What Do Electric Military Vehicles and Carbon Offsets for Ballistic Missiles Have in Common?
Hypocrisy. However, electrifying the military does highlight the key counterargument to electro-mobility – electric vehicles can go only where there is charging infrastructure
US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently reiterated the US Government’s full support for the military’s transition to electric vehicles by 2030. The threat of climate change is severe, severe enough that everyone must do their part, including, perhaps counterintuitively, the branches of Government tasked with destruction... I mean defense. This counterintuitive idea does highlight in an eloquent manner the key counterargument to electro-mobility – electric vehicles can go only where there is charging infrastructure - all while encompassing the increasingly hypocritical nature of this ‘transition’.
During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm stated in response to the question “Do you support the US military adopting EV fleet by 2030?”
Jennifer Granholm: I do, and I think we can also get there as well. And I do think that reducing our reliance on globally traded fossil fuels, when we know that global events such as Ukraine can jack up prices for people back home, it does not contribute to energy security. Energy security is achieved when we have home grown clean energy is abundant, like in Iowa, and we can be a leader globally in how we become energy independent. (see Igor Chudov’s substack on this)
The Challenge of Electrifying Military Vehicles
Since this statement, Rep. John Garamendi made clarifying comments around the fact that only non-combat vehicles are under the transition scope in the first instance. The News Nation anchor insisted repeatedly on how this transition may affect the battle readiness of the military, a question which was repeatedly slipped. However, the US military has actually been investigating electrifying its non-combat and combat vehicles for some time. This YouTube video from the Military Times provides some details on the military’s electrification ‘journey’. Some of the problems with electric vehicles highlighted by the videos were that:
The battery required for the M1A main battle tank would be bigger than the tank itself and add more than 8 tonnes to the tank’s weight, making it too heavy to be transported onboard some of the military’s airplanes.
There were still some “significant challenges” around charging. Military contractors floated around ideas such as airdropping batteries or mobile charging stations.
Let’s just pause for a second and reflect on these ideas, especially around charging. The military plans to decarbonize its operations by airlifting batteries. No more dirty trucks fueled by diesel, logistics would take place using helicopters or airplanes. Powered or fueled by what? Oh, fossil fuels! Mobile charging stations are an interesting concept, though they face similar issues with regular electric vehicles – charging times. Charging a tank for 24 hours makes it a sitting duck. Most importantly, where on earth is all that electricity going to come from in the battlefield given that one of the first targets in any conventional war is often the energy infrastructure.
Charging Infrastructure, the Ball and Chain of Electro-Mobility
Range anxiety was typically the key argument against electric vehicles. Electrifying the military highlights the crux of electro-mobility: electric vehicles can only go where there is charging infrastructure. The assumption was that vehicles in general are always driven in urban or semi-urban areas. Even if charging infrastructure wouldn’t exist yet in these areas, there was a reasonable expectation that, over time, it would be constructed. This assumption was based on the premise that electricity infrastructure was available, which, of course, it is in most urban areas.
The US military idea to electrify vehicles (whether non-combat or combat) reveals the real issue: electric vehicles can go only where there’s infrastructure to charge them. Unlike fuels, which can be much more easily transported, transporting electricity has its challenges. In a very real sense charging infrastructure becomes the ball-and-chain of electro-mobility.
Mobility can be (indirectly) controlled through charging infrastructure availability. Areas which do not have charging infrastructure become inaccessible to electric vehicle users. If one draws a radius of half of one’s electric vehicle range around all chargers in an area, one discovers quite quickly how much of an area is inaccessible.
What does this mean for supply chains? In short, congestion. By making areas inaccessible for vehicles through charging infrastructure unavailability, traffic is virtually forced through a distinct set of routes and regions with accessibility to chargers. Much like highways absorb a substantial amount of traffic because alternative routes are typically slower, areas with electric vehicle charging infrastructure will likely become magnets for traffic (luckily, electric vehicles release no tailpipe emissions).
Hypocrisy
As entertaining as the electric military thought experiment may be, the hypocrisy of the proposition is beyond belief. The US military emitted 59 million tonnes of CO2-e in 2018 (that’s NOT accounting for the emissions of the stuff that has been blown up) in order to accomplish its main function – blowing things up. Now the same military is planning to reduce its emissions footprint through electrification in order to save the planet while continuing with its main function – BLOWING THINGS UP.
Have a look for example at how blowing up a fuel tank looks like, in this video taken recently following a Ukrainian strike on a Russian fuel depot. Fuel infrastructure is a prime target in any war but none of these emissions generated through this are accounted for.
What’s next, certified carbon-neutral napalm or maybe carbon offsets for ballistic missiles?
In Other News
The Return of the Knob
Despite the fact that this headline may be interpreted as a slogan in the upcoming American elections, the meaning is quite literal. Car manufacturers seem to be taking a 180 degree turn with respect to touchscreens in their vehicles. VW group, among others, have increasingly begun designing dashboards with physical buttons rather than touchscreens. We’ve written previously about the safety issues surrounding the use of touchscreens in cars, however, these issues have, so far, fallen on deaf ears. It seems that, finally, enough consumers have started complaining about the touchscreens that car manufacturers have started doing something about this issue.
One argument I heard often was that manufacturers change their products to respond to their customers’ desires. If cars increasingly had touchscreens, it’s because the customers demanded it. First, I’ve yet to be asked what I think about any feature of any vehicle I have ever driven by a car manufacturer representative. If there’s some group for this, it’s probably like the Bilderberg’s, ultra secret and exclusive. Second, it is increasingly obvious that car manufacturers’ decisions are primarily driven by internal considerations (e.g., manufacturing costs or ease, potential for monetization) rather than external considerations (e.g., consumer demand, ease of use, impact on road safety). The same article talks about the extent to which car manufacturers blatantly ignored the US NHTSA guidelines for dashboard design and interaction. Seems that consumers wanted physical controls after all!