 This is your October edition and tonight we're going to have a show called our electronic vehicles ready for prime time. My guest is going to be our trusty True North reporter, Michael Bielowski, and I believe Lou is going to be calling in remotely, so we'll wait for him to call in. Mike, you recently wrote an article about the problems with the battery technology and electronic vehicles, and that's the biggest problem, there's other problems. And I want to go into that, but before I go into that, I want to touch, make a distinction between the concept of electronic vehicles in principle and the reality. I think, personally, I think the concept itself is eventually going to win out, but I think if the politicians leave it alone, and I think a lot of the things that you picked up on are symptoms of a technology that's not ready yet. So what's happening is you've got political social engineers trying to, they're strangling the goose before he has a chance to lay any golden eggs, and they're going to end up destroying what is, I believe, a promise in technology, and actually it's part of a bigger trend, the electrification of our economy and the automation of a lot of things. You've got, you know, a big deal in a lot of your cars now is these global position and systems. Yep, it's the only reason I'm here today at the same time. Well, ideally they believe, you know, the next step in the global position system is you don't just program the thing to tell you where to go, but it's keyed into the car and it'll tell the car where to go and you can maybe read a book in the car. Wow, I've got my own opinions about that, but I know that's where they're trying to push things, certainly. It's possible to do that and have, the question is, well, there's a lot of questions regarding how it gets controlled and the problem, but the question is, do you grab on to a technology and see that you have a lot of emerging technologies by themselves at pros and cons, but it's part of a larger trend and you have a tendency for people to get over excited and want to push. That's what I see. And push it and that makes a backlash and the backlash is against, gets people tuned, turned off that my background is engineering. So I'm a technophile, I'm very much into the new technology, but historically new developments like this turn off the public if people start using it as a control device to control people's behavior or try it. The automation, certainly. The automation has a potential to do the opposite, it has a potential to allow people to gain more control, social media for one example. And it has a potential to free up people, but it also has a potential both ways. You have, when there's a lot of change there's a backlash anyway because people don't like new things, but if the new things, if they see that they're freedom being impinged upon and they see something forced upon them that doesn't make sense, they're going to reject it and you're going to destroy the market for it. And that's what I want to go into at first because I believe in principle, well you got electronic vehicles, okay, if the technology was there you would have lower maintenance costs because you wouldn't have, there's a lot of things. Perhaps the batteries if they were to break down are quite pricey to fix. Right, I mean I'm saying if the problem with that is because the battery technology is not there. Right, the efficiency of the battery. So you have, in principle, electronic car in principle could be more efficient because you don't have the in and out. Less moving parts. Yeah, less moving parts, but also the energy production system is you've got the ratio of input to output ideally would be a lot better. That's why they consider it, you've got the no emissions. The reason why is not is because the reality is the battery technology is not ready. Right, and that battery has to be charged by electricity which comes from all different sources. I think the last numbers I had from a couple years back, wind and solar combined in the United States account for I think it's like three or four percent of our electricity usage. And I know there's other energies that they consider renewable but if that's going to be the benchmark then... Well, that brings another issue. It's not just electronic cars. You've got all kinds of gadget connecting to the internet. So you have the electrification of our economy. The portion of our economy that runs on electricity is growing. And so the portion of the economy that runs on traditional fuels is shrinking. It might not be shrinking in absolute sense because the economy as a whole is growing. In terms of percentage, the portion of our economy that depends upon electricity is growing and portion of our economy depends upon fossil fuels is shrinking. That is a trend that is happening because of technological developments, not social engineering things. And this has been happening. The computer revolution had a lot to do with it. The computer Silicon Valley is one of the most deregulated parts of the economy. And so this is coming about from a portion of the economy that's highly deregulated. So if people want to see this happen then they might want to encourage our political wannabe saviors to get out of the way. So that's another argument going back to renewables. Renewables are not efficient producers of electricity or they don't produce the quality of electricity. So if we're going to have electrified economy and you're going to have electric cars, we have a line one, let's take a look. Hello, is this Lou? Hi Lou, how are you doing? Doing well. We're dividing up the electric car issue into two parts. We're talking about how, in principle, is a good idea, but they're forcing it before it's ready so we're going to probably kill the goose before it lays any golden eggs. Oh, interesting. So if we electrify our economy further and we switch to all electric vehicles, then the amount of electricity required to power the economy jumps a lot. Well, it's complicated. In an ideal scenario for electric cars, what we have right now is an electric grid that produces power whether you're using it or not. In other words, it's always being produced. It's inefficient to shut down gas and coal and nuclear power plants at night when people are sleeping just to crank them up again in the morning. They don't do it like that. So a lot of the power goes to waste. So in an ideal scenario, you would want electric cars to be charging at night because then it's using power that would otherwise go to waste. Obviously that's not always when they're going to be charged. People have to use their cars throughout the day. The other, this goes back to an issue that we were carved, the smart grid idea and the storing of electricity and being able to switch it for when it's usable, but that's another issue. What I'd like to talk about, I'd like to bring up this video here. This is the chairman of Toyota and he's all for electric cars, but he doesn't think that we're ready for it and he doesn't think it's a good idea for the political sector of our society to be forcing upon us because now the car manufacturers are forcing to building something that the technology's not ready for and there's no market for. So he believes they're going to screw up the market and of course he's speaking in Japanese and he's being translated into English. Can you jump over to that one here? This one? Yeah, and okay, hit play, hit the blow up, yeah, then hit this one right here and then hit the blow up, yeah, right. Well, I felt change would be forecoming, pace of change far exceeded our imaginations, accepted, convenience for the user, the consumer experience would have to be a key consideration. The hybrid didn't dramatically alter the driver experience. It actually enhanced it by reducing the amount of trips to the gas station because it was more fuel efficient. As we continued our work on the hybrid, we realized something else. We realized that electrification is inevitable and the vehicle needed to be equipped with a system to supply electric power and motor. Did she say that it's the latter? Mm-hmm. Did she say it's the latter? It's the necessary technology for semiconductors to accommodate the future. Let's talk about the future. Okay, well, we apologize, Murphy's Law. We had a video queued up and it just did not, as the viewers, we thank you for putting up with that, but obviously you could not hear. We could hear it here, but we're told that it wasn't being... Right. It wasn't being picked up by the main system. Right. In any case, Lou, you own an electric car, don't you? Do you want to say... What are your feelings on all this? Yes, actually, my wife and I drive a 2013 Chevrolet Volt. I purchased it used. It had... At the end of its lease, the first owner of the car traded it in at the end, I guess it was a three-year lease. So as far as cost goes, I thought it was a really good deal. Did a fair amount of reading about the various vehicles before we purchased it. And I like the Volt. I like the technology. I mean, I certainly can't speak on the infrastructure aspect. I know Michael's done a lot of research and reporting on that. But I can certainly speak from the car owner's perspective. And it's... Well, between I drive every day a gasoline vehicle, my wife uses the Volt, and primarily drives around town. I live here in Middlebury, and she goes to meetings, shopping, whatever, using the Volt, and she primarily runs it on the battery. The Volt is kind of the platform of it is a little different from the Prius. In fact, I prefer it to the Prius, because it's not an automatic, switching back and forth between the combustion engine and the battery. It's up to the driver to decide what mode you want to drive in. So General Motors designed a couple of different driving modes in which you either drive all gas. There's a setting for more high-speed interstate driving and also mountain driving, which really comes in handy here in Vermont, which is why the Volt is a really good vehicle for Vermonters. The other thing is it does have regenerative braking, as a lot of these cars do, where coasting and braking, downhill travel kind of put energy back into the battery pack. So it's got a lot of neat features. I got a question. Yeah, go ahead. Did I understand you to say that you can switch it back and forth from gasoline power to is this a hybrid you're describing? You know, it's not a true hybrid in the sense that it's automatic in that sense, but yes, it is a hybrid. You can choose to. It's got a four-cylinder gasoline motor, and it has a lithium battery pack. And it recharges while you drive it in the gasoline. The battery recharges during that period. Is that how it works? Yeah, and then it's a plug-in, too. So if you run down the battery, and this is what's called a first-generation Volt, the second generation came out, I think, in 2015. And they have a much longer range. I have about a 40-mile range on it fully charged. But if you run out of that battery, you can just go to a gas station. Well, no. Well, if the battery runs down, I mean, I've driven the car to Pennsylvania, about a 350-mile one-way trip from Vermont. And you can run it on the battery until the battery runs out, and then it automatically switches to gas. So it's not like, I think, early perceptions of people was that, oh, I'm not going to drive a Volt because, you know, when the battery runs out, I'm stranded. Well, that's not true. Some of the electric cars, that is true, though, not this one. Well, that is what the distinction that the, sorry, no one could hear it. But the chairman of Toyota was talking about the hybrids that they had made and how it was enhanced the driving experience for the customers. And he was making a distinction between hybrids and all electric cars. Yeah, yeah. And of course, Chevrolet has a new vehicle called the Bolt, which is all electric. And that has around a 250-mile range on its battery. So that's a pretty significant increase in battery range. Again, that wouldn't get me to Pennsylvania one-way completely. It would probably get me down to around the Newburgh, New York area from Vermont. And how long does it take you to charge up the battery? For the Volt, it's, well, I can't say because it's always plugged in at night. So I'll plug it in at night. It's ready to go the next morning. Yeah, the time that. Yeah, so if you got halfway between here and Pennsylvania, the charging time, it would lengthen your travel time probably quite a bit. Only if I wanted to run it on the battery. I'm saying hypothetically, if this was an all-battery. Yes, correct, correct. Yeah, you'd have to because you wouldn't have a gasoline backup, which is why, personally, I wouldn't go all electric yet unless it was a second car that I might use as a town car where you just, even driving from Middlebury to Burlington or to Montpelier, you could easily do it and still had plenty of juice left in the battery probably for a whole week, if not with. There are other issues that say heavy duty electric vehicles, what, how's this applied to, say, trucking, electric trucks? I really don't know much about it, but I should say that General Motors had originally designed the Volt. I've done some research on this and talked to our Chevy dealership here in Middlebury, Deniker Chevrolet, where I bought the vehicle. And they have certified mechanics and electricians to work on the electrics of the car. It had originally been designed for a fuel cell rather than a lithium battery. No, I shouldn't say that for an electric, for the gasoline to have a fuel cell. And General Motors, I guess, wasn't quite ready to introduce a fuel cell, but from what I've heard is it is down the road. So the car could likely, if I want to hang on to it that long or the next owner of it, could conceivably retrofit it, retrofit the gas engine and put a fuel cell. And of course, fuel cells are kind of a battery. They were really pioneered by NASA's Project Gemini Program. Some of those long-duration Gemini flights in the 1960s used fuel cells. And it basically provides kind of a catalytic conversion of water, breaks down the hydrogen, and then powers of the vehicle or spacecraft. You got also the Toyota chairman was talking about the possibility that they're actually working on now solid-state batteries. OK. Well, and Toyota, I know, they pioneered hydrogen vehicles. Yes. But there's no infrastructure for hydrogen. That would be my personal ideal fuel source rather than electric. You're describing what you think would be the best use for all of them. And that's letting the market, letting the customer decide. Which I agree with, I think. Eventually, if we get all the technological issues straight and out, I think it's going to go that way. But what we're concerned about, and there's a push by some politicians, Vermont wants to be first and everything, to move us all towards electric cars. And we don't know when it's going to be ready, so you can't have a politician's five-year plan and say, look, we're going to move them all this way. Because it's going to turn a lot of people off. And then people, the arguments that you're making is going to be lost on people because they're going to be frustrated. I agree. And of course, central planning of anything is usually a disaster. History has kind of shown that. So I don't think you can foist technology on people. I just see it evolving. And it is happening. People are going electric. But I think it makes more sense to do it in steps rather than some draconian act that it's just not thought through. I just want to, you don't need to say what you paid for it unless you want to. But my concern is that the Nissan Leaf, up until recently here in Burlington, was being sold for, I want to say, $11,000 or $12,000. Now, the problem with that is it's a $30,000 car. So if you do the math, that's like almost a 2-thirds subsidy or rebate or a combination. Anyway, financial assistance one way or another. Well, yes. I mean, Chevy was, I guess, subsidized somewhat. I don't know where their current state is. But again, I bought the car used. So it was a significant buy. You already got that discount. Yeah. I paid, it was around $18,000, something like that. But I'm a fan of that show on TV to use an analogy. Shark Tank, the one with Mark Cuban and the folks who listen to different business plans and business models, and they either embrace it and give you money or they tell you to run for the door. And I can't imagine standing in front of Mark Cuban and those folks and saying, I've got this brilliant product that's going to save the world. Oh, and by the way, in order to make it marketable, it needs to be 60% subsidized. I think they would laugh you out the door before you even got the finish given your spiel. And I know that the technology is getting better all the time, but it's clearly not there yet. And it's probably not going to get there as quick if you cut the process off by subsidizing the existing technology and trying to force it. You're absolutely right, because if given the time to evolve, you'll get a better product and a better power source. And one of the articles I was reading, one of the subsidies they wanted to make, electronic cars available to the poor, is if why is another car not good enough for them? We're using this in the name of the poor as if this is going to benefit them. But then all of a sudden, OK, if they have them long trips, it's harder to do if it's an electric car. You get a subsidy that's 60%, but maintenance costs, until they get this battery tech, maintenance costs on these batteries are not cheap. Right. Yes, and I should say that I bought an extended warranty on the lithium battery pack on my Volt, which was available through the manufacturer. Just because it was one of these GM approved used cars where they check it out. And so there was some warranty on the vehicle already, but I wanted a little extra insurance on the battery, because knowing just how expensive it would be to replace a battery pack of that size. This reminds me, I used to be product engineer at IBM. So the computer industry is something that I'm used to be an example a lot of times. Your early computers were monolithic, huge beast with very little power, and they cost a fortune. Now most people for a very little amount of money relatively can have something far better and far more powerful than the most expensive early computers. So has Rob Mainer just admitted he's a computer geek? I like the technology. I'm not an applications geek. I understand the engineering theory behind the hardware and software, because I studied mathematics and engineering. So I can probably figure out a problem based upon the error code, but I haven't tinkered with all these applications. The underlying principle is behind it, I understand. But what we're going through now is the equivalent of the early days trying to force the IBM mainframe on everybody. I find it interesting that really the first practical electric cars appeared as early as the 1880s, and they didn't certainly take off. But gosh, I remember my father who passed away at the age of 102 years ago. He still remembered one or two of these old, I don't know if they were Franklins, electric cars. And he remembered a neighbor in his town who had one. And it had loaded with big lead-acid batteries. And the guy drove it a couple of blocks and took it out every Sunday or something. And that was an old timer from probably the late teens. If there's something I can interject here, we talk about forcing this product onto the market. That is actually quite literally happening. If I'm just going to read an excerpt from my article, Vermont is one of the states that requires automakers to meet the California Vehicle Emissions requirements, often called the Zero Emissions Vehicle or ZEV program. Those regulations require automakers to have a certain number of credits associated with the sale of plug-in vehicles. So it's not just the financial incentives in the form of rebates and tax credits. There is also a mandate to sell the cars by the state, which I did not know about until I wrote this article. Well, I wanted to mention that. I think, Michael, you wrote back in your watchdog, Vermont Watchdog days, you write an article about possibly taxing electric vehicles because they weren't paying a gasoline tax. Well, that was another issue that came up. Yeah, Vermont realized a gasoline tax for, I believe it's roadways for filling potholes and whatnot. And obviously, that would have to be mitigated in some way if we were to go full forward with this electric car thing. So that is another thing to think about. But my big takeaway from writing this article was that my father owns a hybrid. He owns one of the Priuses. And I think it's a neat technology. I think the hybrids are pretty much there because, yes, you're paying $30,000 for a car, but you're not paying as much money for gas. I don't know how much you would save, assuming you'd have to drive the car, at least for several years, to get most of your money back. But if you buy a hybrid today and use it for seven, eight, nine years spending, what do you think you spend on gas for a hybrid? Yours is technically a hybrid. So what do you think? I couldn't tell you. I'm not a numbers guy, so I don't. And it depends on where you live and who's driving it and all these different variables. But I know I spend about $100 a month on gas. But well, I can tell you, actually, although I don't have it at my fingertip, is GM has a very nice, the car uploads data to, I guess, through their General Motors OnStar program, where you get an email, basically, a monthly status report on your vehicle. It'll tell you what your MPG is. It'll tell you whether or not your front right tire needs to be inflated because it's low. It's pretty amazing. And I guess I look at them and read them, but I should pay more attention to it analytically, which I'm not doing, but I'm pretty impressed with 150 miles per gallon. Getting back to the zero admissions. That goes back to something that we have talked about before. When they're talking about non-polluting, they're talking simply about emissions. And they're not talking about the whole process. You got the conversion process. You got the disposal process. Disposing of these batteries is not environmentally pristine to begin with. A lot of heavy metal batteries. I mean, if you get a solid state battery or a fuel cell, you've got it is a different issue. But like I said, we're not fully there yet. A lot of the lithium ion batteries and a lot of these heavy metal, they've got a lot of disposal issues in terms of environmental sensitivity. Well, personally, I've always been an advocate, personally, of a hydrogen economy. And you already have an infrastructure of gasoline stations. I guess, of course, there's a cost to retrofitting them for hydrogen. And hydrogen is not, I think people just have this sort of Hindenburg notion of, oh my God, hydrogen wants to touch it. But you look at the Hindenburg disaster and it was really the... Hopefully, we're not going to disaster. ...Hindenburg disaster that was ignited by the lightning strikes. I had to cut you off. I guess we're at the 22nd warning. Any closing comments? Personally, I think there is a lot of work that still has to be done in electric vehicles. And I personally don't like central authority telling me what I should or should not drive. Okay, well, we've got the 5-4-3-2-1 going on over there. So thank you for watching. See you next month.