Peter Zeihan made a series of mostly unsupported and false claims about electric vehicles while being interviewed on the Joe Rogan show.
James Stephenson goes through all of the over forty aspects of what Peter Zeihan said.
Here is the video and I have below screen shots of the thorough take down of each unsupported or false claims.
High-Level Summary – ICE Combustion Engine Cars Are Dying But Spend $7 Billion/year on Advertising and More on Consulting
ICE car makers like Toyota, GM and Honda spend a total of about $7 billion per year on advertising. They and the oil industry have conferences and can invite Zeihan to come and give them a pep talk. The legacy car industry Titanic will take a few more years for the decline to get really bad but it is already bad. Honda lost over 30% of sales in the US in one year.
Central EV Claim by Peter Zeihan on the Joe Rogan Show: Zeihan claims that the electric car revolution will start to fail or mostly fail around 2030 and “disappear” in the 2030s.
This serves a few purposes. This shows that he is on the side of big auto and big oil. He is saying invite and pay me to speak and I can give you happy talk that EVs won’t crush you. Zeihan gets invited to oil conferences all the time. It also says any TV or other program, please invite Zeihan to give the anti-EV side. The anti-EV claims can be all lies or made up but those are irrelevant if he can say them in a cute way in a few minutes.
Zeihan and Friedman Have Decades of Grift. Anti-Japan Grift in the 1990s. Anti-China Grift from 2000 Etc…
Peter Zeihan and is mentor George Friedman have a history of making high-profile claims that end up being wrong. There is book sales, public speaking and consulting that they get for being on one side of the argument on important issues or trends.
This is a little business like being one of the anti-Japan guy or one of the anti-China guys or pro-oil guy.
He launched his own firm, Zeihan on Geopolitics, in 2012 in order to specialize in customized executive briefings for his clients. Prior to going independent, Zeihan worked for twelve years with the geopolitical analysis firm Stratfor.
Overall, China passenger-car retail sales climbed 1.9% from 2021 to 20.5 million, but that’s not the full story.
Battery electric vehicle sales increased roughly 50%, while internal combustion vehicle sales decreased nearly 6% year over year. pic.twitter.com/fx6qsa0J04
— Sam Korus (@skorusARK) January 10, 2023
US new vehicle market share change since 2020: pic.twitter.com/7VK20Gtjmf
— Sam Korus (@skorusARK) January 4, 2023
Tesla Model Y is the best-selling car by revenue in 2022. It outsold Ford F150 and the Toyota Corolla for dollars sold. There were 796,583 Model Y sold globally in 2022.
The Camry was down alomst 6% in the US and again the Corolla did not make the top ten in the US.
The Tesla Model Y will be the best selling car in units in 2023. Over 1.1 million will be sold in 2023.
I will have that actual number for you in about a month
But if we estimate 7.6 million BEVs sold in 2022 and compare that with 77.6 million vehicles total sold in 2021 we would get 9.8%
– or very close to 1 in 10 of all vehicle sales are BEVs pic.twitter.com/X5pFQyWuPx
— JPR007 (@jpr007) January 2, 2023
Zeihan EV Claims are Fundamentally Wrong and Stupid and Disconnected from Actual Business Reality
Zeihan said many wrong things, so that going through them is a too long did not read situation.
The three main ones are Electric cars are no cleaner than gas cars and we will run out of materials for EVs and it is not worth putting those materials into EVs because it is better to put them into other more green things.
The first one is a pure lie. He says it takes 1-2 years to make back the carbon to build the EV and that energy for EV is all coming from coal. Coal is 60% of energy in China and dropping and some of the main factories for batteries and EV use a lot of solar and batteries.
There will be challenges around 2030 to keep growing beyond 6 terawatt hours per year of lithium batteries. This is ten times more than in 2022. However, sodium ion batteries are scaling this year and they use no lithium. All other materials can be more easily substituted or used far more efficiently. It is also not a matter of some dictator deciding if EVs get copper or some other product. If demand is more than supply then prices go up and whoever is willing to pay gets the material. A maker $30,000 or $50,000 EV that needs $1000 worth of copper instead of $400 can afford to pay an extra $600 and the same for inflation onother materials. if the profit per car is 20% that is $6000-10000 per car. What other products might get cut back if they are less profitable?
There is also no global dictator saying that we only put materials into things based upon how efficiently green they are. Otherwise, hundreds of billions money would go into growing a 2 trillion trees to take out a trillion tons of CO2 and offset ta hundred years of emissions. The investment goes to who is willing to pay and those willing to pay more make more profit.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
