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Backup of Problems Created From Charging Forward With Electric Vehicles
Should There Be A Red Light on This Green Deal?
Rev Kat Carroll
On Aug. 10, 2023, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted and approved resolutions allowing autonomous vehicle (AV) companies Cruise and Waymo to operate like taxis and charge passenger fares at any hour in San Francisco (technically a “Phase I Driverless Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service Deployment permit”).
Amidst concerns, San Francisco city leaders have since asked the CPUC to put a yellow light, in the way of a pause, on robotaxi expansion. The city attorney’s office would like to temporarily suspend the approval of unrestricted commercial expansion for Cruise and Waymo.
City Attorney David Chiu said, “In this past year, we have received too many reports of safety issues, interference with first responders, impacts on traffic flow, with public transit”.
Robo-taxis have caused confusion and congestion on city streets. Video footage from Mission Local earlier this week shows a driverless taxi briefly stop in the middle of an intersection on Mission Street before driving into a construction zone and then pulling over to the wrong side of the road.
VIDEO: Aug. 18 Driverless Cruise car struck by SFFD truck, injuring 1
San Francisco residents were caught off guard after Cruise self-driving cars caused a traffic jam, according to social media posts. The obstruction came a few days after California regulators approved robotaxi companies to operate their driverless cars 24/7 throughout the city.
VIDEO: 2 Waymo self-driving cars stall at SF Pride Parade street closures during heavy traffic
At some point it was discovered that placing a cone on the hood of a self-driving car puts it into panic mode, shutting down the $50,000 vehicle until a human employee can come in person to get it unstuck. The CPUC told ABC7 News a commissioner requested the postponement but didn’t offer any details why. Bigelow believes the delay is due to companies Cruise and Waymo not providing enough data to the CPUC. ABC7 has documented multiple incidents where cars stalled in the middle of the road or blocked emergency crews in already congested San Francisco roadways. Stalling EV are also causing a host of headaches for Emergency Response units.
Amidst soaring summer heat and electricity prices, power companies have asked consumers to limit when they charge their EV’s and turn up the thermostat to avoid straining the grid. If a ban on gasoline motors is in the works, what is being done to protect the grid? Electricity in the United States is generated using a variety of resources and technologies. Most electricity is produced using conventional sources such as natural gas, oil, coal and nuclear. Looking at the situation with that perspective in mind, do electric vehicles really make a difference in climate change?
There are other issues with Electric Vehicles
EVs don’t work well in cold weather, and many found themselves stranded in some of the worst weather.
For electric vehicles, raging winds and rain raised longer-term doubts. Could California’s fragile power grid really guarantee such cars could be counted on for safe, reliable transportation? After all, as recently as last summer’s heat wave, PG&E was asking EV owners to forgo charging their vehicles because of heavy demand from air conditioning units.
Are we even ready to go fully EV?
Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley had his own reality check when driving a then new Electric truck across country.
“Charging has been pretty challenging,” Mr. Farley said in a video on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It was a really good reality check of the challenges of what our customers go through and the importance of fast charging and what we’re going to have to do to improve the charging experience.”
In California, Mr. Farley said he encountered slow charging times. When using a low-speed charger, it took about 40 minutes for it to charge the electric F-150’s battery to 40 percent.
A Canadian man told news outlets that he was forced to abandon his Ford electric truck after suffering charging failures during a road trip. Dalbir Bala of La Salle, Manitoba, said he left his Lightning in Minnesota last month after he couldn’t charge its battery at two different stations.
Will going to electric rather than using gasoline and diesel really help with carbon emissions?
See if you can answer this question. The anser will be in a video at the end:
What Percent Of Our Atmosphere Is CO2?
Reliability is only one issue with electric vehicles
Prohibitive Costs
Digital Trends has shown the average initial price of an EV is still about $65,000. By comparison, mid-sized cars are about $32,000 and full-sized cars are $44,000. EV sticker prices put them between full-size pick-up trucks ($60,082) and luxury mid-size SUVs ($69,608).
The article states the price over time is deferred in the savings per month. But that cost is kicked down the road in how the production impacts others. If ICM (internal combustion motors using gas) are to be limited, then drivers may find them selves unable to purchase the new vehicles which could be a huge problem for people with limited incomes. Will it cripple American drivers?
Per Yahoo Finance, “just two in every 10 Americans are “very likely” to buy an EV as their next car”, even with the additional IRA subsidies. The number shifts to 1 in 10 Americans among Republicans.
Cost and charger availability are being cited as the two main reasons people aren’t buying EVs. Behind them, price still remains a key factor.”
One comment in the article caught my attention as it aludes to weather manipulation to drive the climate change agenda: “No wonder those hurricanes coming up the Gulf Coast keep getting bigger! Quick, everybody to the Tesla dealership!”. As a conspiracy analyst, that comment made me chuckle.
Where do charging stations get power for EV?
A question that too few people consider! Charging stations are appearing all across the globe, ready to charge the electric cars of tomorrow. The electricity that charges your car doesn’t magically manifest itself. And while EVs are clean, their power source might not be.
The charging station power source is mostly natural gas. It’s cheap, abundant, and accessible. But not all electricity is generated by fossil fuels alone… Charging stations are connected to “the grid.”
If you own a home charging station, it’s connected to the grid. It’s America’s power supply divvied out among your community, with 40% of that power generated by natural gas and 19% generated by coal. It’s clear the introduction of EV without a clean power source is not solving the problem. EV is not as “clean” as the new deal suggests. Recharge times are also very slow compared refilling time at a gas pump. Video of frustrated drivers
Lithium battery fires 
Per CNN, “This process can be triggered by a battery overheating, being punctured, or an electrical fault like a short circuit”, Khoo said. “In cases where fires occur spontaneously while charging, it is likely due to manufacturing defects”.
“In all of these fires, these lithium-ion fires, it is not a slow burn; there’s not a small amount of fire, it literally explodes”, FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanagh told reporters. “It’s a tremendous volume of fire as soon as it happens, and it’s very difficult to extinguish and so it’s particularly dangerous”.
A CBS News Investigation discovered similar incidents have been happening with more frequency over US skies. The FAA verifies the number of lithium-Ion battery fires jumped more than 42% in the last five years. This calls their safety into question amidst battery recalls.
Environmental issues of cobalt and lithium mining
Though emissions deriving from mining these two elements are lower than those derived from fossil fuel production, the extraction methods for lithium and cobalt can be very energy intensive leading to air and water pollution, land degradation, and potential for groundwater contamination. How is this an improvement over oil drilling and the use of gasoline?
Slave labor involved in mining for battery materials
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), over 40,000 children, some as young as 6 years old, work in cobalt mines. Often working in tight spaces underground without proper safety equipment or procedures, child laborers face serious risks of injury or death.
Per research of Amnesty International, Major electronics brands, including Apple, Samsung, and Sony, are failing to do basic checks to ensure that cobalt mined by child laborer’s has not been used in their products, said Amnesty International and Afrewatch in a report published today.
Video – This is what we die for: Child labor in the DRC cobalt mines
The report, This is what we die for: Human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of the Congo power the global trade in cobalt, traces the sale of cobalt, used in lithium-ion batteries, from mines where children as young as seven and adults work in perilous conditions.
So, while the current administration wants to implement a carbon tax to enforce the change to electric vehicles, the cost is heavier for the planet and those mining rare earth minerals for next to nothing. Meanwhile, any person who has stock in the mining companies are “making a killing” and EV manufacturers may have profits now, but risk losing business if enough alarms are raised about the many hazards of these batteries and the human cost.
But wait, there’s more…
On how China came to own most of the industrial mines in the Congo
Per NPR.org, “China cornered the global cobalt market before anyone knew what was happening. It goes back to the year 2009 under the previous president in the Congo, Joseph Kabila. He signed a deal with the Chinese government for access to mining concessions in exchange for development assistance, a commitment to build roads and some public health clinics, schools, hospitals, things like that — and that opened the door. Before anyone knew what happened, Chinese companies had seized ownership of 15 of the 19 primary industrial copper-cobalt mining concessions down there. So they dominate mining excavation on the ground. And not just that, they dominate the chain all the way through to the battery level. They have about 70, 80% of the refined cobalt market and probably half of the battery market.”
You’ll want to read the very last article posted under Sources for a Deeper Dive at the bottom of this article. It will help you understand why the Biden family, and others, have accepted huge payments from China.
There are many issues with the “Green New Deal”, which on closer inspection, seems to be more about greenbacks for those making the decisions for all Americans. If allowed to vote, it’s often without full knowledge of the details and costs involved. Even the windmills and solar panels are hard on the environment and fraught with their own costs and problems with reliability.
Over the past few years we have been told repeatedly that we need to follow the science. Those shouting like bullys should be taking a closer look at the details for themselves and weigh the factors and human cost. The return on investment will not be sustainable for very long. Government and corporations need to stop putting profits before people if we expect to evolve as a species. I can’t help but ponder the long term effects and what the domino effect will be if allowed to continue.
We could stand a peak at those free energy device patents about now.
Sources for a deeper dive
Complete meltdown’: Driverless cars in San Francisco stall causing a traffic jam
California allows robo-taxis to expand and emergency responders aren’t happy
The rebel group stopping self-driving cars in their tracks – one cone at a time
Close to Home: Winter storms, summer swelter can stall electric cars
Ford CEO Admits ‘Reality Check’ When He Took Electric F-150 Truck on Road Trip
Are EVs more expensive than gas cars? It’s complicated
Lithium-ion battery fires are happening more often. Here’s how to prevent them
Lithium battery fire and smoke incidents on airplanes worry pilots, flight attendants
The Department of Labor’s Exposing Exploitation in Global Supply Chains Series
Exposed: Child labour behind smart phone and electric car batteries
How ‘modern-day slavery’ in the Congo powers the rechargeable battery economy
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