’ve already established, the electrical grid isn’t ready to handle an influx of EV’s right now. It can be made ready, but this would take billions of dollars and several years to do so. In other words, we need more time. With the global production of combustion resources now being cut, we have just lost far too much time.

Automakers ignore these facts entirely. As far as they are concerned, this is an issue for politicians. Electrification is moving full steam ahead. 2024 will be a major year for EV’s, on the horizon are vehicles like an electrified Chevrolet Silverado, new models from BMW, Mercedes, and supposedly this will be the year of the Cybertruck (I remain unconvinced such a thing exists). Between now and the year 2030, the US electrical grid will face an unprecedented strain. We could be looking at continually worsening blackouts, possibly even damage to our current power stations. This is an issue the US is not ready for, not by a long shot.

In short, the United States is in the middle of an energy crisis. The current electrical grid simply isn’t equipped for such a massive strain. At the same time we can’t continue to rely on combustion power because of driwndling global production. Sadly American leadership has been up until this moment, spectacularly inept. Action is needed, and needed quickly. Until such changes are enacted, then the electric revolution is shorted.