266: The Genie is Already Out of the Barrel
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Brand
Lucid
Lucid is a company that makes electric cars. When they change their CEO, it can mean the company is changing direction or priorities.
Concept
hydrogen
Hydrogen is another way to store energy. Some vehicles use it in fuel cells, but it’s complicated because you need a way to make and deliver the hydrogen.
Concept
import refined petroleum products
Rather than making fuels locally, they buy the finished fuels from other countries. That can save money sometimes, but it also makes you more dependent on global deliveries.
Concept
supply chain can crumble overnight
They’re saying the system that delivers fuel can break very fast. When that happens, cars can’t get what they need, even if everything looks fine one day to the next.
Term
utility rate
Your local electric company has its own electricity prices, called the utility rate. Charging companies often base their charger prices on those electricity costs.
Concept
EVs
EVs are electric cars. Instead of burning gas, they run on electricity stored in a battery. The host is saying that big world events can create a window where more people are ready to switch to EVs.
Car
Model 3
The Tesla Model 3 is an electric car that helped kick off EV popularity. In this conversation, it’s treated like the turning point that made Tesla’s approach succeed.
Concept
universal vehicle platform
A “universal platform” is like a common car design that many different models can be built from. The idea is that it lowers costs and speeds up development.
Term
Forced labor
Forced labor means people are made to work against their will. The speaker is flagging it as a serious issue connected to how some products are made.
Concept
economies of scale
It’s the idea that making a lot of something usually makes each one cheaper. So if a company builds millions of EVs, the cost per EV can drop.
Concept
unit cost
Unit cost is basically “what it costs to make one.” If you make more, the average cost per car can go down.
Concept
government subsidies
Subsidies are government money or tax breaks that help lower the cost of something—like buying or building EVs. They can make EVs more affordable than they otherwise would be.
Brand
Tesla
Tesla is one of the biggest electric-car companies. Their cars and pricing can really shape how fast EVs become popular.
Company
Edmunds
Edmunds is a car-shopping website that helps people research vehicles. The host is using their data as a sign that more people are looking for EVs and hybrids.
Concept
interest spike
An interest spike means more people are suddenly looking up or shopping for something. Here it suggests more buyers are paying attention to EVs and hybrids.
Concept
cost of operation
Cost of operation means what it costs to keep the car running day to day. They’re saying EVs usually cost less to drive because electricity is cheaper than gas for many people.
Concept
ICE
ICE is the usual type of car engine that burns gas or diesel. They’re saying some people who try EVs end up sticking with them instead of going back to gas cars.
Concept
charging at home
Charging at home refers to using residential electricity to recharge an EV, typically overnight. The speaker says they couldn’t charge fast enough at home for their commute, which made EV ownership difficult—highlighting how home-charging capability can be a key adoption factor.
Term
home charger
A home charger is a device you install at your house so you can charge your EV at night. It usually makes charging cheaper and more convenient than relying only on public stations.
Concept
electrical grid
The electrical grid is the system that delivers electricity from power plants to your house. If it can’t handle more demand reliably, charging many EVs could become harder.
Concept
electrify
Electrifying transportation means using electric power instead of burning gasoline or diesel. The speaker’s point is that this can lower how much oil is needed for transportation.
Concept
top off
“Top off” describes charging a battery briefly to add enough energy to continue, rather than fully charging from near-empty to full. The speaker connects this to scheduled breaks, suggesting short high-power sessions could enable continuous long-distance travel.
Part
dual saddle tanks
Dual saddle tanks are extra fuel tanks on the sides of a truck. More fuel onboard means the truck can drive farther before it has to stop for gas.
Brand
Walmart
Walmart is used here as an example of a place truck drivers often stop to rest. If electric trucks can’t go as far, they may need different stops for charging.
Concept
solar panels
Solar panels make electricity from sunlight. If you have them at home, you can use that power to help charge an electric car.
Concept
wind turbines
Wind turbines are machines that make electricity from wind. The wind turns the blades, and that spinning makes power.
Concept
wave energy
Wave energy is electricity made from ocean waves. The movement of the water powers a device that turns a turbine.
Concept
solar thermal power (mirrors focusing sunlight)
This is a type of solar power that uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a tower. The heat is used to run a turbine and make electricity.
Concept
electrification
Electrification just means moving away from gas cars and toward electric cars. It usually involves things like charging stations and government support so more people can switch.
LIVE
This is what Car-E-V podcast for Thursday, April 16th, 2026, episode 266.
The genie is already out of the barrel.
I'm wildly unprepared for this episode.
I haven't said that for a little while, but it's true.
You said you were going to open with an interesting factoid.
Okay, interesting factoid that I can't really remember.
But we started this whole thing with a blog, then we introduced a podcast.
And now it seems like shorts are the new podcast, which podcasts are the new blog.
Blogs are the new magazine.
Yeah, definitely.
What I'm saying is youtube.com slash at the walk car is where you want to go.
There, you can see this entire episode.
This whole episode is like 40 minutes, 50 minutes long.
But in there, we cut up a bunch of stuff.
We cut up a bunch of stuff and makes it into shorts.
And the shorts are where we get most of the traction with this podcast.
It's crazy.
It is an amazing evolution to watch.
And I was talking to another podcaster.
I think I brought this up the other week, but then didn't carry on with the story.
I was talking to another podcaster a couple of weeks ago.
And he was saying, I linked to his youtube channel and he was like, don't do that.
Link to the Spotify because the podcast is where I get most of my traffic from.
And I was like, huh, you need to go on and do reels and shorts.
Because this is a dead medium of the full long form podcast.
This is where you get your shorts content from.
So I'm Phil Royal.
I am one of the podcasts.
I'm wondering when you were going to get to that.
And I have been doing content in this ever changing environment for decades at this point.
And you just roll with it and you see where things take you.
And now things are taking us to shorts, which I kind of like because that's what I,
individually, I watch long form stuff, but I also watch short.
I probably watch more shorts and reels than I do the long form stuff.
But then like night I'll sit down and I'll be putting the kids to bed and I'll watch the
shorts, whatever.
So long story short, subscribe on YouTube.
You can also follow us on Facebook and other places, whatever.
It doesn't really matter.
And I'm here with Ed.
Ed, the shorts maestro, evidently, of the walk car.
You're the next generation.
You're the odd new thing.
Sounds kind of funny at a 50 years old, but sure, I'll take it.
Yeah.
So been doing this a while, known Phil a long time.
More than, I'd say more than half my life at this point.
God, it's surprising.
Scary to think.
But anyway, this week's episode is going to be a little different.
There was some news in the EV world, nothing particularly earth shattering.
I didn't think other than Lucid getting a new CEO, which we'll probably cover next week.
There was plenty of little things that we could have talked about, but it was
just boring.
Anyway, I'm bored of this.
So I told Phil, I just want to do a rant episode.
I just want to do an episode where I just ran for like 45 minutes and he was all against hydrogen.
No, this is so it's going to circle back to big oil.
So if Nata isn't camping out there, their black van in front of my place, it'll be big oil.
So anyway, so we'll get into that.
But I'll tell you this much.
I am glad I live in the U.S. of A and not in Australia.
So I was wondering when I was going to get to this.
Well, no, there are many countries that that I would be glad to live in as well,
but Australia for this one particular reason.
Yes, nothing against if we have Australia listeners, nothing against you, nothing against you as a
country.
But as you're probably well aware, if you're listening to this, you're in a little bit of
a pickle right now with the the Strait of Hormuz situation.
So I don't think I need to beat that dead horse for you.
So so Australia at one point and even even now, you know, I know population-wise,
it's not a huge country, but but you know, geographically, it's pretty large massive.
At one point, Australia had eight domestic oil refineries, I guess.
Care to guess how many they currently have?
Fewer.
Quite a few fewer.
Two.
So how many fewer?
Two.
Two.
Wow.
So I guess this was a strategic decision made maybe, I don't know, 35, 40 years ago,
where they figured it was cheaper for them to import refined petroleum products.
So you know, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, all that, it was cheaper for them to import it
than to make it domestically.
So they closed a whole bunch of their domestic refineries.
There's two still in operation.
So but I'm guessing right about now, they were hope they were wishing they had more than two open,
because Australia is highly dependent on imported oil.
And they're really feeling the crunch right now from what I'm reading about and the reports I'm
saying. So it seems we learned during COVID that the supply chain can crumble overnight.
And now with Iran, we've had the same thing happen, essentially, with very specific to oil.
But it seems like a world economy is a really good idea.
I'm all for a world economy.
I'm for everybody, depending on everybody else.
It's a great idea until it's not.
Well, it's a great idea until it's not.
And then you swing back and forth somewhere in all of this.
There's a happy medium.
But it seems like when, at least in COVID, and then now with the Strait of Hormuz,
it seems like your options are all or nothing in some cases.
It's not like a trickle of something.
It's just like, oh, it's gone, whatever it is.
And so if you didn't have it all in-house, then you're up a great.
The problem is, I think, a lot of countries, Australia, among them,
greatly underestimated the need for resiliency.
Basically, planning for a plan B and the importance of that.
They just kind of assumed the world would be peaceful forever,
would have free flow of oil, everyone would be holding hands and seeing kumbaya.
And that would be kind of the status quo.
Of course, if you look over history, that's rarely been the status quo for more than
maybe a couple decades at most.
World War II has been less than 100 years.
And that's probably one of the longest peace times,
I'd say probably in the last 200 years.
So anyway, yeah.
How annoying is it got to be, though, for all these other countries?
So you've got Australia, Canada, and basically everybody else that's not China, America, Russia.
You've got everybody else that is, I mean, obviously there's stuff going on in the Middle East
all the time.
But for the most part, the majority of the countries are good players.
And they are just cruising along like, we just want to live.
Here's healthcare for everybody.
And let's be nice to everybody.
And that's what a lot of these other countries are doing.
And then you've got these three big players in the world that then go and start attacking somebody.
And now you're Australia and you're over there going,
I'm just trying to have some good time on the beach and drink some beer.
Yeah, WTF.
What is happening, you guys?
We were cool.
We were all cool.
So a quick commentary on this before I go into my longer form rancid raves.
Even more rancid raves.
So California is somewhat of a microcosm of Australia's situation.
Not quite as bad, but not great.
So there's basically like the Gulf kind of energy epicenter around like Houston and Louisiana
and all that.
That's kind of like, you know, ground zero for the American oil industry.
And from there, they have pipelines that go out to a lot of places, a lot of states.
California is kind of isolated.
They don't, we don't have, I think we might have like one or two pipelines that go outside of the state.
But basically we're kind of isolated.
So we rely on oil basically brought in by ship.
And because of our, that geographic isolation in terms of oil, we actually, California,
I think I read somewhere in ports like 75% of its refined fuel.
So that means predominantly Middle East, Asia.
I think I said a couple episodes ago, the biggest refinery in the world is actually in India,
of all places.
So yeah, so California used to have a bunch of refineries.
We have a lot more than Australia.
Currently we have 11 that are still active.
But, you know, of course, you know, California being on the vanguard of environmental activism
and all that, we basically effectively pushed a lot of them out that they've said,
you know, forget all this regulation and compliance and everything.
We're just going to go to Texas or wherever.
So there's 11, possibly fewer than that.
But again, again, I can't remember exactly when we discussed this, but the whole,
you know, light, sweet, heavy, sour and like the refineries are generally optimized for
one or the other and you can't just like easily interchange them.
So anyway, there's a lot of variables with that.
So, but the gas price has gone down slightly here.
So the Costco closest to me here, it was for the past couple of weeks,
it's been 545 a gallon for 87.
It's dropped down to 539.
So that shows the market has some confidence this will be resolved soon.
I don't know if I share that sentiment, but anyway.
This has been one of the wildest rides for gas prices.
I went camping over the last week.
And in it, I mean, I got a big old F 250.
Like I'm chugging through gasoline.
It's not diesel, it's gas.
Diesel is like 748 gallons, no matter where you turn.
Gasoline though, you would be driving through, I went out into the desert
and you would go through some towns and on one side of the town,
price of gas will be like 540 and the other side of town, not talking big towns.
I'm talking like a population of like a couple of thousand people.
The other side of the city would be nearly $7 a gallon.
It's just, it's all over the place.
It was pretty regular that you, if you saw price of gas at like 640,
you would just drive down the street and you'll be able to get it for 780 or 580 or something.
There is no consistency with the price of gas right now.
It's the wild west when it comes to gas pricing.
Now you don't fill up your EV because I want to tie this a little bit in EVs.
You don't charge your EV on public chargers that much, do you?
Like have you noticed a change in any of that pricing?
Usually only like road trips or if I'm kind of out of area.
Is it been as EV charge pricing been somewhat consistent?
I mean, you know, where I live in Northern California, it's a higher utility rate area
anyway. So super chargers vary. I would say
on the low end, maybe like 42 cents a kilowatt hour.
Every now and then I've seen up to like 60 cents a kilowatt hour, which is pretty expensive.
But it generally falls somewhere in that range.
They've not been cranking up the prices because price of gas is going up and they're like,
oh, we could just increase price. I mean, I guess they could, but I mean,
it's basically, it's whatever the utility rate is. And then they tack on, I think,
a little extra surcharge for like demand pricing because I guess high voltage,
depending on time of day and stuff, it can kind of vary a little bit.
But yeah, not a huge difference from what it has been historically.
And we've got a lot of renewables here in California. We did have one day,
like five years ago, where we were completely renewable
powered as the entire state for like two minutes.
I think on average, we're at about like 50% renewable right now. So anyway,
so getting into unicorns and rainbows, I guess, on that note, I just have,
you know, and again, I'm not, I'm not an oil markets expert. I'm not even,
I don't know if I'd really call myself a renewables expert. I, my background,
my degrees in journalism, I keep up with the news. I try to stay on top of things. So
I'd like to think myself is pretty well informed. I'll just kind of leave it at that. I'm sure
we'll get plenty of comments telling me I'm full of it and I don't know what I'm talking about.
That's fine. You know,
but that's, that's every week.
Yeah, that's every week. So maybe, maybe this week more than usual. But
so yeah, you know, you know, if people want to call me liberal or, you know, tree hucker or
whatever, my main approach to all this and my observations with this whole thing is
I don't want it to be political. I see this as more kind of some strategic
miscalculations, I guess, for like a better term of short-term and long-term bets.
The US and various countries made based on historical events and how they decided they would
kind of react to that and kind of how it's turned out, you know, as far as oil goes,
as far as oil goes, like, you know, as the same goes, how that worked out for you. So yeah.
Yeah, which ultimately all of this is, as we covered a couple of weeks ago,
is the potential opening for EVs for people to go, try to paint all these.
You would think, but the funny thing and it's, you could kind of see why is, you know, because
of the lead time, the development lead time for cars versus current events. Current events can
change rapidly. The planning stage in the auto industry is a multi-year process. So sometimes
there can be a little bit of a mismatch. And I would say that's probably what's happening right now
is, you know, current events. Well, the manufacturers just dumped all their EVs,
like six months ago. On the expectation of regulatory relief, the removal of,
you know, cafe penalties, they're like, woohoo, we're going to make muscle cars and sports cars and
yeah. And then we've got no oil. So anyway. All right. What's step one on this journey?
So China, China, my favorite subject. So yeah, that seems to get the most clicks and the most
comments on our shorts. I'm going back to shorts. This seems to be somewhat of a hot button issue.
So here's a segment on it. So I'm just, here's my take on China. I'm not mad that they're
successful. We gave them, we basically planted the seeds of their success
kind of willingly. I mean, I'll make the point. Define their success. What category are you
talking about? I mean, EVs, batteries, electrification. Okay. If you look at the origins
of most of these technologies, most of them were pioneered in the US. But at the time,
there wasn't much marketplace interest and, you know, companies were like, man, you know,
not really interested. And, you know, the Chinese saw the promise and like, hey, yeah,
we'll buy the patents or, you know, yeah, we'll adopt this and run with it. So
we've got slave labor, we can make this cheaper.
Yeah. I mean, that's, that's a, that's a factor for sure. But yeah, so basically,
since the, I'd say early 2000s, China was very forward thinking, you know, they haven't had a
perfect, they've had their own set of issues. But in the area of EV technology, they've been
very methodical. They've iterated very quickly. And yeah, I can't be mad at them for basically
taking advantage of, I mean, if you want to, you know, that has kind of some ugly undertones, but
yeah, they took advantage of American technology and American business's willingness to do business
with them. But I think, you know, whereas American businesses, I think a lot of times are just kind
of obsessed with the quarter to quarter, you know, profit margins and, you know, stock price and all
that, you know, China takes a much longer term strategic view. So they're like 100 year and
1,000 year plans. Exactly. So they're willing to ride stuff out for decades. Whereas, you know,
if we, if you, an American company has like two or three consecutive losing quarters early,
oh, forget it, we're going to dump this. Oh, it's the Q1 earning reports are coming out like
this week as we record this. And everything's like Q1 over last year is down for Tesla by
whatever percentage it was. And they've produced, God, what was it? They produced 50,000 more cars
than they sold in Q1 and this is bad sign and yada, yada. I mean, you live and die by the quarter
here. And in China, they literally have like 100 year plans for their country. We don't have that.
We have like, we're looking at the midterms here. This year could literally change everything. If
things go horrible for the Republicans this year, we could end up with a removed president
from the White House. Like it could literally change that fast. A couple years from now, a
very dramatically different regulatory landscape, which could influence transportation policy.
Anyway, so am I mad at the Chinese? No, they were smart. They were savvy. They saw an opportunity
and they grabbed it. Should we've been more guarded about our intellectual property? Absolutely.
Did we, you know, I sometimes think foreign, especially American companies that went over
to China and invested, we were kind of the frog that got into the pot of water. And when we got
over there, it was kind of a lukewarm, kind of pleasant. It's like, oh, yeah, this is fine.
And then, you know, gradually kept turning up the heat. And by the time we figured out
was boiling, you know, it was too late, we're cooked, you know, so.
You'd mentioned like, like with EVs, Tesla really changed everything for the world.
Had Tesla have operated like a Ford or a GM, I don't think they would have had 10 years of losing
money, 10 plus years of losing a lot of money. Like it would have been in terms of the quarter
to quarter, like. Yeah. I mean, they were just throwing money out the window for years and
years and years. And it was always with the promise of this is the future. We're, we're working
toward this. And eventually they got to the Model 3 and they got it. And, you know, but there was
that like before 2012, they weren't making any money. Then 2012, the Model S comes out and that
runs to like 2019 where it's just like, or 2018, just throw in cash out the window nonstop. The
Model 3 comes out as the savior and then the Model Y after that, which really transformed it.
But if you put that same, that same kind of business and an horrible failure monetarily
on something like Ford. Most companies wouldn't have the patience for that.
No, the CEO would have been gone after two quarters. No.
They wouldn't have like a CEO that was stood there and said, just wait seven years, guys.
Just wait seven years. Not how many CEOs can get away with what Elon got away with.
Yeah. And in, and so we've ended up with basically Tesla succeeding in America.
And then China going, oh, we see the future here. And they can crank up and they can lose
the money because they're all government subsidized. And, you know, everything's fine.
And they jump ahead and now we're in this energy crisis. And if that leads to EVs,
America's up a creek again, like. Well, you know, again, like I said,
last week, you know, all of a sudden politicians are sounding the alarm on China and they're
trying to erect all these barriers. That may work for a while, but at some point,
we need to learn how to be globally competitive. And we need to, you know,
whether or not we have a huge export market, it's kind of irrelevant. There's going to be
imports coming in, whether from China, Korea, Japan, you know, I mean, Jim Farley, who, who
drove the Xiaomi SE7 said, oh, I love this, an amazing car. Even he said, no, the Chinese are
an existential threat to the American auto industry. So yeah, he sees it. We'll see if this new,
you know, low cost universal vehicle platform pays off like he's promising it will. But
he's got a lot riding on it. Yeah, unfortunately, for America, we've got to decontent everything
to get. Yeah. And yeah, like the slate where it's like crank windows and, you know, like one
screen in front of you that gives you your speed and stuff like that. Whereas in China,
they've got the advantage of less cost in the manufacturing.
What's what's the term I'm looking for?
Forced labor.
Economies with scale. Yeah. So if they crank out, you know, five million of something,
the unit cost is very small. Yeah, you combine that with the amount that they pay people and
like America just subsidies. Yeah. Yeah. And America just can't compete, especially
with like the government subsidies, because like, if there's one thing nobody in America is ever
happy with, it's subsidizing private industry. We're no, just just the oil companies. Yeah,
we're fine with the oil companies for some reason. No one else. And healthcare. And, you know, the
stuff that, I don't know, I'll stop. Okay, this is a rant episode. So yeah, it's all free game.
So far, I'm doing good on this rant thing, because it used to be just a couple of years ago,
we would get emails all the time saying that I need to shut my mouth because you don't know
how to my mouth. Well, no, it was because all I said was bad things about Elon. And so far,
I think I've only said positive things about him and Tesla. Sure. I think anyway.
So how, how is five plus dollar? So we, a couple episodes ago, we mentioned Edmunds is seeing
interest kind of spike up a little bit on their, their website in terms of,
you know, new car, new car searches combined for EVs and hybrids. So that's up.
Yeah, it was up like 21% or something like that. I think 21 to 25 or something. Yeah. So
yeah, what's interesting is I don't know how bad it's going to have to get for,
for really, I think it's more longer term. I think because so right now we're what,
did you just do that? That memes overhead. That was so last year.
Kids aren't doing it anymore. Nope. Anyway. So that's still relatively short term. So I don't
know how long it's going to have to go till people are like, wow, maybe I need to, maybe I don't need
this F 250 super duty diesel at eight bucks a gallon. You know, you know, maybe I could go to
a Model Y or whatever. And what's interesting too is I saw another video, this guy is,
I guess he's like a used car dealer, but he's like, he's like that. And even he's a little
confused by, he's like, you know, it really hasn't caught up quite yet. He said the resale
values on used EVs are still low. He said over time he could see that changing, but he says
there's still so much fun about EVs like, like they automatically, you know, some people believe
they get to 100,000 and they're, they're like toasts, like batteries or toast, you know, this
and that. He said that's still a very predominant kind of, you know, thought and consideration
with a lot of buyers. So he's like, yeah, they have a lot lower cost of operation, obviously a
lot lower, you know, fuel costs, you know, costs per mile, but people are still kind of hesitant
to take the plunge. So he's like, will that change? He said maybe, but he said it's going to,
he said he thinks he's going to take a longer time until, you know, consumer sentiment changes,
market dynamics change where, you know, there won't be this kind of misconception about EVs.
So it could help accelerate, I think. Yeah. Very slowly help accelerate the adoption
because you're not going to have everybody go over and spend $48,000 on a new EV.
But you might have some. And the thing that we've seen, I believe there's been studies on this,
haven't there? The people, once they've got an EV, they are more likely to stick with an EV
than go back to ICE, even though I know multiple people that have bought EVs and they've gone back
to ICE. But that was use case specific. It wasn't because the, the EV didn't do what they wanted,
it was because situations in their life changed. And as you have said, EVs aren't for everyone.
And like for me, an EV was definitely not for me. I was a super commuter doing 90 miles through LA
each direction every day. And I couldn't charge up a car fast enough. I was having a,
I would have a power deficit every time I'd test an EV. I had a power deficit. And so by the end
of the week, I like, I couldn't charge fast enough to like, I was having, I couldn't charge at home
fast enough. So it was turning into a slight problem. Whereas now I work from home, it'd be
great. I don't even need a car now. An e-bike could get me around where I need to go. So the kids
on the handlebars and off I go. So life changes. But I think that this could slowly, like it could
jump us a couple of percentage points in a graph where we were projected to be for EV adoption
versus where we are. And once you capture them, once you capture that audience, EVs are sticky,
that you don't necessarily want to go back, especially once you've made an investment.
So if you get the EV and then you put the home charger in as well, which you would,
then it's like, well, I've already done that. I don't have that expense anymore. And it's already
there might as well get another EV or you're looking for a second car. Well, I've already got
that charger. You know, I can make it all work. So I think that this, yeah, you need it for a
long time. But I don't, I think a long, you need this crisis for a long time for large-scale
adoption. You need it for, it already will be a jump. We just haven't seen the percentage
jump in. It's just going to be a small percentage. Yeah. And I think the US is different than other
countries. I think, you know, Southeast Asia, Australia, countries that are heavily reliant on
imports. And the US is too, to a point, we'll get to that in a little bit, but for them,
it's a matter of the government starting to ration fuel. And not just like gasoline diesel,
but like propane, you know, natural gas lights out certain times of the day,
you know, closing businesses certain days of the week. I mean, it's getting like really
critical for some countries. So I think from that perspective, assuming they have
relatively reliable electrical grid, which is not the case in a lot of countries,
I think a lot of people are kind of saying, yeah, maybe we need to reduce our dependency on this.
So I think the, the, the impetus is a lot stronger in other countries than it is in the US. US,
it's like, you know, you got the nightly news reports, oh, I can't believe gas five bucks a
gallon, you know, but it's not, it's not like a crisis stage for most people in convenient,
you know, a little crimp on the budget. Yes, for sure. Again, I'm still concerned about diesel
prices because in California, I've seen, I remember a couple of weeks ago, I sent you that picture
driving around where it was like 745 a gallon. I would say the average price of diesel around
here is probably over $7 a gallon now. Just looking around, looking at the marquees.
Oh my camping trip, I don't think I saw it below $7 a gallon. Period. I think like 730 might have
been the lowest per gallon a diesel. Yeah. So it's, you know, I think there will, I think,
you know, ironically, I mean, you know, it's funny that the Tesla semi has been delayed for like
forever, but if, if Tesla can bring it to market when they say they would, they say they're going
to start ramping up production later this year, I think a lot of trucking fleets, especially
having gone through this will say, you know what, maybe we should look at this because I mean,
if they're looking, I mean, some of the bigger tracking fleets, I gotta guess their fuel,
I mean, their fuel bill is probably millions of dollars a quarter or per month even.
And, you know, a difference, I mean, I'd have to crunch the numbers, but let's say it basically
cuts fueling by, by, let's say that the cost of fueling for the Tesla semi versus diesel,
again, I'm just pulling this out of thin air. Let's say it's one third of diesel, which is,
I don't think that's inconceivable. You multiply that times, you know,
50, 100, 200 trucks, you know, nationwide. Now, granted, we don't, we don't have the charging
infrastructure to really have a do coast to coast electric semis quite yet, but in kind of regional
pockets, you know, Southern California, Nevada, Chicago, I think Dallas area, they're starting to,
they're starting to put up, you know, megawatt charging. So it's probably going to start there
then gradually kind of spread out. But, you know, I think if it fits their use cases, I think you're
going to say a lot of interest in electric semis. Anyway, it'd be nice for EVs to be delivered by
electric semis. Well, I think where it's feasible, you'll see that. You know, right now, it's just so
strange to see a truck load of Teslas chugging down the road. Diesel truck. Yes. And it's like,
you can be there going, well, I've already got an EV, so this doesn't really affect me or whatever.
But, well, the price of people purchasing EV, the prices are the price of gas, just like with
tariffs, the price gets passed on to the consumer. The price of gas or diesel to fill up the truck
that delivered the EVs gets passed on to the consumers. All of this gets passed on. So you
see the destination charge jump from like whatever it is currently on Teslas, like $13, $1400. All of
a sudden, it's two grand. Yeah. I mean, that's where you're going to see that. And it's never
going to go down. Yeah. It's going to go down. Yeah. I mean, depending on how long this goes,
I mean, I think people that have at least some kind of intellectual curiosity about it and open
open-mindedness about it are probably considering EVs more than they used to. Because it used to be,
oh, you know, George has a Tesla and he likes to show it off and whatever. That's cool, I guess,
but not for me. But now it's like, oh, can you believe we spent $500 this month on gas and like,
well, you know, maybe we should look at an EV. I think those conversations are happening. But
again, I think it's going to be a while till we really see that manifested in sales numbers. But
yeah. So one, this is kind of ironic. So one of the unintended consequences to this, and not one
I think environmentalists would be very happy about, is countries that maybe don't have a lot
of oil and refining capacity, but they have a lot of coal. All of a sudden, there's a renewed interest
in switching to coal, because they're like, well, hey, we're sitting on all this coal. We got tons
of it, you know, and yet we're cut off from oil supply. A little bit of an unintended consequence
of this is there is renewed interest in coal power, which from an environmental aspect,
it was not great. But that is happening. What's the next topic here? Smart countries will look
for ways to reduce their dependency on petrochemicals. Which is kind of, I mean,
isn't that what individuals have been doing with solar panels on their house?
Well, except you need petrochemicals to make said solar panels.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can't get rid of it.
No, I mean, basically, I mean, here's the thing is, it's unrealistic to think probably in our
lifetimes will completely be oil free. Well, you and I are nearly dead. I think you covered that
earlier. Yes. But I think that the thing to consider is globally, transportation consumes
60% of oil products. So if we electrify a significant percentage of that,
that kind of reduces the price and demand pressure on oil. So we could use it for
a big bonfire parties. Well, no, I'm trying to think of the term I want to use.
I don't necessarily say higher value, but more, more durable uses, because when you burn,
you burn a hydrocarbon fuel, you burn gasoline or diesel. That's it. I mean, yes, you know,
I know there's no we get to pay for the consequences for decades afterwards.
Well, no, that, but I mean, but what I'm saying is it's like, it's not,
it doesn't have like a 10 or 20 year life. Like you consume it immediately, right?
Whereas plastic packaging, well, I mean, packaging is its own thing. I mean, that's also kind of
disposable. But I guess where I'm getting with this is like, if we're not burning it,
we could use it for medical uses, for product packaging, for
you know, construction, stuff like that. Making roads.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, bunker fuel. Speaking of which, that's the next thing I wanted to kind of touch
on. So one of the things keeping us from being completely oil free is certain use cases. So
road transport, I think in the next 20, 30 years, we could almost fully electrify that.
I think that's not unrealistic. If that's made like a national priority,
I think you could see the majority of road transport, light duty and heavy duty potentially
electrified. Yeah. It's not as easy to do that with ocean freight. And even harder to do,
I would say with airplanes. So I think those are probably be the last holdouts that fully
electrify if ever. And I mean, I know just a couple of weeks ago, we had Andrew on talking
about fuel cells and how impractical they are for cars. But I think that's where fuel cells
might make some sense is aviation and ocean freight potentially. So I will concede there
is a use case for hydrogen, but I think that's where it makes the most sense potentially is aviation,
ocean freight, I would say long haul road freight. And maybe the Tesla semis will get there eventually.
But right now, they're pretty much limited at 400 or 500 miles. Now, what's kind of interesting in
the US, there are mandated, I guess 30 minute breaks every four hours. I don't know if you
knew about that. So that's kind of got to log everything. Yeah. So that's kind of the idea of
how you'd ultimately kind of make electric trekking make sense. So if and now, grant, we have a
long, long way to go to really build out a megawatt charging infrastructure. But the kind of the
vision is, you know, if they have to effectively stop every four hours, you know, they could stop
kind of top off and keep going that you could conceivably have coast to coast, you know, network
of megawatt charging and do coast to coast road freight. But you know, it's not uncommon now for
diesel trucks with like the dual saddle tanks to have like 1000 mile ranges.
So I think we're quite a ways off from that with with TV trucks. And I know from my camping
experiences, you'll stop off at a rest stop, or you'll stop off at a Walmart, potentially for the
night. And there will be big rigs. And they will, the driver will be sleeping, whatever, there's no
fuel, fill up there or anything, but they carry enough fuel that they don't need to fill up,
they can get where they're going. They just need to stop and sleep, they've got they got to fill
out their log and make sure that everything's legal. So if you then say, okay, well, it can only go
the the electric EV, the electric semi can only go 500 miles. But we build out all this infrastructure,
you're also changing where those trucks have to go to stop, that they now need to stay on this main
thoroughfare or whatever to like, it alters what they're already doing. And I imagine a lot of
these truckers have a routine that they go to this stop. And this is where they sleep. And
they know it because that has a shower. And so they're going to stop here. But if pilot or loves
or, you know, those are the two that pop into my head. It's gonna have to change habits. Yeah,
but it's gonna have to change driver habits as well. Because Walmart's aren't going to suddenly
have megawatt chargers, maybe they will. Yeah, but not suddenly. You know, maybe they'll have them
eventually. Yeah, but I could see loves and pilot and flying J, eventually installing megawatt
chargers. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think those are the easy ones. Yeah. So but if your truck can only do
500 miles instead of 1000 miles, and you always go to this Walmart sleep at the back parking lot,
because it gets you within 15 minutes of the dock that you need to unload at at 6 40 in the morning.
And so you can stop there. And you don't need to fuel up. And anyway, it's just
old habits die hard. Yeah, I get what you're saying. Convince these truck drivers that they
need to change the way they're doing it. I don't think that's insurmountable, though. I mean,
like the the truckers that have driven the Tesla semi and these these, you know, trials for like
Frito lay and Pepsi and Walmart or whoever, they love driving it just because the power,
the responsiveness, the smoothness, they're like, they're like, I would take this any day over diesel.
Yeah. So, but part of that tradeoff is you might have to, you know, change your stopping and
charging routines. So, you know, I think that's possible to change that. I think it's doable,
but I think there's friction. Yeah. And again, that's going to be a decades long transformation.
That's not going to be next year. I'd say even in 10 years, I'd say this is going to be
10, 15, 20 years. And it's going to be highly, highly dependent on the infrastructure build out.
But I think the other difference with passenger cars versus heavy trucks, heavy trucks is heavily
influenced by the economics, the cost per mile, you know, the TCO total cost of operation.
If the trucking fleets, even with the higher upfront cost, if over the life of the truck,
they're going to save hundreds of thousands or millions potentially and fuel maintenance,
all that, they're like, we're going to do that. So anyway. Yeah, so.
I've lost track of where we are.
U.S. being an oil glutton. So. What? No. Well. Glutton's in America? No. Yeah, imagine that.
Never. So we are the biggest exporter. We are also the biggest consumer by far. And that difference
is like. I think something like. 20 million barrels per day.
I think we both export and consume about that amount. So basically.
I mean, in theory, we could be energy independent, but it's it's the margins are very
tight, even if we could and we can't because most of our export is light sweet. Most of our
refining capacity is heavy sour. So. You know, again, and there are a lot of,
there are a lot of reasons why having a completely closed energy market is not a great idea.
You know, it can have some unintended consequences. And I know, you know, maybe some of that's just,
you know, oil industry apologists just trying to line their pockets. But
there have been a lot of examples where when it's basically you've had a state
run oil company, it's basically for the politicians to line their pockets. It usually
results in under investment in the, you know, production and refining infrastructure.
It's used as a political weapon by the party in power to like subsidize, you know, oh, look, 30
30 cent a gallon gas and this and that. And but then, you know, that that gets all distorted.
And then you're running deficits and like, yeah. So, um, yeah, but I mean, so globally, the US,
which is, let's see, the population of earth is about 8 billion, right?
US is what, 330 or 350. So we're like four, I want to say about 4% of the world's population.
How, what percentage do you think the US uses of the world's oil?
A lot, roughly in metric.
Metric crap done.
Yeah, metric half done.
We use 20% of the global oil. So that's reasonable to me. Sure. Yeah,
why not? It's the American way. Yeah. And about half of that is gasoline. So
again, you know, if we could electrify a good portion of that, then, you know, these supply
disruptions would not be as crippling. I guess really that's that's the main point I'm getting
at with all of this is, yes, there would be, there would be some inconveniences,
there would be some disruptions. But if most of our transport was electrified,
like I said, there would be supply disruptions and like packaging, you know, certain medical supplies,
this and that, but it wouldn't be like, I don't know. And again, I'm not an economist,
I'm not an energy expert, but it just seems to me having some resiliency, having a little
more wiggle room to kind of kind of ride out these situations seems to me like a good idea.
So that's all I'm saying with this. So one of the houses that I drove by
out near Palmdale, if you know the area, pretty windy out there. And there is, as we were saying
before, like put solar panels up and create your own electricity. This dude had a huge windmill,
not like the industrial ones like that. Birds. Yeah. But he's got, it was like a significant
windmill. And that thing was spinning away. And I don't know how much power can be produced.
But man was that thing spinning. And I would, he had a pretty big property. And I was thinking like,
that dude is generating probably more than the electricity than he could ever use
for his property with this thing spinning. And it's a, it's a windy area. So he didn't have
any solar panels on the house. He just had wind. There's the idea of,
I guess, using less petrochemicals and an oil, whatever, to create your electricity.
There's different parts of the country that you can do different things.
And you can create electricity in different ways. And we can kind of capitalize on so much more
than we are now. Have you seen those little Wibbly-Wobbly windmills? You can search them on
YouTube there. I don't know how to, but they go like, they wobble back and forth in the wind.
I've seen the vertical ones that kind of go like this. But yeah, there are ones that twist around
as well. And there's ones that kind of wobble. There's the, in ocean-y areas where there's a
lot of waves. There's those pretty cool boats that, yeah, where it like takes an air gap underneath it.
And then the water like pressurizes the thing and it shoots the geyser out the top and in the
process spins a little turbine or something. Turbine or whatever it is and creates electricity.
And then they run a string across it. So many ways that we can generate electricity.
But then if your infrastructure, if your transportation was then electrified,
it all works together. And you're not as, like you said, you're not as reliant.
I think they're closing it down of that big, maybe it's closed down already, the like the steam
electricity that they're producing on the way to Vegas. It's like near state line
between LA and Vegas. Oh, the solar focusing. Yeah, Google and yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's
all these, they look like solar panels, but they're not, they're mirrors. And they aim
the sunlight to Sauron's eye and the middle of this in the tower. And it hits that and it
hyperheats. It's not, they're not boiling water. It's like, it's some sort of liquid,
but it basically spins a turbine and yeah, it's a closed system though. It like recycles the, yeah.
Yeah, it's so many ways. The long story short is I'm like, I'm not,
I think it's basically certainly not in our lifetimes, probably not in our kids' lifetimes.
We will never, the genie's kind of out of the bottle with oil. We will always have a certain
level of dependency on oil. The genie's out of the barrel. There you go. I don't think that's ever
changing, but I think to me, just burning it just doesn't seem very smart. That just seems
like a really critical vulnerability for a lot of countries' economies, for supply chains.
This latest conflict is just kind of proving how brittle and fragile the world's economy is.
With supply disruptions and oil and petrochemicals can have such a devastating
effect on the world economy. Whereas, if we could substitute some of that, like I said,
if we can electrify, it's like, well, it's not a matter of, can we take a trip? Can I get to
work or back? Is Brock going to be $10 a pound versus two or whatever it is?
It just seems like, to me, it's a good idea, too, if we could start to transition toward
electrification for transport. Again, I'm sure there are oil industry apologists that'll,
their answer to everything is drill, baby drill, or basically increasing our dependency on oil.
We had another episode not long ago, and by that is probably like two years, because
that's how my mind works now. Where we came to the conclusion that electrification, being
electrified, electrifying everything, I don't remember, but more electricity for stuff,
is more of, it should be more of a national security issue. We just don't seem to,
the country just doesn't seem to see it that way. Even here, we go in to whatever it is that we
were going in to do in Iran, whether it was a regime change or whether it was nuclear weapon
abatement. And it's resulted in the world being incredibly reliant, like showing our
weakness of being reliant on this. And even though we produce so much oil, we don't, according to
the president, we don't need the oil that's coming through the trade of her moves. We're in a world
economy. And even if we didn't need it, we're still bidding against other countries that do.
So it still drives up our prices. It still becomes an issue where we are reliant on countries that
we are attacking in order to, whether it's direct or indirect, this seems like clear cut
national security. Where are our EV government credits?
Yeah. Well, I mean, I can tell you this, and again, I don't know who's going to be
in the White House in January, 2029. But I think this has been a big wake up call for a lot of
people and policy and government. Like, we can't, we got to change.
They'll pump all the money to oil companies to build different refineries. That's what'll
happen. Well, I mean, electrifying is not in the conversation. They won't do it. They have already,
they have already, is lambasted the right word, electrification, that they have already
demonized electric vehicles. Okay, so I know we're kind of getting late in the program here, but
yeah, I'm just going to say this. Even if that's the case, I wish I had the faith and the energy
sector that they would build the right kind of refineries. If we were smart, we would build
more refineries that could process light, sweet, crude like we produce rather than being reliant
on Venezuela, being reliant on Canada or whoever to, you know, basically pump us the tar that
our current refineries are set up to process. But I mean, right now, we have to go in and topple
other countries to get their oil, like to get their crappy oil that nobody else wants. It's
astounding. Yeah, and all we need to do is offer some vehicle credits for some EVs and come up
with an infrastructure bill that already existed and just proceed with this plan and become
not you're never the conclusion of all of this is it would never going to be not reliant on some
oil. We're always going to be in that market for as long as any of us are alive build in some
resilience. Yeah, but if where if the tap goes, you know, yeah, if 75% of you can shift over,
if you can move 75% of everything to something that you can produce yourself, that's not
destroying the environment in the process seems like a win. Yeah. What also seems like a win
is the walk car.com slash store store. Say it with a question. Unfortunately,
not the cool dinosaur DeLorean shirt I'm wearing. But yes, if you're at youtube.com slash at the
walk car, you would see what Ed is wearing and he's wearing a cool dinosaur DeLorean shirt,
which you cannot buy at the walk car.com slash store, but you can buy the hat that he's wearing.
You can't buy the shirt I'm wearing because this came from a thrift store.
Oh, very trendy. Yeah, I do recommend thrift stores.
I'm sure more people are shopping there.
It saves you a lot of money right now that you can spend on gas if you don't already have an EV.
You could like as a social media, I don't really care if you do or on social media,
I don't care. Where we get our traffic is if you post us on your social media,
it's word of mouth. It's always worked, always will be.
Love us or hate us, tell a friend. Yeah, tell us a tell a friend.
Links to everything in the show notes, which there won't be any links in the show notes this
week because the show notes are basically go to whatever you get your news and you will
undoubtedly find something on the world and the straight up her moves and war and stuff like that.
And back to our usual programming next week, maybe next week, we're back. I mean, we're here now.
We didn't leave. We're still here. We're still here. Yeah, we're done though. Talk to you later.
See you.
About this episode
A wide-ranging rant ties global oil fragility to EV adoption, starting with Australia’s refinery shutdowns and how Strait of Hormuz tensions expose supply-chain brittleness. The hosts compare California’s import-heavy fuel situation and wild gas price swings, then contrast steadier EV charging pricing. They debate China’s EV rise—taking US-pioneered tech and outlasting quarterly pressure—while arguing EVs are a strategic, not purely political, response. The discussion also covers EV resale hesitancy, electrifying road transport first, and where hydrogen might fit (aviation/ocean freight), plus the long road to megawatt charging for electric semis.
Original notes
World news has us deviating from the norm this week, as we dive into how China became the world EV leader, under what circumstances the war in Iran could lead to increased EV adoption, why the price of diesel could affect the purchase price of your next electric vehicle, and why the world could never be “oil free.”
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SHOW NOTES
No show notes this week!
This week’s hosts: Phil Royle and Edward A. Sanchez
Episode art courtesy Polestar
Music courtesy Twisterium at Pixabay
Website: https://www.thewattcar.com
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