Trump, Elon Musk and the "EV Mandate" with Ben Sullins | Fully Charged Show Podcast

The electric grid is quickly moving away from coal and toward natural gas, solar, and wind power. We really need to stop referring to EVs being charged with coal.

Thanks for having me!

I once calculated approx how much gas we could hold at all gas stations, and total gas to fill every gas car registered in America, and average time per person to fill. We have enough gas to fill about half the cars in America, and we would have 7+ hour wait to fill our cars. Using the absolute model (like all EV's charge at the same time argument), we don't have the infrastructure for gas cars.

The best tribe to belong to in our times is the laws of physics and thermodynamics tribe. It accepts any new member without question. Its laws cannot be overwritten by a theological supreme judicial junta. No nation can escape it's control. Its not dualistic. It has a remarkable ability to resist misuse. All life bows to this tribe in reverence.

What you need is a Tom Cruise disaster movie where he owns a Ford F150 lightning and gets caught in a Tornado outage, has to use it rescue a few people and get to safety, and then needs to work out how to get it online and powering the house for a week. That’d persuade quite a few people that EVs might just be useful

For quite a while my standard reply to the "How far will it go?" has been "Further than my bladder".

We had bumper stickers in England saying. PARTS FALLING OF THIS CAR ARE OF THE HIGHEST BRITISH QUALITY.

US coal mining isn't what it used to be, thousands of jobs have been replaced by strip mining also known as mountain top removal in West Virginia. The PJM electric market is blocking renewables with antiquated queue requirements and keeping coal plants on the grid with expensive capacity payments that pay coal plants to be available but not run, using them like a battery, instead of just installing actual batteries! We won't see a change in the grid until we see a change in the Greed!

Robert, Ben said the right-wing party in the UK are the Labour Party. That may be true, but they took over from 14 years of the extreme right-wing Conservative Party… and you didn’t tell Ben any of that.

Bought only 2 year old ICE for last several years, to save money. Going into retirement, decided we should go electric for the convenience and reliability, and to maximize battery longevity I bought new. Now two week long owner of 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5. Have never been exposed to so many bells and whistles, and mine is just the SEL. This car is the bomb! I agree sticker shock has sway over many, but those who have researched EVs thoroughly understand the return comes over the life of ownership. Most keep their cars 7-10 years now, so calculate the difference from that!

We import a lot of electricity from Canada. 52 terawatt-hours in 2022. Hydro-Québec has 37 gigawatts of hydro electric dams. They export a lot of power to NYC and New England. Another $6 billion "Champlain Hudson Power Express" power line is being built for NYC.

I really enjoyed this podcast. I had the pleasure of briefly chatting with Ben at a Supercharger station in Carlsbad, CA just when the network became open to Rivian. I have owned a Model S and a Y but I am one of those rare outliers (I guess) who decided to go with something completely different and now own the Lucid Air Pure. It is an amazing car and you're right in that most people go..."never heard of it!". It will also be able to use the Superchargers in 2025. I absolutely credit Tesla with accelerating the move to EV's and still think they are very nice cars but absolutely love the Lucid Air. I did first look at the new Model S, The MB EQS as well as BMW, Hyundai, Kia, Audi, & Porsche and after comparing the efficiency, range, ride and cost, went with the Lucid (the front trunk is enormous!). I am now leasing it for a short time to protect against depreciation and the company possibly having a real downturn. You're right in that the Lucid Air is usually not in most EV buyers radar but I do think the Lucid Gravity will be very popular. I also have the Rivian RS2 in the back of my mind as they are another car brand I really admire and will look forward to its launch. Thanks again!

Re Ben's comment on import/export of energy: Actually Canada exports very large quantities of electricity to the USA - mostly due to the huge resources of hydro-electric power generation available across the country.

Vehicle to grid is so amazingly important. I live in an apartment complex that has 1000 apartments. Everyday, all day there is at least 400 cars parked there. That is a lot of power that can run the apartments during peak times. It just makes sense. If the complex can make a few bucks from it, they will install them.

Great show with Robert and his guests as always. 🙂👍

Ben Sullins said "We don't import electricity from .... Canada ...". Oh yes they do. BC Hydro is an integral part of the electric grid that runs all the way down the west side of the USA and Quebec Hydro is a major supplier down the east coast of the USA.

"We don't import Electricity from Canada" - Ya, Sullins knows nothing about electricity markets.

Robert, your purple light on your right side casts a huge purple tumour onto the side of your head. A very disconcerting look. Love the show, by the way.

The legacy carmakers are STILL dragging their feet on electrification precisely because they are painfully aware that EVs will dry up their after-the-sale revenue stream. Like computer printers and their consumables, they can afford to sell vehicles at slim margins or in some cases even a loss because of the incredibly lucrative parts and service business afterward. Except that goes away with EVs. So now they're trying to work out how to build more obsolescence into EVs in order to maintain their profits. Until they have that figured out, they are never genuinely going to be on the bandwagon.

I am looking forward to V2G . I live in Australia we are so very slow to develop this. . The previous federal government was actively arguing against electric vehicles. Even the present government seem to be very very slow to promote evs ,