Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Pictures Media Radio. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Policy and Rights shows. Welcome to policy that human joys.
Speaker 1: All right, welcome back to Policy and writes here in
Speaker 1: Depictions Media Radio. I'm your host, Michael Kloggs. So we
Speaker 1: have a special episode today and it is on electric
Speaker 1: vehicle infrastructure. Now, what makes electric vehicle infrastructure so important?
Speaker 1: And we're gonna have a guest to come on, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk to Bob Homer because he recently wrote
Speaker 1: an article about electric vehicle infrastructure and its importance. When
Speaker 1: we consider bringing government services online with electric vehicles such
Speaker 1: as forestry trucks, police vehicles, things like that, we need
Speaker 1: that infrastructure to keep these vehicles running. They need to
Speaker 1: be serviced, They're going to need to be charged. And
Speaker 1: how do we do that. How do we build an
Speaker 1: infrastructure or the government, how will the government build an
Speaker 1: infrastructure that will actually create a seamless line of services
Speaker 1: for these vehicles. So, and when we get to Bobby,
Speaker 1: we'll find out more about why that is so important.
Speaker 1: So in recent happenings, though, we have heard that the
Speaker 1: White House has been pushing for the federal government, the
Speaker 1: US federal government to buy to obtain ten percent of
Speaker 1: shares of lithium America. Now they are a lithium innovator.
Speaker 1: They come up with innovative ways to want to use lithium.
Speaker 1: And they're based in in Nevada and they they get
Speaker 1: their high quality lithium or from it is Thacker Pass
Speaker 1: who is who is the mining company that actually collects
Speaker 1: the lithium from them. Now, I said in a previous
Speaker 1: episode that there would seem to be a race on
Speaker 1: too between the US and Canada. Who is going to
Speaker 1: come up with that infrastructure first for electric vehicles? And well,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna have to see how the conversation with
Speaker 1: with with Bob Homer actually goes and what new information
Speaker 1: we can learn about lithium anion batteries, the safety of them,
Speaker 1: how this maybe how this infrastructure will will keep keep
Speaker 1: these batteries safe. So let's bring Bob one to the show.
Speaker 1: So Bob, welcome to the show, and congratulations on a
Speaker 1: what was a two page layout in the Vancouver Sun
Speaker 1: Saturday Sun about electric vehicles. And the one thing I
Speaker 1: really wanted to talk to you today about was infrastructure
Speaker 1: for those government vehicles because it's not there, is it?
Speaker 2: No according to the people that I talked to in
Speaker 2: government and some private companies, the infrastructure isn't there like
Speaker 2: the charging infrastructure were. It's kind of weird because BC
Speaker 2: is leading the way in Canada. We have the highest
Speaker 2: adoption rate of electric vehicles and the infrastructure is higher
Speaker 2: than any other province except for Quebec parts Quebec, but
Speaker 2: it's still fifty percent below what their original targets were.
Speaker 2: So we're still and the energy delivery is still below
Speaker 2: what was forecasted and within the targets that were set
Speaker 2: by by government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, okay, we're going to give Carneie a pass
Speaker 1: for the moment. But justin Trudeau never hit a target.
Speaker 1: He was always far below all of his any climate
Speaker 1: action target that he had, with the exception of carbon taxing.
Speaker 1: Kind of interesting there, but he was. He was far
Speaker 1: below and and the rest of the world was actually
Speaker 1: talking about how he come with the huge targets for
Speaker 1: Canada and never hidden hit one at all, he said,
Speaker 1: each of the climate action large climate action summits and meetings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I don't know where. And I talked to
Speaker 2: I talked to Blair Quaali from the New car Dealers association,
Speaker 2: and he said that the targets that the governments came
Speaker 2: to him with were unattainable and he wishes that the
Speaker 2: government could have done more like coming to industry and
Speaker 2: kind of doing it. They did it backwards by setting
Speaker 2: the targets and then going to industry and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: you've got to meet these targets, where Blair was saying
Speaker 2: that it should have been the other way around, that
Speaker 2: the government should have talked to industry and then set
Speaker 2: realistic targets based off of those numbers. But it seemed
Speaker 2: like they just kind of pulled dates out of the
Speaker 2: air and said, yeah, you have to you have to
Speaker 2: meet these targets by these dates, and it was completely unrealistic,
Speaker 2: and especially for the like my article primarily talked about
Speaker 2: the medium and heavy duty vehicles and there's no plan
Speaker 2: for them, right government official saide I got responses from
Speaker 2: them that they have no targets for heavy duty vehicles
Speaker 2: and a lot of them are like the fire trucks
Speaker 2: and big heavy infrastructure building equipment, and there's no plan
Speaker 2: to have that switched over. So I thought that was
Speaker 2: really kind of ironic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is kind of ironic, and you know, part
Speaker 1: of the part of the plan would be things like
Speaker 1: charging statestions that that that that a police vehicle go
Speaker 1: to a or a government service vehicle could go to.
Speaker 1: Is like, yes, there's okay, right around the corner from
Speaker 1: from where my studio sits there is a huge Tesla
Speaker 1: charging station, but that doesn't do government services any good.
Speaker 1: That's all every charging station that is out there, the
Speaker 1: BC hydro ones that are that are sitting around, they're
Speaker 1: all consumer based, so they need they need designated uh,
Speaker 1: charging stations, aren't.
Speaker 3: They They do Tesla is kind of as far as
Speaker 3: I know, is unique to Tesla, but some of the
Speaker 3: other like when you go to the mall, they have
Speaker 3: the charging stations and any one of the manufacturers can
Speaker 3: plug in to those.
Speaker 2: But that's that's a good point about the charging stations
Speaker 2: and the infrastructure that needs to be there for lease services.
Speaker 2: It's one thing to buy these electric cars, but they
Speaker 2: have to have a place to to plug a whole
Speaker 2: fleet of them in. And at one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars plus for one of the chargers, it think
Speaker 2: gets really costly. Yeah, and in municipalities like here in
Speaker 2: Port Moody, I don't think that's in the budget to
Speaker 2: put in like ten charging stations for a fleet of
Speaker 2: ten cars.
Speaker 1: And like that.
Speaker 2: That's just I'm just kind of throwing numbers there. But
Speaker 2: my point is at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: per charging station, it's not cheap to upgrade an entire
Speaker 2: fleet for these emergency vehicles.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, let's go go back to Tesla the first second,
Speaker 1: because Elon Musk actually said something this is before the
Speaker 1: whole Trump is something he said, in order for us
Speaker 1: to build the enough infrastructure in the time frame that
Speaker 1: we that uh, they're laying out for the one point
Speaker 1: five degree increase that the United Nations has been talking about.
Speaker 1: We'll hear Antonio guer Area's talk about it all the time.
Speaker 1: Keep everything to one point five keep everything to one
Speaker 1: point five degrees in order to do that that it's
Speaker 1: the manufacturing that would need that they would need to
Speaker 1: want to build the fleet to service that fleet and
Speaker 1: everything that they will probably choked the planet with the
Speaker 1: carbon they would would be needed to actually burn to
Speaker 1: actually create the infrastructure, the global infrastructure needed to service
Speaker 1: everybody's vehicle, including government vehicles. And it's a pretty interesting thing.
Speaker 1: To hear the owner of Tesla's say that, because hey,
Speaker 1: he's got skin in the game.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, exactly, because I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: regret is that they're not carbon neutral or emissions free.
Speaker 2: There's the whole process, and especially with vehicles like the
Speaker 2: four de f one fifty Lightning, it's almost identical to
Speaker 2: the the gas powered version of it, so it still
Speaker 2: goes through the same manufacturing process. And you need to have.
Speaker 1: The uh.
Speaker 2: Uh cool or gas burning infrastructure to power the factories
Speaker 2: to do and especially here in British Columbia, and I
Speaker 2: know we don't manufacture many cars this way, but we
Speaker 2: don't have that alternative or the reliability of the sun
Speaker 2: to power like massive solar farms. But that brings up
Speaker 2: a whole other side of it, how environmentally unfriendly solar
Speaker 2: panel production is, and and wind farms they just don't
Speaker 2: produce enough energy too to keep up with If everyone
Speaker 2: was to buy an electric car to tomorrow, we wouldn't
Speaker 2: have the capacity to a to build it because people
Speaker 2: were waiting five years for Tesla's, or at least they were,
Speaker 2: And like the batteries, and there's there's so many things
Speaker 2: that were not prepared for that, we need to get
Speaker 2: her prepared for maybe maybe electric cars is the solution,
Speaker 2: but not today. Statscan came out with some statistics last
Speaker 2: week or the week before, and it was saying that
Speaker 2: they don't have it in front of me. But there
Speaker 2: the gas powered cars were on the rise and electric
Speaker 2: car sales were kind of slumping, and that's part and
Speaker 2: Leri Quali was saying that partly because of the rebate programs,
Speaker 2: there was like a big boom of electric vehicle sales
Speaker 2: because they were getting some pretty amazing deals from from
Speaker 2: provincial and federal subsidies to buy an electric car. But now,
Speaker 2: for whatever reason, they've taken those programs away. And those programs,
Speaker 2: by the way, weren't available to government agencies I found out,
Speaker 2: So they're paying for the electric cars full price. In
Speaker 2: most cases they didn't they didn't have the ten thousand
Speaker 2: dollars rebates or whatever they were from the government that
Speaker 2: everybody else had access to. So I don't know it
Speaker 2: just it doesn't make sense right now to be doing
Speaker 2: this push when we're a resource rich province and we're
Speaker 2: not doing anything to to help the government's not doing
Speaker 2: anything to help out every day people by forcing this mandate,
Speaker 2: these mandates and pushing and pushing these mandates on us
Speaker 2: that are completely unattainable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they are seemingly unattainable as far as okay,
Speaker 1: so we could could look at it this way, right,
Speaker 1: instead of maybe pushing for a completely electric vehicle, uh,
Speaker 1: we maybe we should be looking at hybrids and what
Speaker 1: especially British Columbia for for service vehicles. Why not look
Speaker 1: at where where the supposedly one of the number one
Speaker 1: sources for liquid natural gas, Why can't we use some
Speaker 1: of that to power the vehicles and build and build
Speaker 1: a vehicle and in a way that that it's more
Speaker 1: of a hybrid electric than totally electric.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the things I found was
Speaker 2: why some of the government agencies aren't switching to electric
Speaker 2: cars or alternative fuels is like the weather so in
Speaker 2: British Columbia where we have kind of extreme heat in
Speaker 2: like places like a soil use, but then you get
Speaker 2: way up north and the temperatures really cut down on
Speaker 2: the battery life of the vehicle. So you're right there,
Speaker 2: maybe there should be like a made in BC type
Speaker 2: of solution. Like I don't the one thing that I've
Speaker 2: in researching all this was that there's a lot of
Speaker 2: countries and provinces within Canada. They're trying to make a
Speaker 2: one size fits all kind of solution. It's like electric cars,
Speaker 2: but electric cars don't make sense in a lot of places.
Speaker 2: So I think to save the planet, we need to
Speaker 2: look at the different regions where we are and find
Speaker 2: solutions that fits the unique geographical position that like Britain,
Speaker 2: where British Columbia is sitting, compared to where Saskatchewan or
Speaker 2: even some of the Atlantic provinces or Ontario.
Speaker 1: Because because for example, for one to switch SAT none
Speaker 1: of it, because because no of it, it had a
Speaker 1: good bit of it sits in the Arctic Circle. It's
Speaker 1: during the wintertime it is cold enough that the cabling
Speaker 1: and everything in the wiring for electric vehicle freezes, which
Speaker 1: means that the electrons camp passed through the wires, which
Speaker 1: means car no doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Right. So according to the government mandates in three years, yeah,
Speaker 2: three years, three four years, they would have to be
Speaker 2: fully electric. Or if you're buying a car up there,
Speaker 2: if they sell you in a gas card, they're going
Speaker 2: to get penalized twenty thousand dollars the dealership, it's going
Speaker 2: to get penalized twenty thousand dollars. Obviously that twenty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars is going to get passed on to the consumer.
Speaker 2: So all of a sudden, you get a card that's
Speaker 2: twenty thousand dollars more than it should be, which is
Speaker 2: to me insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can picture a brand new Kia costing twenty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars more than on top of whatever the manufacturer
Speaker 1: retail suggested price would be right.
Speaker 2: And if part of the program the penalty, they can
Speaker 2: trade trade with other many other dealerships who are selling
Speaker 2: more cars, so it's kind of offset. They're so Dealership
Speaker 2: A sells say the numbers twenty cars that they need
Speaker 2: to sell to be fully electric. Say Dealership A only
Speaker 2: sells eighteen, but Dealership B sells like thirty. Dealership A
Speaker 2: can trade whatever, carbons, whatever with Dealership B to offset
Speaker 2: their their costs. But the companies that are selling all
Speaker 2: electric cars or Tesla, and you know, people have problems
Speaker 2: with Elon, Musk and Tesla. So we're still giving money.
Speaker 2: We're fundling funneling money to companies that they fundamental that
Speaker 2: some people fundamentally have issues with.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because they ultimately uh uh, the testa vehicle
Speaker 1: isn't exactly standing the test of time.
Speaker 2: No, there's a there's a massive amount of used Teslas
Speaker 2: in scrap yards that because it is one little thing
Speaker 2: goes wrong. Like I read that there's the screens on
Speaker 2: the Tesla's that something like one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: Teslas had to be recalled. I'm not sure when that was,
Speaker 2: I can't remember, but to replace the screens like the
Speaker 2: big dashboard screen, they were failing in a lot in
Speaker 2: a lot of the vehicle. So like even stuff like that,
Speaker 2: it's really reliant on technology. Yeah, like computer systems.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the funnier things that I heard of,
Speaker 1: it was really not all that funny, is somebody took
Speaker 1: their Tesla through a car wash. It froze up because
Speaker 1: he didn't put it in wash mode. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, what did they when they sell you a car,
Speaker 1: would they send you like an encyclopedia sized owners may
Speaker 1: know if you're going to do this, go through the computer,
Speaker 1: do that first sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy that it's it's so really in one way,
Speaker 2: it's it's super cool that we can we can actually
Speaker 2: accomplish this and do it. But in practicality terms, well,
Speaker 2: if everything is controlled by like one system computer thing
Speaker 2: and you're so reliant on it, like there's there's no
Speaker 2: buttons or knobs or anything like that on the dashboard
Speaker 2: and there's something goes wrong, than the cost effects is
Speaker 2: so high.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of crazy. So in recent events,
Speaker 1: of course, we've heard that the White House announcing that
Speaker 1: the US federal government should obtain ten percent of lithium America, uh,
Speaker 1: because well they're trying to build better batteries. And then
Speaker 1: I thought this was kind of interesting also that the
Speaker 1: on Canada that there is a program for one of
Speaker 1: the one company to receive twenty two million dollars in
Speaker 1: lithium battery advancing lithium battery technology. So when we go
Speaker 1: back and look at it at it is well, one
Speaker 1: is more, they're not a battery matterufacturer. There are mining
Speaker 1: company which they're trying to literally own ten percent of
Speaker 1: this mine in Nevada, right, and the twenty two million
Speaker 1: is being supplied to a lithium battery manufacturer here in Ontario,
Speaker 1: but they're manufacturing batteries for electric scooters.
Speaker 2: Like like the car.
Speaker 1: It's are we missing something here that is like we
Speaker 1: need if we want to switch to electric vehicles, cars
Speaker 1: and trucks. You know, how does that translate to a scooter?
Speaker 2: Rights? And then especially when you have companies like Ford
Speaker 2: and Honda in Ontario making big announcements a few years
Speaker 2: ago about retooling some of the plants for battery development
Speaker 2: and creating batteries for cars and then coming out just
Speaker 2: over the summer or early springer since I'm saying that
Speaker 2: they've put their projects on hold because of because of
Speaker 2: the market conditions. So creating batteries for scooters is one thing,
Speaker 2: but like translating that into cars where they want. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's an EVY scooter mandate that scooter sales
Speaker 2: have to be electric. So yeah, like so there, I
Speaker 2: think the the focus is in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly it, to talk about how a car
Speaker 1: is manufactured. Again, I don't think a lot of people
Speaker 1: understand this. I know some of the the people in
Speaker 1: government don't understand that it is Chevy, Dodge and Ford.
Speaker 1: They they manufactured between two cities, m h and those
Speaker 1: two cities sit in two different countries.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Even though they're right next door to each other, and
Speaker 1: that has an extreme effect on how we're going to
Speaker 1: get the car manufactured. In effect on the of course
Speaker 1: the batteries for for the evs.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, because the cars go back and forth between
Speaker 2: Windsor and Detroit like eighteen times before the cars is finished,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it even goes down to Mexico and back up.
Speaker 2: So like the back and forth we've over the last
Speaker 2: thirty years, we've built this infrastructure of a supply chain
Speaker 2: and a manufacturing train, uh chain before going through the
Speaker 2: two three countries. And now with the Donald Trump's tariffs
Speaker 2: on aluminum steel and the it's on, it's off, it's
Speaker 2: on again. The different pricing, Yeah, and that's just for
Speaker 2: like regular car parts. There's probably like the TV batteries.
Speaker 2: At what point do they install the battery because then
Speaker 2: I know a lot of the EV's. Replacing the battery
Speaker 2: is almost impossible because it's so integrated into the structure
Speaker 2: of the car. So at some point they're gonna have
Speaker 2: to but the battery in we're just going to make
Speaker 2: that battery. Is it going to be a Canadian battery,
Speaker 2: is going to be a US battery or we're getting
Speaker 2: it from China.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, which also leads me to one last piece
Speaker 1: of the infrastructure is recycling and capture and disposal of
Speaker 1: these batteries, especially when you, like you said, it's so
Speaker 1: integrated into the car itself. Is not like gas engine. Hey,
Speaker 1: yank god, gas engine out that doesn't work anymore and
Speaker 1: put a new one or retol whatever right can be done.
Speaker 1: It's nearly impossible to do that in some of the evs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's why we have so many. There's so
Speaker 2: many EV's kind of sitting in the scrap yard because
Speaker 2: if the battery drains down or there's a problem with
Speaker 2: the battery, than the car is pretty much useless.
Speaker 1: Now, that is something that is very different in Europe
Speaker 1: than it is in North America. North America, we do
Speaker 1: not have a vehicle recycling program in Europe. They do.
Speaker 1: Do you think that would make a difference in recovering
Speaker 1: the battery and and and the lithium?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely. I I'm not against progress and these and
Speaker 2: and all that kind of stuff. I just don't think
Speaker 2: right now we don't have there's not the willpower and
Speaker 2: there's the government will and consumer buy in and proper,
Speaker 2: proper planning and infrastructure like recycling to handle like what
Speaker 2: happens to these cars, And maybe they should be building
Speaker 2: the cars differently, like have it so that you can
Speaker 2: easily pop out the battery and replace it that way
Speaker 2: if something does go wrong with it, the car isn't
Speaker 2: completely useless and a waste. That they can make things
Speaker 2: more more modular and not so. Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Like I have a Jeep, I have a Wrangler, and
Speaker 2: I can pop out the backseat, I can pop out
Speaker 2: like the engine. I can. I can do all these
Speaker 2: things that I want with with the car. And maybe
Speaker 2: they need to make evs more like that. Uh so
Speaker 2: people hang on to them longer if there is a
Speaker 2: better option for like pulling out the battery and having
Speaker 2: a means of disposing it properly and replacing the battery
Speaker 2: with with a new one, and then maybe the people
Speaker 2: would hang on the car, hang on to the cars longer.
Speaker 2: Uh there would be less waste. But we don't have it,
Speaker 2: like you said, we don't have anything like that here.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, to recycle the battery and
Speaker 2: to recover the elements and everything from the battery, I
Speaker 2: know that's a that's a huge undertaking too.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is so anyway, Bob, thank you for your
Speaker 1: time today. I mean EV infrastructure, big question mark and
Speaker 1: uh it's still on on still on the rise, right, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just one last thing, I PC Hydro is still
Speaker 2: After I wrote the article, I went back in and
Speaker 2: had to make some changes after Mark Kearney made an
Speaker 2: announcement in early September to get some updates. But from
Speaker 2: a government perspective, none of the targets have changed there.
Speaker 2: They're still going forward even though the federal policy has
Speaker 2: been paused for a year. But they're they're mandate of
Speaker 2: targets that internally that they're trying to hit are still there,
Speaker 2: which to me doesn't make any sense, but it is
Speaker 2: what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we're we're having me. Yeah, we'll just have
Speaker 1: to see what happens. It's government right, all right. Thank
Speaker 1: you everybody for listening, and we will see you next time.
Speaker 1: Her own policy and Rights.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: The show has been produced by Depictions Media. Please contact
Speaker 1: us at depictions dot media for more information.
Speaker 2: M