George Jetson Would Be Disappointed with Autonomous Vehicles || Peter Zeihan

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George Jetson Would Be Disappointed with Autonomous Vehicles || Peter Zeihan

Key Points

Electric vehicles don't make economic sense for average consumers without substantial subsidies, which are going to zero under the Trump administration
Without subsidies to support mass adoption, the necessary charging infrastructure will never be built
About half the U.S. population doesn't have a garage to charge an electric vehicle
80% of global lithium processing happens in China, creating a supply chain vulnerability
The Trump administration is removing grants and subsidies that were established to build domestic battery processing infrastructure
Tesla holds most of the necessary EV engineering expertise in the U.S. but hasn't released a new model in 3 years
Elon Musk's corporate empire is at risk of dissolving over the next couple of years
Over 75% of U.S. EV owners have them as their third or fourth car, not their primary vehicle
The full lifecycle carbon footprint of manufacturing EVs makes them questionable as an environmental choice
An automated electric vehicle requires about $2,000 worth of chips, half of which are high-end and difficult to obtain
In a deglobalizing world, the capacity to produce high-end chips will likely go to zero
True autopilot requires significant local processing power that can't depend on weather or network uplinks
The future of the technology is likely in truck convoying rather than personal vehicles
Truck convoying would involve one lead vehicle with human operators followed by multiple automated trucks
Convoying technology doesn't require electric vehicles and needs lower quality chips than full autopilot
Legal liability issues remain unresolved - it's unclear who's at fault in accidents (driver, software developer, manufacturer, sensor designer)
Congress needs to codify liability rules before automated vehicles can gain significant market penetration
Electric vehicles work best in specific locations with concentrated infrastructure like Oslo, Norway, not broadly across the U.S.

Full Transcript

Language: en
Hey all, Peter here coming to you from
Oregon and today we're taking a question
from the Patreon crowd specifically what
I think the future of electric and
automated vehicles are specifically
self-piloting sort of stuff. Uh
it doesn't look great. Uh a couple
problems here. First of all, there are
very few electric models that make sense
to your average consumer without a huge
amount of subsidies. And under the Trump
administration, those subsidies are
basically going to zero. And if you
don't have the infrastructure in place
to support charging and if you don't
have the subsidies to support mass
adoption, you're never going to build
the infrastructure that you need to
support support charging. So outside of
some very specific places where there
just has a the right concentration of
infrastructure and support places like
say Oslo and Norway uh this really
doesn't have much of a future in the
rest of the world. Most notably in the
United States where the distances are
large and about half the population
doesn't have a grudge to charge. Uh
that's problem one. Problem two is
manufacturing. Right now, the vast
majority, something like 80% of global
lithium is processed and turned into
lithium metal in China. And that is an
infrastructure we're going to lose. So
if these are technologies you really
want, you have to build the processing
locally. And the Trump administration is
actually moving in the opposite
direction and removing some of the
grants and the subsidies that the B
administration established to build up
this sort of infrastructure. Uh so
that's problem two. Uh problem three is
legacy infrastructure. Uh it's not just
that the United States loves their cars.
But in the United States, the sort of
engineering that is necessary to do this
thing is really held within one company
and that one company is Tesla. Tesla is
arguably the most well until recently
the most subsidized company in modern
American history and those subsidies are
also going to zero. Uh the bigger risk
here is that Elon Musk's entire
corporate empire is going to dissolve
over the next couple of years. Uh and I
just don't see Tesla, which hasn't
issued a new model in 3 years, being
really part of the American automotive
future. As for other companies, you
know, Ford, Chrysler, and the rest,
they've all tried to get into EVs, uh
running them alongside their other
vehicles, uh but they have proven to be
not as popular because again, that
infrastructure doesn't exist. Uh, and
that means you have a huge upfront cost
for people who want to do it. And so it
with the last data we have, which is
about a year ago, over 3/4 of the people
who owned an electric vehicle in the
United States, it wasn't their first
car, their second car. It was their
third or their fourth car. It was a
showpiece. It was a talking point. It
was allowing them to beat their chest
and say they were environmentalists.
Although I would argue uh that if you
look at the full cycle for producing an
EV, uh the amount of carbon and energy
it takes to build it in the first place,
it's actually not a very smart
environmental choice. And then fourth,
and finally, and the one that's going to
become just crushingly important in the
not too distant future, are the chips.
An electric vehicle that is capable of
automated piloting requires about $2,000
of chips. About half of those are
relatively cheap and easy to obtain. The
other half are the high-end ones. And in
the world that we're moving into that is
deglobalizing, the capacity of the world
to make the high-end chips is going to
go to probably zero. Which means
anything that is more advanced than say
the iPhone 12 roughly uh is something
that we're simply not going to be able
to produce in sufficient volume. Uh if
you're going to do true autopilot, you
need a significant amount of processing
power on your vehicle that is not
dependent upon the weather, that is not
dependent on an uplink. It has to be
done locally. Otherwise, you're driving
yourself. So, what that means is at the
end of the day, your individual person
vehicles are not probably going to be
autopiloted uh or even electric uh for
much longer. That doesn't mean the
technology is going to die. It just
means it needs to find a niche where
it's more appropriate. And what we're
probably going to be seeing is convoying
for trucks. Basically, your first
vehicle has a driver, software engineer,
mechanic kind of person, maybe two or
three people in it. And then a line of
2, three, four, five, six, seven trucks
follows that first vehicle nose to tail.
The technology that is required for that
does not require electric vehicles and
it requires a much lower quality of chip
to make happen. And that is something we
can do with today's technology. The
reason that hasn't happened yet has to
do with legal issues. Until Congress
codifies where fault lies when something
goes wrong, it's difficult for auto
manufacturers to really get into the
business of making automated vehicles
function. So the question is, you know,
who's at fault when there's an accident?
The driver, the person who did the last
software patch, the manufacturer, the
person who designed the sensor. Until
that is sorted out, it's going to be
very difficult for AVs as opposed to EVs
to get too deep a clause into the
American transport system because if we
don't know who we're supposed to sue
when something goes wrong, uh then the
liability gets spread out everywhere and
it becomes a real mess that nobody wants
to touch. Anyway, that's my two cents.

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