Kind: captions
Language: en
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what's going on my fellow scientifically
curious humans earlier this month
president biden signed an executive
order setting a goal that by 2030 half
of all cars sold in the u.s would be
hybrid or electric which made a splash
in the news almost every automaker in
the world has plans to develop electric
vehicles a lot of it comes down to
charging in the infrastructure there is
a couple billion being set aside to help
build out the charging bridge tesla
continues to be the leader in electric
vehicles aka evs but other automakers
are catching up boy did ford make a big
announcement last night the f-150
lightning is an all-electric pickup
truck goes on sale next spring gmc is
going big on electric vehicles tuesday
night unveiling its new hummer ev one of
20 electric vehicles the manufacturer
plans to release by 2023. but can we get
there half of all new cars electric or
hybrid by 2030 where do things stand
today
and if we could achieve that goal would
it really help reduce greenhouse gases
this is nova now where we electrify the
science and technology behind the
headlines i'm alok patel
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you're listening to the sounds of a
restored 1914 model 48 duplex drive
brome detroit electric car now on
permanent display at the union college
campus in schenectady new york
these days electric vehicles may seem
cutting edge but they're far from new
the first practical self-powered
four-wheeled electric carriage in the
united states was invented by scottish
chemist william morrison in 1890 in des
moines iowa
and then the 1900 united states census
tabulated that 28 of all cars produced
in america were electric outselling all
other types of cars but in 1908 ford
introduced the model t
a mass-produced gas-powered vehicle that
was affordable and widely available and
this put electric cars to sleep
then in the 1970s the price of gasoline
hit record highs and the news was
buzzing about it oil prices are moving
definitely upwards in the dollars area
today dealers raised prices to more than
40 cents a gallon
so the u.s department of energy funded
efforts to try and make a cost-effective
electric car
but evs didn't become popular in the 70s
the technology required to give them
enough range at a reasonable price
wasn't there yet but today it is
biden's 2030 target is part of build
back better his economic plan that aims
to position quote america to drive the
electric vehicle future forward
out-compete china and tackle the climate
crisis unquote that climate crisis a
warming world is caused largely by the
burning of fossil fuels like gasoline
which releases carbon dioxide into our
atmosphere where it traps heat
according to the epa passenger cars
account for about 17
of those emissions so the question is
could electric cars cut that back
sufficiently and what do we need for
them to effectively replace the ones
most of us are driving
one of the key developments that's
allowing the electric cars of today to
compete with the gas-powered cars is
batteries
i think the lithium-ion technology
was a real milestone in moving from low
volume demonstration vehicle to high
volume opportunity denise gray is the
president of lg energy solution michigan
incorporated tech center
as she points out the faster and farther
you want to drive on electric power the
more power your battery needs to store
without it getting super heavy in the
process
the problem for engineers is that no
battery stores as much energy per pound
as gasoline
but there might be hope because we've
seen batteries get better and more
advanced with time you think about in a
regular vehicle there's a 12 volt
battery in there and that battery helps
to start up the vehicle and to provide
the initial support for all the
electrical devices in the vehicle you
know the radio the instrument cluster
that thing on the dash with all the
lights and indicators but as the
technology has improved batteries have
been able to take over additional
functions as we see that this battery
energy can be also helpful in moving the
vehicle from point a to point b you you
have a growing and size of the battery
so
it goes from the 12 volt battery to
say in a mild hybrid of 48 volt battery
and then the next stage is the full
hybrid like a prius which has an
internal combustion engine and an
electric motor that is a full hybrid
meaning that it's a larger battery it
may give you full electric mobility if
you're going at a you know below 25
miles an hour
um and then the next battery again next
battery in size and capacity maybe it's
a 400 volt battery and now it's a larger
battery like in the chrysler pacifica
for example so now you've got a plug
where you can plug it in and maybe you
can go
20 30 40 miles on pure electric
depending upon your driving habits and
then the last stage we call it a full
battery electric vehicle these are what
we call evs think tesla and the growing
number of cars from other companies also
hitting the market now the battery is a
lot larger but it now is your sole
power device in the vehicle the energy
device that powers the vehicle to move
however far you want to go like in the
mustang mock e or in the chevrolet bolt
those are rechargeable you can plug it
in at the end of the day
and recharge it for the next driving
experience okay it seems like the whole
history of evs is basically the history
of batteries so let's take a pause and
review the basics
batteries store chemical energy and
convert it into electrical energy we can
use
and they've been evolving for two
centuries using different materials but
they also have the same basic tried and
tested design
if you pull a double a battery out of
your remote control you'll see it has
two ends one positive and one negative
inside the battery those are called the
cathode and the anode electrons flow
from one to the other generating an
electric current in a controlled way
the key word here is controlled remember
an eevee battery has to store a lot of
chemical energy right which can make
them a little volatile if anything goes
wrong
case in point just last month this hit
the news a defective battery inside the
car has led to nine bolt fires and
prompted gm today to issue its second
recall for nearly 69 000 vehicles
worldwide
investigators determined that the
batteries that caught fire had a
manufacturing defect not a design defect
and gm isn't the only one ford bmw and
hyundai have also had to recall vehicles
over fears of battery malfunctions
we don't design the vehicles to burst
into flames you know i normally tell my
engineers
that your child is going to be riding in
this vehicle your grandmother and your
grandfather
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driving and mobility is literally what
we do for so much of our our daily
existence and i think there's some like
kind of questions we need to address i'm
the average person i'm going to be
firing questions would my electric bill
increase significantly if i got an
electric vehicle not significantly
it will be increased but you have to
look at it not just from your electric
bill but what you would have been
spending if you had an internal
combustion engine in terms of what you'd
pay for gasoline over the lifetime of
the vehicle but also evs are simpler
mechanically than cars with combustion
engines so they require less maintenance
let's say i'm worried about there being
charging stations near me like how do i
how do i know if there's going to be
charging stations close to me
there's different companies that um are
responsible or at least
supply these charging stations and
there's apps on my phone now for
chargepoint and where all of its
stations are so that i can plot my
travels chargepoint advertises itself as
the world's leading electric vehicle
charging network with nearly
and thirty thousand public charging
locations the vehicles are becoming very
smart as well and this is why i'm so
excited about
these apps being integrated into some of
the vehicles that you buy they also are
providing you aids in knowing where to
charge how much charge you have left
based on the route you want to go and
where the nearest charging station will
be
charging a vehicle is going to be a
behavior i think as we adopt it to
computers and charging them at night
phones i think we're going to really
adapt to learning how to charge our
vehicles in a convenient location be it
at work or at home you know another
thing that people get lost in the
internet especially when we talk about
the environmental impact of these cars
is what happens when the batteries at
the end of its life and someone is done
with their electric vehicle you know
are we exchanging one environmental
issue with another is that a myth what
happens with those batteries the first
thing is
secondary use what you think about
instead of having a a diesel generator
could we have some kind of
battery electric backup supply for my
home so i don't lose my ice cream in my
refrigerator so
i think that this is an area of open
opportunity to determine what could be
those secondary life of those useful
batteries and then after
that secondary life
say now we've got 20 years later if you
will
now recyclability we're all trying to
figure out how to you know harvest
materials out of the battery cell or
recycled and put back into the circle of
life so still a lot of work to be done
in that area
battery-powered electric vehicles have
fewer tailpipe emissions and reduced
noise and like i said they typically
require less maintenance but will this
be enough to get consumers to actually
consume them
more on that after the break
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the lowest carbon intensity form of
travel you can use is to use your own to
feed in your legs to walk or ride a
bicycle but that's often not possible
jessica transit is a professor in the
institute for data systems and society
at mit
she and her team do research on energy
and transportation systems and they've
spent years looking for ways to
decarbonize energy services you know if
we go from hybrid vehicles to electric
vehicles you can think of it as kind of
phasing out the internal combustion
engine vehicle
and you're starting to rely
you know solely on the energy that's
stored in the battery and that will come
ultimately from
you know the power grid and the power
plants that are supplying electricity
and that obviously is going to differ
depending on what state you're in right
like some place the power grid may come
from coal whereas somewhere else it may
come from wind or solar am i right when
i when i differentiate it like that yeah
so
coal is kind of being phased out for
various economic reasons and also
because of the high emissions but it is
true that in some places you could be
using a little bit more coal and in
other places less
so that impacts the emission savings
that you get from the battery electric
vehicles but what we see is that just
regardless of where you are in the u.s
even with today's power grid
you can save substantially from
switching to one of those alternative
powertrains alternative powertrain
technologies refer to hybrid vehicles
plug-in hybrids and battery electric
vehicles all of them jessica transit's
team has also been evaluating personal
vehicles against climate change
mitigation targets they've examined the
costs and carbon intensities of almost
all personal vehicles available in the
u.s today yeah so the carbon intensity
is just the greenhouse gas emissions per
mile traveled and that includes all of
the emissions that are incurred in
building the car you know and producing
the battery
as well as in the case of gasoline
vehicles and refining
the crude oil and then driving these
cars her research group developed the
online app carbon counter to provide
information to consumers who may be
considering one of these alternative
powertrain technologies
through the app you can input the
vehicle model you want and see its
carbon intensity and how that translates
to cost per mile
i played with this app it's actually
kind of fun
what is one myth
you would like to squash about electric
vehicles can i give you two
please yeah give me myths that you want
just to smash about electric vehicles
yeah uh the
energy requirements and therefore the
greenhouse gas emissions coming from
producing the battery are just so large
that you don't save emissions and
switching to a battery electric vehicle
that is not true okay good to know so
how much difference does it make you can
save substantial emissions 30 or more in
switching to an electric vehicle even
when we take those emissions into
account
now the second myth is that the
environmental and
social impacts of
mining are unique to battery electric
vehicles and this is a topic that is not
unique to
battery electric vehicles or to
batteries we use lots of metals we use a
lot of fossil fuels these are extractive
industries
and they can have very negative um you
know environmental and social impacts
that
are something that we really need to
become more focused on but not specific
to electric vehicles because that's
that's really a distraction
okay these myths are crushed
i don't drive very much at all i don't
even have a car my wife has a car i use
a bicycle but i feel like just a few
years ago
in driving from napa to san francisco
every now and then i would see a tesla
on the side of the road and that has
added to this range anxiety and so you
know the fear that a vehicle has
insufficient range to reach its
destination and could strand its
occupants on the side of the street when
the battery dies you've cited this for
years so i wanted to ask you as the
expert here is range anxiety justified
given cars and our charging
infrastructure it's mostly an outdated
fear i would say
if you're using an electric vehicle even
for the lower cost electric vehicle
models
and especially if you you know have a
reliable place to charge it then upwards
of 95 of days you wouldn't have to
recharge during the day a lot of strides
have been made within the last decade
here again is denise gray we went from
batteries and vehicles that can get you
maybe 60 to 80 miles to today's vehicles
they're giving you over 300 miles i've
only run out of gas from an internal
combustion engine once
and once you do that you don't do it
again and i think same thing with a
better electric vehicle if i
am looking at my my dashboard and it's
saying coming empty soon
if you don't do that the same thing will
happen you'll be on the side of the roll
and you've got to call someone to tow
your vehicle or bring a
portable charger to be able to give you
some juice same kind of thought process
there is this anxiety that comes from
getting into this kind of unknown
situation back to jessica transit but
once people do it the reports you'll
hear from many different electric
vehicle owners is that they are able to
find places to charge now unless you
know where you're going to be able to
recharge then you're probably not going
to buy an electric vehicle transit says
most people on most days are not driving
any farther than the maximum range
allowed by evs available today but
there's going to be a small number of
days throughout the year where they may
travel further and those are what we
call the high energy days and so it's
really important to
find ways to
charge vehicles and sort of have these
predictable reliable locations for
charging conveniently on those days
there are definitely pockets that are
deficient in charging stations but there
are plans to expand charging
infrastructure last week the u.s senate
approved a one trillion dollar
bipartisan infrastructure bill that
includes 7.5 billion dollars to fund the
installation of electric vehicle
charging stations across the country
the bill still needs to pass the house
where it faces an uphill battle
as more models become available
you know there's going to be a natural
process of expanding charging
infrastructure and there's also
government policy that's being discussed
you know for
incentivizing that process but the
availability
is pretty uneven at this point i'm glad
you brought up
government infrastructure and us trying
to create a more equitable world when it
comes to electric vehicles and charging
stations you know i just want to ask you
what's it going to take for battery
electric vehicles to become like a
widespread option there's a few
different steps that need to be taken
so
one is to accelerate the process and
allow more consumers to adopt electric
vehicles it's really important to put
the information out there for
where can you predictably and reliably
charge
the second is to
make more electric vehicle models
available to people people like to have
choice we also need more electric
vehicle models at the lower price points
and then the third is expanding charging
infrastructure but it's not about just
haphazardly putting charging
infrastructure in various places if we
really focus on providing charging at
home and then also a couple other key
locations including fast charging along
highways and long rural roads workplace
charging which can really help the power
grid and then overnight locations like
hotels you know that is like a strategic
package of charging locations that would
allow people to
charge their vehicles very conveniently
and on most days you won't even have to
think about whether you have
the charge or the fuel left in your
vehicle to take you where you want to go
you know in terms of who will do all
this
ideally it's going to be a combination
of government policy incentives and then
private sector innovation and this can
sort of build up into
a positive feedback loop that can
actually bring about quite rapid change
and you could even get to a point where
electric vehicles are an asset for the
power grid you know where on some days
they they could act as storage
you know it's kind of acting as
batteries for the power grid but that's
that's something that we're a little bit
further from
but it's a really interesting
opportunity to look into there's a lot
to look into for the consumer it's
driving habits budget and well what type
of ride suits your fancy and with
engineers and scientists continuing to
improve these vehicles and their
batteries we may all one day be able to
drive on to a greener less carbon
intense future
i'll vroom vroom to that well i probably
shouldn't say room room because i think
electric cars are supposed to be more
silent but
you get the point
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nova now is a production of gbh and prx
it's produced by terence bernardo ari
daniel jocelyn gonzalez isabel hibbard
sandra lopez monsalve and rosslyn
tordesillas julia court and chris
schmidt are the co-executive producers
of nova suki bennett is senior digital
editor christina manan is associate
researcher robin kasmer is science
editor and devin robbins is managing
producer of podcasts at gbh
our theme music which always charges me
up is by dj kid koala
i'm alok patel we'll be back in two
weeks which is enough time for you to
read up on the engineering marvels of
all the electric vehicles out there like
the bmw i3 hyundai kona electric jaguar
i-pace kia nero ev nissan leaf volvo
xc40 recharge the audi e-tron sportback
the tesla model 3 s x or y or maybe
you'll be like me live in a city and not
have a car at all and cruise around on a
bicycle
gbh
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