Re: Here is holding LAC shares
in response to
by
posted on
Dec 28, 2020 01:23PM
Thank you Okiedo for your gentle reply,
First, let me congratulate to all LAC holders to recent share price appreciation. Some of you may think, that I do not approve this growth. Well, let me reiterate, that I do not mind this growth at all. In fact we are in an agreement, that for time being, there isn’t any other way, but up. The market is hot, supply of money unlimited, I do not thing that $20/share mark isn’t impossible. Of course, it has nothing to do with the value of the company, but that is for another comment :-).
Now, let me start my “defense” by stating, that the core mission of (B)EV existence is to reduce emission. Of course, everyone can see that, BEV do not have any tail pipe, so these cars must be “ecological”, because there are no emissions left behind those cars. Unfortunately, the truth is bit more complicated, that simple observation of an BEV car on a street. Like it or not, BEV will not dramatically improve the emission problem, on top of that it may even worsen the situation.
The core problem of BEV is, that those cars do not run on “a Moon light” but on the electricity taken from your socked. It may look like a clean source of the energy to you, but the reality is, that more than 60% of this clean energy comes from fossil sources (https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3). On top of that those so called “renewable” sources need a backup (usually a gas generator), so it is not really fair to count this production in its face value, but that is for another debate.
The goal is, that in 2050, 90% of all light cars must be EVs (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ninety-percent-of-u-s-cars-must-be-electric-by-2050-to-meet-climate-goals/)! Lets leave aside the insanity of this assumption (it is not mathematically possible to achieve that) and assume, for a sake of simplicity a linear annual growth, something like each year, 285/30 or about 10 mil. EVs must be deployed in the US. Some of you may already see the problem right here, but let assume that Elon Musk will do that for you. Those 10 mill new EVs added each year will drive about 12k miles annually and will need about 30 000 GWh energy (I hope, I have not missed some zeros in my calculation, should be 4miles per kWh) to charge, just to put it into a perspective one 1000 MW nuclear block makes about 7-9 000 GWh annually. Faster the electrification of the fleet goes, sooner we arrive to a problem, that current generators won’t be enough and the only way is a heavy taxation and fast build up of new generators. Let me just guess, what sort of fuels will be used: right! Natural gas (for those not familiar with mineralogy, it is a fossil fuel, chemically quite similar to the stuff, you currently put into your car tank).
Now, apart of CO2 and NOx emissions, the biggest problem of personal transportation is dust, at the moment it comes out of the pipe and the second most significant source are tires. While modern cars can pretty much eliminate the dust emissions from burning a fuel, the dust from tires goes away freely. More heavier the car is, more dust generates. EVs are quite famous for not exactly being light, despite the fact to belong into the “light vehicle” category. So one can expect, that dust production will be much higher then by comparable ICE. Hence dust pollution will not be reduced.
My last point of today is to assure you, that EVs will not make “the big oil” obsolete. Not a chance. Just 25% of oil is used to power light cars (source: google). I am not saying, that extraction of oil is something “environment friendly”, it is just a fact of the life, that especially in the US, current life style would not be possible without a cheap source of oil (that is why, drilling gets its subsides), and our civilization will continue to be heavily dependent on oil till some new primarily source of energy is found. And that source is not a solar/wind farm.
Final note: at the moment, nobody gives a damn, so the “electrification” will go on at any costs, till the music stops. We can only guess, when that happens, till then, we are in the right boat. Go LAC! :-) Cheers.