I’ve been driving an EV for over 8 years now — first a Chevy Bolt, and now an E-Blazer. I love the cars. One of the benefits I hadn’t originally anticipated was no regular service except rotating tires, which my local Les Schwab does for free. I will never go back to gas. And, here in the great Pacific Northwest, our electricity is very clean. I see more and more EV’s here seemingly every day.
I'm halfway through the podcast and loving your focus on propaganda and mis/disinformation.
Two things jumped out at me, as a guy who tries to communicate #s w/o baffling anyone who might listen to me. I find "1 out of 1000" and "1 out of 100,000" are more understandable than 0.1% and 0.001%.
And even saying "yes there is 6x as many minerals, excluding iron and aluminum," why not then include those and it becomes just 25% more or so; I guess if we look at those having more recycled content, maybe 50% more raw materials.
I’ve been advocating for EVs since I got my first one in 2002 and offer this: People continue to believe EV myths because the oil and gas industry has spent billions and billions spreading disinformation about EVs for decades. Spent on PR, on advertising, on front groups with cheery, all-American names, on journalist lunches, on fake scientists/merchants of doubt, and on influencing policy, policy, policy and on climate deniers like the one running our country.
I do believe suspicion of elites and political ideology bias is powerful, but let’s look at the dollars. Oh yeah, electro magnetic fields….I bet Big Oil loved that one. They feed and fund that stuff! With Plug In America, we wrote the first "definitive guide" to EVs, debunking myths, in 2009. But we’ve been obscenely outspent and continue to be.
Trump has actually done us a huge favor—never been this kind of interest in EVs, especially during an oil shock. We're looking at huge opportunity here. And right: Drive less—that’s always the first move. Use transit. Coast to red lights and use less gas. But if you have to drive, skip the tail pipe and skip the pump. Every time we pump, we pay Big Oil, its PR teams and lobbyists to stay in business.
So...I do marketing research/focus groups, and in the last round of research on the subject that I did on this topic, I had multiple younger women tell me that the radiation given off by EV batteries would harm their fertility and that's why they hadn't gone, and wouldn't go, electric. I think it would be well worth examining this piece of disinformation specifically to get at how this one spread, because it is out there.
The whole EMF/EMR (some like to call it "Radiation") thing is wild. Lots of seeming "pseudoscience" out there, and there are many "smart people" who've "done the research" and are hard for normies to argue with. It's a subset of or adjacent to MAHA concerns that have some basis in fact (increasing "chronic disease") but seem to have created their own misdiagnoses.
Back to the specific EMF in EVs concern, I once hung around with a full-bore EMF dude. In some group suing towns for allowing smart meters, sleeping on a steel mesh mattress, turning off the whole house breaker at night... He had this Ghostbusters style kit and took it on a Tesla drive and said the EMFs were zilch nada. I've also heard they may be high inside the cars during charging. Maybe some, not others.
Don't ever change Emily. I love your "eye- rolley" and aggressive style. I understand why it may turn off some people, but I find it refreshing. I'm in a climate group that is fairly conservative, so we can't always show our true feelings about deniers and the current administration. So I tune into you and Bill McKibben to get my "YES!" fix.
As an EV activist since installing solar and buying my first EV in 2002, I've encountered hundreds of people over the past 20+ years who have proffered various "merchants of doubt" lies about EVs. I always push back with the facts as I know them, sometimes with success, but often without. In the early days, virtually no one had personal experience with EVs, so my information had to go head-to-head against lies generated by oil and auto industries with very deep pockets and the ability to spread their lies globally. Today, tens of millions of people drive EVs and can, and do, back me up with personal knowledge.
One massive cost of ICE vehicles not discussed is the military cost. We've never fought a war over electricity and we never will. We fought two wars in Iraq over oil spending several trillion dollars and killing over 100,000 civilians. In addition to that, a 2009 RAND study found that taxpayers spend some $80 billion every year in non-war-related military protection of oil. A lot of that is for the Fifth Fleet in the Middle East. Before 9/11, American wars were paid for by raising taxes and selling war bonds. After 9/11, for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, president Bush and congress didn't want to raise taxes, so they put the trillions of dollars we spent fighting these wars on the US debt which is now over $39 trillion. Since we pay interest on that debt, this means taxpayers are spending tens of billions more - every year - for those long-ago wars. This ongoing tax on us is a massive cost that is not part of any scenario involving electric cars. Seems fair to tax gasoline for some of that cost.
Side comment - please don’t use AI or Chat GPT for work that people can be trained to do. Dont we all see where this AI thing is going? I refuse to use it, and I want the right to ban it from my phone and apps and all interactions on my phone.
Late to this discussion as I only discovered this newsletter/substack as a result of the video for this podcast interview. It popped up on my Youtube recommended feed a few weeks ago as I watch a lot of EV related content so I subscribed and today I signed up for the paid version, and boy howdy I have a lot of catching up to do. For once the algorithm did something good.
My wife and I went all electric (and bought rooftop solar) in 2018 as a direct result of hurricane impacts and aftermath and wanting to be part of the solution. Since then I have become an EV enthusiast and attended dozens of educational 'drive electric' with one or more of our EV's. Unknowingly, I have applied Dr. Bretter's suggestions but I feel like I can do better. Very few of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances (who know that I drive electric) have switched. At least a few have.
The misinformation is real and I wonder if part of the reason it works so well is it allows people (including many left more friends than I) to feel justified in continuing to do what they always have done and what most everyone else does (I heard that said by another behavioral scientist).
My cousin drives an electric car in Philadelphia, and her chief complaint has been about a lack of infrastructure for EVs. Even when there are charging stations, sometimes regular cars will park in front of them! Unfortunately, I think that problem will only get solved if either a lot more charging stations become available or people get fined for putting regular cars in front of them. It's a bit of a self-perpetuating problem: lack of EVs means lack of infrastructure for EVs, which makes getting an EV less appealing.
The one thing I noticed no one is talking about, and that is that Trump's government is likely doing all it can to dissuade people from buying EV's, or at least buy a Tesla. Trump's companies are getting kickbacks from Musk for pushing exclusiveness in the American and, to a lessor degree, Canada. that campaign is failing, as we've seen but it's still not doing anything to promote EV's nor lower the price tags. Until the market opens up to lower priced EV's and Trump is no longer taking some off the top from Musk and the fossil fuel corporations, EV's will remain a high priced toy for the elites who can afford them (that's the propaganda), and the misinformation will continue online. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is moving on without the U.S. car markets. Slowly, but EV's are making a big mark everywhere but the U.S.
The closest I could get with my small budget, was a Ford hybrid pickup truck.
"EV's will remain a high priced toy for the elites who can afford them"
You could buy a used Nissan Leaf in 2016 for $5,000. Today, you can buy a used Model 3 for $20,000 that's better than any new gas car costing $40,000.
Those who perpetuate this false notion are doing the bidding of oil companies. Every time you see it, cut and paste my previous paragraph in your reply. Always push back, because they are always lying. Challenge anyone to find a $40,000 gas car that's as good as a $20,000 Model 3. They can't do it.
Very interesting point about propensity to distrust elites. I think there should be more to it: how does one spot a (baseless) conspiracy? I.e., critical thinking. We very much *do* have conspiracies, such as among Jeffrey Epstein's colleagues, entities in the fossil fuel industry, ALEC, etc.. I wouldn't advise someone to trust or to not trust elites, but rather to assess what entities are involved, what their motives could be, whether what they're saying coheres with other information (including scientific findings), whether they're changing their story over time, etc.. I don't trust elites either. I just don't understand why people will believe in a conspiracy that vaccines have microchips while they won't believe that fossil fuel companies are working to keep us addicted to their product. One of those makes more sense than the other.
My theory is that such people positively *want* to invest in these theories. I heard a lot of obvious BS while growing up in Alabama, and I know from experience that the people spewing such stuff are not generally stupid. Rather, they choose it. There's such a thing as being *willfully* ignorant.
The ICE vs. EV fire discussion reminded me of a vignette from a recent "EVs in China" article; I forget where, but with the whole, "Wow we are sooooo far behind" vibe. A C-store had replaced some gas pumps with chargers. They had to build a brick wall between the two areas to avoid mixing petrol fumes and sparks. It wasn't clear if the sparks were from the charging connections, or the EV-driving cabbies who like to hang out and smoke and jaw with each other while they waited 15 minutes for their cars to recharge.
I’ve been driving an EV for over 8 years now — first a Chevy Bolt, and now an E-Blazer. I love the cars. One of the benefits I hadn’t originally anticipated was no regular service except rotating tires, which my local Les Schwab does for free. I will never go back to gas. And, here in the great Pacific Northwest, our electricity is very clean. I see more and more EV’s here seemingly every day.
I'm halfway through the podcast and loving your focus on propaganda and mis/disinformation.
Two things jumped out at me, as a guy who tries to communicate #s w/o baffling anyone who might listen to me. I find "1 out of 1000" and "1 out of 100,000" are more understandable than 0.1% and 0.001%.
And even saying "yes there is 6x as many minerals, excluding iron and aluminum," why not then include those and it becomes just 25% more or so; I guess if we look at those having more recycled content, maybe 50% more raw materials.
Anyway, good job.
Great point, thank you!
I’ve been advocating for EVs since I got my first one in 2002 and offer this: People continue to believe EV myths because the oil and gas industry has spent billions and billions spreading disinformation about EVs for decades. Spent on PR, on advertising, on front groups with cheery, all-American names, on journalist lunches, on fake scientists/merchants of doubt, and on influencing policy, policy, policy and on climate deniers like the one running our country.
I do believe suspicion of elites and political ideology bias is powerful, but let’s look at the dollars. Oh yeah, electro magnetic fields….I bet Big Oil loved that one. They feed and fund that stuff! With Plug In America, we wrote the first "definitive guide" to EVs, debunking myths, in 2009. But we’ve been obscenely outspent and continue to be.
Trump has actually done us a huge favor—never been this kind of interest in EVs, especially during an oil shock. We're looking at huge opportunity here. And right: Drive less—that’s always the first move. Use transit. Coast to red lights and use less gas. But if you have to drive, skip the tail pipe and skip the pump. Every time we pump, we pay Big Oil, its PR teams and lobbyists to stay in business.
100 percent correct.
So...I do marketing research/focus groups, and in the last round of research on the subject that I did on this topic, I had multiple younger women tell me that the radiation given off by EV batteries would harm their fertility and that's why they hadn't gone, and wouldn't go, electric. I think it would be well worth examining this piece of disinformation specifically to get at how this one spread, because it is out there.
Wow! Thanks so much for sharing this. It's wild what is out there, specifically around fertility/reproductive health and misinformation.
Whoa...
The whole EMF/EMR (some like to call it "Radiation") thing is wild. Lots of seeming "pseudoscience" out there, and there are many "smart people" who've "done the research" and are hard for normies to argue with. It's a subset of or adjacent to MAHA concerns that have some basis in fact (increasing "chronic disease") but seem to have created their own misdiagnoses.
Back to the specific EMF in EVs concern, I once hung around with a full-bore EMF dude. In some group suing towns for allowing smart meters, sleeping on a steel mesh mattress, turning off the whole house breaker at night... He had this Ghostbusters style kit and took it on a Tesla drive and said the EMFs were zilch nada. I've also heard they may be high inside the cars during charging. Maybe some, not others.
Don't ever change Emily. I love your "eye- rolley" and aggressive style. I understand why it may turn off some people, but I find it refreshing. I'm in a climate group that is fairly conservative, so we can't always show our true feelings about deniers and the current administration. So I tune into you and Bill McKibben to get my "YES!" fix.
I appreciate that!!
As an EV activist since installing solar and buying my first EV in 2002, I've encountered hundreds of people over the past 20+ years who have proffered various "merchants of doubt" lies about EVs. I always push back with the facts as I know them, sometimes with success, but often without. In the early days, virtually no one had personal experience with EVs, so my information had to go head-to-head against lies generated by oil and auto industries with very deep pockets and the ability to spread their lies globally. Today, tens of millions of people drive EVs and can, and do, back me up with personal knowledge.
One massive cost of ICE vehicles not discussed is the military cost. We've never fought a war over electricity and we never will. We fought two wars in Iraq over oil spending several trillion dollars and killing over 100,000 civilians. In addition to that, a 2009 RAND study found that taxpayers spend some $80 billion every year in non-war-related military protection of oil. A lot of that is for the Fifth Fleet in the Middle East. Before 9/11, American wars were paid for by raising taxes and selling war bonds. After 9/11, for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, president Bush and congress didn't want to raise taxes, so they put the trillions of dollars we spent fighting these wars on the US debt which is now over $39 trillion. Since we pay interest on that debt, this means taxpayers are spending tens of billions more - every year - for those long-ago wars. This ongoing tax on us is a massive cost that is not part of any scenario involving electric cars. Seems fair to tax gasoline for some of that cost.
Side comment - please don’t use AI or Chat GPT for work that people can be trained to do. Dont we all see where this AI thing is going? I refuse to use it, and I want the right to ban it from my phone and apps and all interactions on my phone.
I have also been driving EVs since 2017. Had a plugin before that in 2015. The low maintenance is fantastic!
Late to this discussion as I only discovered this newsletter/substack as a result of the video for this podcast interview. It popped up on my Youtube recommended feed a few weeks ago as I watch a lot of EV related content so I subscribed and today I signed up for the paid version, and boy howdy I have a lot of catching up to do. For once the algorithm did something good.
My wife and I went all electric (and bought rooftop solar) in 2018 as a direct result of hurricane impacts and aftermath and wanting to be part of the solution. Since then I have become an EV enthusiast and attended dozens of educational 'drive electric' with one or more of our EV's. Unknowingly, I have applied Dr. Bretter's suggestions but I feel like I can do better. Very few of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances (who know that I drive electric) have switched. At least a few have.
The misinformation is real and I wonder if part of the reason it works so well is it allows people (including many left more friends than I) to feel justified in continuing to do what they always have done and what most everyone else does (I heard that said by another behavioral scientist).
Thanks for the great work and interview!
Can't thank you enough for reaching out and sharing this, Andy. Glad you've subscribed and are part of the Heated community.
My cousin drives an electric car in Philadelphia, and her chief complaint has been about a lack of infrastructure for EVs. Even when there are charging stations, sometimes regular cars will park in front of them! Unfortunately, I think that problem will only get solved if either a lot more charging stations become available or people get fined for putting regular cars in front of them. It's a bit of a self-perpetuating problem: lack of EVs means lack of infrastructure for EVs, which makes getting an EV less appealing.
The one thing I noticed no one is talking about, and that is that Trump's government is likely doing all it can to dissuade people from buying EV's, or at least buy a Tesla. Trump's companies are getting kickbacks from Musk for pushing exclusiveness in the American and, to a lessor degree, Canada. that campaign is failing, as we've seen but it's still not doing anything to promote EV's nor lower the price tags. Until the market opens up to lower priced EV's and Trump is no longer taking some off the top from Musk and the fossil fuel corporations, EV's will remain a high priced toy for the elites who can afford them (that's the propaganda), and the misinformation will continue online. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is moving on without the U.S. car markets. Slowly, but EV's are making a big mark everywhere but the U.S.
The closest I could get with my small budget, was a Ford hybrid pickup truck.
"EV's will remain a high priced toy for the elites who can afford them"
You could buy a used Nissan Leaf in 2016 for $5,000. Today, you can buy a used Model 3 for $20,000 that's better than any new gas car costing $40,000.
Those who perpetuate this false notion are doing the bidding of oil companies. Every time you see it, cut and paste my previous paragraph in your reply. Always push back, because they are always lying. Challenge anyone to find a $40,000 gas car that's as good as a $20,000 Model 3. They can't do it.
The used car market is actually flooded with EVs now. There are more EVs available at lower-prices; good piece from Fast Company about this: https://www.fastcompany.com/91512892/cheap-evs-are-about-to-flood-the-used-car-market-will-more-buyers-make-the-switch-from-gas
Very interesting point about propensity to distrust elites. I think there should be more to it: how does one spot a (baseless) conspiracy? I.e., critical thinking. We very much *do* have conspiracies, such as among Jeffrey Epstein's colleagues, entities in the fossil fuel industry, ALEC, etc.. I wouldn't advise someone to trust or to not trust elites, but rather to assess what entities are involved, what their motives could be, whether what they're saying coheres with other information (including scientific findings), whether they're changing their story over time, etc.. I don't trust elites either. I just don't understand why people will believe in a conspiracy that vaccines have microchips while they won't believe that fossil fuel companies are working to keep us addicted to their product. One of those makes more sense than the other.
My theory is that such people positively *want* to invest in these theories. I heard a lot of obvious BS while growing up in Alabama, and I know from experience that the people spewing such stuff are not generally stupid. Rather, they choose it. There's such a thing as being *willfully* ignorant.
The ICE vs. EV fire discussion reminded me of a vignette from a recent "EVs in China" article; I forget where, but with the whole, "Wow we are sooooo far behind" vibe. A C-store had replaced some gas pumps with chargers. They had to build a brick wall between the two areas to avoid mixing petrol fumes and sparks. It wasn't clear if the sparks were from the charging connections, or the EV-driving cabbies who like to hang out and smoke and jaw with each other while they waited 15 minutes for their cars to recharge.