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Roberto Baldwin:
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Hello, I'm Roberto Baldwin, and this is Tomorrow Today's Sustainable Mobility Brief.
The transportation world is evolving at a rate not seen in decades. The transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy has brought with it some truly exciting opportunities, but also some confusion. I'll sift through the noise and share quick updates on the latest news, trends, and advancements that will impact our world for years to come.
This week on the Tomorrow Today Briefs Podcast, we have freelance journalist and all-around great guy Tim Stevens. Tim recently wrote an article for MotorTrend about the troubling side of EVs, especially surrounding the mineral sourcing for batteries and electric motors. Tim, thanks for joining me today.
Now, I know online and talking to you, you said this is probably one of the hardest articles you've ever had to research and write. Can you give me a little brief summary of what you found?
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Tim Stevens:
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Yeah, absolutely. I've always known that a lot of stuff that go into EVs and hybrids is not necessarily good stuff. And I knew the rarest were a bit of a complicated subject, but I had no idea how complicated they were and the negative implications that are surrounding a lot of the materials that go into, Primarily the motors are used in hybrids, plug in hybrids and EVs, but also in batteries as well really learned a lot about mining techniques and the environmental implications of mining.
And ultimately what I think was the most surprising to me was the cultural implications of mining. There are a lot of places, Myanmar in particular, where these materials, these valuable materials are found, where it's tearing society apart, where there's literal slave labor happening to, to extract these materials.
And a lot of that then is being funneled through semiofficial channels. And winding up in the EVs and the hybrids that, that the people are buying every day, like I said, I knew that this was a problematic subject, but I didn't realize the degree of these unsavory materials that were happening and how they were getting into the cars we buy and basically, how little transparency there is into this entire process.
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Roberto Baldwin:
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We've heard over the years about cobalt. Cobalt been the big boogeyman. And occasionally when you talk about EV, someone will bring up cobalt mining. And but even with that in the back of your mind, were you still really surprised about what you found?
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Tim Stevens:
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Yeah, absolutely. I really focus more on the rare earth side of things like neodymium and dysprosium. And these are materials, they're often found together, and they are really valuable when it comes to the creation of permanent magnetic motors, which are of course the things that power hybrids and plug in hybrids and EVs.
And they're not really used in great quantities in these motors typically you're talking, a couple of grams A couple hundred grams something like that. So we're not talking about large Quantities of these materials, but they are extremely common in just about all these cars And so the demand for them is very high and while there are some availability of these materials in the united states China is far and away the greatest supplier of these materials and then A lot of that materials allegedly come into China through basically illegal means as I mentioned Myanmar is one of the major sources and in Myanmar, It's been described as an environmental catastrophe there the types of mining the open strip mining the types of chemicals that are needed to basically extract these elements from the soil The implications to the local environment are devastating and then basically anybody, local farmers Anybody who's concerned about this locally?
If they raise their voices, they are effectively being silenced sometimes violently That's just really troubling stuff and the fact that a lot of this is again allegedly being filtered in through China and given the stamp of approval and then finding its way into major manufacturers motors and batteries, it is really troubling.
So that was really the big stuff that I uncovered that made me rethink about things. Obviously, there are a lot of other implications to every form of transportation, but this is something that I hadn't seen really covered in depth before. And so it was great for me to be able to dig in and dig a deep on it because, I spent a lot of time writing topics and articles that explain complicated issues.
And I typically take on these assignments because it's something that I want to learn more about. And this is something that I wanted to learn more about, but the more I learned about it, it was almost like I was more comfortable about the situation before I learned more.
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Roberto Baldwin:
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Yeah. Yeah. I think there's, China's has a bit of a stranglehold on rare or supply.
They can raise the prices at will. They can say, hey, we're only going to give, we're going to reduce output by 20%. And so the whole situation, it's a human rights situation. It's an ecological situation. It's also, it becomes a sort of a fine financial situation for essentially every other, anyone who's outside of China, who needs a source of this stuff.
So can we talk, let's talk a little bit about that. Solutions in your article, you talked about Wyoming, for example and, and Australia, these could be potential sources for these minerals that we can keep an eye on. I think that's really the big thing, right?
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Tim Stevens:
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Absolutely. I think the most promising find is coming out of Wyoming in the U.S. as you mentioned, a company called American Rare Earths has put out a lot of research into a site that they are proposing to open a mine at in Wyoming called the Halleck Creek site. And they're saying that they could extract as much as 1.8 million metric tons of magnetic rare earths there in a single year, which is way more than China produces every year, multiple times more than what China produces every year.
So this would basically immediately put America into the global leading position of creating of supplying. These were earths for current magnet motors. I don't really care so much about who's number one, but certainly, I feel much better about this stuff coming out of Wyoming than I do out of it coming out of Myanmar.
Not that, Wyoming is a beautiful place, and I certainly don't want to tear it up, but I also feel that the regulations that we have in place in the United States would make sure that this happens in a responsible, as responsible as a way as possible. With a minimum impact to society and to the environment as possible.
And ultimately that would really change the game in terms of how this works. But I think one of the promising solutions is basically other types of motors that don't rely on these materials to make them that don't rely on permanent magnets. There's still a lot of research going on, EVs and hybrids, they've been on the market now for decades, but it's still pretty early days in the grand scheme of things when it comes to the Benz baton wagon 140 years ago, we still have a long way to go, a lot of new technologies to develop. So there's the hope that maybe we don't actually even need these materials going forward, but either of those things show great promise, but they're both years away. Even if American railroads got permission to build that mine tomorrow, it would be years before they're able to actually start putting anything on the line.
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Roberto Baldwin:
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I think one of the bigger one of the big things people don't think about is our permitting solutions here in the United States. And of course, incentives. China has been throwing enormous incentives at these mining operations and essentially, again, trying to be, number one, supplying these minerals, not just for its own EVs, but for the rest of the world.
And I think, in the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act, we're getting, we're seeing more and more of that, but getting anything spun up in the United States takes a very long time versus in China. I, one of the things I've heard over the years from folks who do manufacturing and who do building and who do mining in China is this thing called China fast, where, they're like, I want to do a thing.
And then six months later it's doing the thing, whereas the United States it's, yeah, we have a lot of red tape and bureaucracy, which in some instances is very important. You want to make sure the environmental and mental impact is not as horrible as it could be, but also it can be difficult.
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Tim Stevens:
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I spoke with a researcher at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence who do incredible research into all of these issues and many more, Daan de Jonge, and he was talking about how basically the price of these materials is basically set by the Chinese government at this point, because they can charge whatever or as little as they want to, or as much as they want to, because they have such a dominating supply of the global supply, a dominating percentage of global supply.
And I think, That is that's not necessarily a bad thing for a country to China's obviously made huge investments in this area They believe that EVs are going to be you know one of the most transformative parts of transportation that we've ever seen And they're doing a lot of effort to make sure that their companies are at the forefront of this revolution Which makes a lot of sense and obviously there's been a lot of success from their companies so far but When it comes to, the environmental impact of it and the sociological impact of it as well, the societal impact of this, that's when things get a little bit more troubling.
And again, that's where I'm a little bit more optimistic that if we can get a good supply of this material in the U S that will help in that regard. But again, if China is basically dictating the global price, even if we do bring a major new supply online, China could effectively just decide to cut their prices by a huge amount. And make what was going to be a profitable mine, no longer profitable anymore. That's definitely a risk. So I'm curious to see how that all shakes out.
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Roberto Baldwin:
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I think one of the things that people forget him cause we've just accepted it is that oil oils the historically, the number one conflict mineral ever.
We've, we fought wars. There have been coups companies have over literally companies have overthrown entire governments just because of for oil. And, we've had more than a few wars. It's not great, but because I think it's a societally, we just accept it and then we're just like, Oh, okay.
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Tim Stevens:
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It's just part of the wallpaper. I obviously knew about the Deepwater Horizon incident. Obviously, it's been dramatized into a movie that you got plenty of coverage at the time, but even then, I didn't appreciate the amounts of oil that was spilled into the Gulf, the impact of the lives of the people who were affected by that, the fatalities that were involved in that one incident.
And there was something like 10 major incidents within American coastal waters over the past 20 years, Exxon Valdez, which I remember as a kid was massive news. That was like number five or number six and there just are so many instances going on like this all the time But it's it barely even makes the news at this point and on top of that You know the refining of crude oil alone is four percent of global co2 emissions And that's just the refining to get that stuff to the point where you can burn it in your car That's four percent of global emissions And you know As awful as everything that we've been talking about mining and what's happening in my bar and everything else is you have to remember that the impact to the environment that oil has had over the past hundred plus years has been, impossible to calculate, like you said, the war has been fought over it.
Countless lives have been lost over it on top of the impact to the environment as well. We cannot undermine that. And that's part of the reason why I was a little bit hesitant to pull this article together because it's definitely great ammunition for someone who is anti EV, look at all these horrible things that are happening to the environment, but everything is context, and I'm very firm believer in that you should have as clear picture into everything that you're doing as possible, as ugly as it is, as positive as it is, I think it is important to see the dark side of EVs and everything else now, so that we can then be focused on improving that situation, And helping to ultimately improve the global environment and everything else.
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Roberto Baldwin:
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Do you think we're in a better position now to hold, again, we talk about the petroleum industry and the automotive industry, and they just did whatever they wanted, essentially up until I guess, probably the mid-eighties, the nineties, when we started thinking, oh, wait, this isn't great. Do you think we're in a better, do you think we're in a better position now?
Cause we're, the whole, these companies and these governments to for the environmental impact of EVs versus. Again, when we talk about oil refining, and the fact that you need oil for the entire life of the vehicle, that horse has left the barn. There's not really much we can do.
The infrastructure is there. As we're building out this infrastructure for manufacturing for EVs, you Do you think that we have a better understanding of what could be, go wrong and are actively trying to fix it?
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Tim Stevens:
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I'd like to think so. I think we've learned a lot over the years, and I think ultimately there's been a lot more awareness in these issues to some degree. But I think that awareness has again helped to push a lot of that into the background to the point where people will, I'm just so used to it again. So I think now it's time to bring that same level of awareness to the side of EVs and I think that, we've heard some of this before when it came, when smartphones started to blow up, we, there was a lot of research and talking to, do you know where the materials in your phone came from, do you know who's building your phones?
And I think that did help. We saw. Apple taking major initiatives to help raise the bar there. And there's still obviously room for improvement, but ultimately that exposure, I think did help the industry as a whole. And I think that we're still waiting for that moment. When it comes to EBS, I think, looking forward, there's not a lot of feasibility on these materials, as I mentioned, but there is hope for things like battery passports which will basically enable a manufacturer to effectively create a physical and virtual label that applies to the batteries that not only tracks where all the elements that when did that battery came from, but the structure of the battery, the construction of the battery, where it was manufactured, what the components are of this battery, what car was installed into, when was it serviced, how many miles, how many charges, all this data can be tracked and assigned to a specific battery.
And then when it comes time for the end of life of that battery, that data can then all be fed into a recycler to basically determine the value of that battery and help to automate the process of recycling that battery. Because now that recycler will know exactly where that battery came from, exactly the structure of that battery, how many cells it has, are they pouch cells, are they prismatic cells, and help to automate the disassembly and ultimate recycling of that battery.
So that's I think battery passports have the potential to really, again, raise the bar and give a lot more transparency into where these materials are coming from. And I think that'll also simplify the, a lot of the confusion that we've seen around the current state of the federal incentives in the U.S. where people are struggling to find out, oh, this is an American car, but oh, it's got cells from China. So therefore, it's not eligible for the full rebate, things like that are very confusing to buyers right now. And I hope that can simplify that process too.
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Roberto Baldwin:
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Yeah. Yeah. I think there's room for improvement. I think there's a lot of either government entities or company. I know Siemens is working on something to help because the suppliers, before they didn't have any incentive or any reason to say, Oh, we're carbon neutral, or we this is how we trace things. Or this, that wasn't a thing that they had to worry about before.
And now, the, in order to make sure that our vehicles have a lower environmental impact. You're like, oh, now you got to do this. And for some of them, they're like wait, how, what, this is new. We don't know what we're doing. And everything's moving so quickly. Technology wise that they're like if we implement something now, is it going to be something we'll have in five years? Should we invest now? Do we wait until regular, there's a regulatory structure around it? It's a weird time.
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Tim Stevens:
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Yeah. If you look at the number of times that Tesla has re-engineered their battery packs, they make, I think there were four or five different models of cars these days, but they've got dozens of different battery pack designs that they've gone through over the years.
And that's just one company. And we're still, again, And the early days are figuring out exactly what battery chemical compositions work best for which situation. Are you prioritizing performance? Are you prioritizing cold weather performance? Are you prioritizing longevity? And so OEMs and battery manufacturers are messing with the recipes every day.
And that just complicates the ultimate life cycle of that battery. If you can recycle that battery, then you need to know what's inside. And right now, it would be pretty difficult to do that kind of calculations because there's really no central source to, to know what a battery, where a battery came from, what the composition is.
So hopefully battery transports can help, but they will add some red tapes. They'll definitely add some bureaucracy to the mix, and nobody likes bureaucracy. So hopefully it won't slow things down and add too much cost to our cars. That's the risk.
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Roberto Baldwin
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So after all of this, I know you're, you have an EV and I have an EV. Are you still, I'm. I had an inkling for a lot about a lot of this because of the cobalt and, I've talked to people who mine minerals and how that whole situation is, but I still feel better. I have a gas car, but I still feel a little better driving my EV. How do you, how has it made you feel about your EV?
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Tim Stevens:
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Yeah, it definitely made me look at my E. V. A little bit differently for sure. But again, I don't think that anybody can drive a gasoline power car with clean conscience because again, you have to look at the history of wars. You have to look at the history of conflicts that and the measurable environmental impact that has had.
So I guess I'll say that I don't feel as good about my EV, but I still feel better about driving that than I do a car with internal combustion. And I also feel like identifying and exposing these problems help us to step forward and fix them. Whereas the oil industry is what the oil industry is.
It's been this way for decades. It's not going to change significantly. And so by raising more awareness to the issues on the EV side of things, there are solutions, whether it be more safer mining sites or new battery and motor technologies that don't require these elements, there are ways forward. It's just a matter of prioritizing those things.
And so I'm still very bullish on EVs. I still feel like that eliminates more problems than it solves. And the problems that EVs do create, we have potential solutions for in the pipeline. And so again if we can invest in, in those solutions, it'll be a net win. And ultimately, it's a step forward for us as a society.
And at the end of the day, too. I just like driving EVs better. It's just a less stressful experience. It's, there's less maintenance involved. There's less, less to worry about in an EV. And even if you had to eliminate all the environmental questions, which you should never do, I still think that EVs are a Let's step in the right direction for transportation in general.
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Roberto Baldwin:
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Thanks so much, Tim for joining me today. You can check out Tim's article on motortrend.com. I'll put a link in the show notes above.
For more information about the evolution of sustainability, head on over to sustainablecareers.sae.org. There you can read about how the new Mercedes E Sprinter electric delivery van will be a force for creating jobs in the United States.
Be sure to subscribe and listen every week on your favorite podcast platform. SAE International makes no representations as to the accuracy of the information presented in this podcast. The information and opinions are for general information only. SAE International does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this podcast.
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