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