140. Oil's Last Lavish Party: The 2022 World Cup in Qatar

Two hundred billion dollars of oil and gas money to through The World Cup in Qatar. Turns out Qatar is 'new money' and yet has a huge sovereign fund of $300B. Even they know the transition is coming. The governor of Tokyo suggests turtleneck sweaters for saving on energy. Will the trend take off? Donate to The Clean Energy Show via PayPal! COP27 was a big, fat compromise and we need to do better but it does seem the world is slowly coming together to oppose fossil fuels. The sexy new Prius is fast and sporty. Too bad it isn't an electric vehicle. We predict continued bad sales for Toyota. Biden pours billions into aiding the U.S. power grid to transition to renewable energy. Canada begins a program to replace oil furnaces on the East coast with heat pumps.

Other topics: GoComics, Carlos Ghosn, Unilever to make precision fermented ice cream could be the blow to dairy we've been predicting, Mazda might be the only Japanese auto company to get serious about EVs and Volkswagen may be dropping the ball. A listener bought his first EV and is worried his reduced winter range won't come back. Don't worry, it will!

Thanks for listening to our show! Consider rating The Clean Energy Show on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you listen to our show. Follow us on TikTok! @cleanenergypod

Transcript------------

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Hello, and welcome to episode 140 of the Clean Energy Show.

I'm Brian Stockton.

I'm James Whittingham.

This week, with the World Cup underway in Qatar, we look at what might be the peak of petrol state decadence.

I mean, what does $200 billion even get? Dennis a soccer tournament without beer.

Hell, even my kids pee wee soccer tournaments had beer.

The governor of Tokyo has solved the energy crisis.

The solution? Turtleneck sweaters.

Speaking as a Canadian, wait until they hear about Tukes and woolly socks.

Well, the Cop 27 climate summit was a bit of a wash.

You know, like standing in the middle of Miami.

Domino's Pizza is moving to Chevy Bolt electric delivery vehicles.

They've ordered 800 bolts from GM, and if they don't receive the cars in 30 minutes, they're free.

All that and more of this edition of the Clean Energy Show.

Holy brian we're back with another show, another week.

We're nonstop robotic machines here.

Yeah, a lot is going on.

And also this week, will I fit into the surprisingly sexy new Prius? The answer will sadden you, I think.

Biden gives billions to the US power grid, and Canada follows the US.

And installing heat pumps in regions where oil furnaces are popular.

And I still can't figure out why oil furnaces are popular.

They just didn't want to run the they just became popular, I think.

Rural areas where it's hard to get them on the grid, I guess.

And how are you this week? I'm going to tell you right now that I'm not well.

I've been sick.

You sound terrible, James.

No, I'm not possessed.

That is, my lungs.

I've had illness.

I flu since last we met.

Brian pretty much okay, but it's not going well.

Here's what I did.

I tested my family because they're all sick.

They gave it to me.

My daughter brought it home from high school, and I knew I was going to get sick, so I just tested they tested.

My wife and my daughter tested, and they're negative.

So I thought I'm like I was singing at my nose.

It's not like I have something different.

I don't go anywhere, as you know.

Anyway, I've had a hellish number of days, so I am barely able to be here today.

And by the end of the show, I will be soaked in sweat.

Oh, dear.

Because I'm still doing anything is like a chore.

I skipped lunch yesterday because I couldn't go downstairs.

Oh, no.

That maybe answers my question, because the pet peeve of mine.

People often say they have the flu when what they really mean is that they have a cold.

So you said you have a flu.

Do you really believe it's, the damage, or is it a bad cold? I was going to jokingly bring the CDC chart on this to the show, and I thought, no, I'm not going to.

But now I wish I did.

Yeah, well, people say that all the time.

Oh, I had the flu.

And no, you just had a bad cold.

If you've got the flu, it typically means you cannot go to work or go downstairs for lunch.

Yeah, well, there's overlaps, okay? But having fever and severe aches is very uncommon for colds.

You can have a mild fever.

You can have a brief fever.

But to have a long fever and severe aches, which I did, even with pills, I've been thrown down pills left and right until yesterday when I decided I've had enough.

But I took one for the show, so maybe it'll kick in halfway through.

We'll see.

Anyway, I had to do some harrowing things, like go drive my family home from the gray cop, the super bowl of Canada, because they were volunteering there, because my daughter is going on a school trip, and that was one way to fundraise.

Well, it killed my wife.

She was a little bit sick still, and she had to work 10 hours one day serving rich people, which is always fun.

Then my daughter asks, dad, is it legal to quit high school and go get a job? And I said, look, young lady, you want to be the people getting served, not the servers, okay? You want to stay in school.

You want to be those rich bastards getting horse Durham served to them by people like you raising money for school trips.

You don't want to be the person who's 30 years old, has six kids, and is trying to serve.

I mean, we need those people.

Those people will exist school and becomes an entrepreneur and starts a million dollar web company.

Well, sure.

I think she's more likely to start a bakery or something.

Yeah.

Not a huge amount of money in that.

No, but people do do that.

There's a lot of people who do that.

In fact, there's a number of successful local businesses which are at least popular with people who rave about their goods.

Yeah, there's some great bakeries.

Finally, there's great bakeries here.

There never used to be.

It was always ironic because we're surrounded by fields of wheat.

There's just nothing but wheat around here.

But 20 years ago, you could not get a decent loaf of bread in the city.

It was crazy.

But now there's some really great places.

Okay, so breaking news.

I think we're probably the first podcast to deal with this important topic.

There is an important website on the internet that has been down for four days now.

It's not Twitter.

It's not Twitter.

It's more important than twitter.

It's GoComics.com.

GoComics.com.

Yes.

This is a website I go to every single day to get my daily comic strips.

You know, I was always a newspaper guy, and one of the reasons I like newspapers was reading the daily comics.

Now, many years ago, I switched to reading the comics online because you can get whatever comics you want.

You don't have to just settle for the ones that are in your newspaper.

So I go to this website every single day, GoComics.com to read a handful of comic strips, and it's been down for four days.

When was the last time you had a website you visited and it was down for four days? People don't have patience for that anymore.

No, 4 hours would be pushing the limits for most people.

Four days.

And you can get a lot of the comic strips in other places, but there's a handful that are only on GoComics.com.

It drives me crazy.

I've been looking into it, and cyber security apparently is the issue.

And there's not a huge amount of information on the web, which is why we're an important news source now for this story.

But getting the word out there.

Yeah.

Anyway, it's driving me crazy.

Go to homes.com.

Do you want to explain what a comic strip is to people under 45? Briefly, a few panels in a newspaper, usually with a punchline.

The one I'm really missing is Nancy and Nancy classics.

And this was a comic strip I didn't know about really much in my youth, but Nancy by Ernie Buschmiller, which ran like in the they do reprints of this on Go comics as well as the new strip, which is quite good.

So I don't know.

I'm having withdrawals.

Another problem I have is I don't have enough fluids to get through the show.

Okay.

I was about to start the show and I have this giant water bottle from Costco that I've got.

Electric pump on the top with a lithium battery.

And it shows now to quit.

What? It's got a pump on it? No, I bought the pump on Amazon.

You could basically use these things in water coolers, although they're not quite water cooler size bottles.

They're a little below that, but they're still as much as a human can carry and maybe beyond.

I had my son happened to be home for Thanksgiving, canadian Thanksgiving in the head.

So we decided we're only going to buy it when our kid is home from college to lift it upstairs because it's crazy heavy.

Like one of those giant water bottles with a pump on it.

Yeah, I put the pump on it.

You can buy these pumps on Amazon for like $18.

And mine just went dead right when I needed it most.

Before that, I was going to help a water bottle before the show.

And now I'm like, I'm going to have to be careful, very careful.

Any coffee fits and I'm done.

The show's going to come to an abrupt end.

Well, if you have to pause, let me know.

I certainly can't go downstairs for water.

I'm not, you know, that strong.

No.

Well, at least I mean, it sounds like you're in better shape than you were yesterday.

What have you been watching on TV? Well, I've been sick.

Yes.

Well, it's time for Brian's movie corner.

Brian's movie corner.

You mentioned this last week.

There's a documentary on Netflix called Fugitive the Curious Case of Carlos Gon.

And have you watched it yet? No, I skimmed it a bit because I was trying to see if they talked about the leaf in his history.

Okay.

Sadly, there's no real information about electric cars, but it was a nice refresher in who Carlos Gon is.

I'd kind of forgotten what a superstar he was in the automotive world.

He was originally the CEO of Renault, like 20 years ago or something.

Turned around, renew.

And then he became the CEO of Nissan at the same time.

Turned around Nissan? They were heading into bankruptcy as well, that he made both companies very profitable.

And then he got arrested for allegedly embezzling funds from Nissan and then very famously, escaped the country in a giant case on a private jet.

He literally snuck out of the country after he was released on bail.

So.

Yeah, it's a pretty good dock.

It was interesting.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, there was really nothing about electric cars.

He was one of the proponents of the original Nissan Leaf.

So maybe they're lagging in electric cars because he's no longer there.

I'm not sure.

You know, in the documentary.

Well, first of all, there was a documentary.

Who killed the electric car? This is about the EV One program.

The first attempted car company making EVs.

Yes.

General Motors EV.

One like 99 2000 in that area.

Then they destroyed them all.

They didn't let anyone buy them.

Legendary.

And that was a good documentary.

And then there was the revenge electric car, which came at the point where Tesla was getting launched and starting to get the S off the ground.

Their first mass produced car, I believe.

And there was Carlos talking to Elon at the auto show and they were kind of awkward.

It was very cool encounter because it was awkward to Egomaniacs who didn't want to give anything away.

Carlos had said at that time that we're doing this just to hedge our bets.

If Latter Eagles take off, we'll be prepared.

But he didn't really get behind them.

He didn't make them compelling enough.

He basically looked at the car for the first time without approving it.

He just looked at it at the auto show.

Oh.

This is what it looks like.

Okay.

And it was not a great looking car.

It was divisive.

I don't hate it.

There's a lot of you know, it's iconic in a way because it's designed with big buggy headlights to deflect the wind so that you don't hear them on the mirrors because you would in an electric car because they're so quiet.

And then who else was there with Chevrolet? There was what's his name? With GM.

The cigar smoking what's his name? I can't remember.

Bob Lutz, the legendary Bob Lutz, who always said that EVs would fail and the Tesla would fail.

But then he was the guy sort of behind the Volt, which was coming out.

So there were three things.

There was a trifecta, this is history now.

This used to be just my daily life, but it was the Volt with a V, which was a plugin hybrid.

Essentially.

It was an EV with a backup engine.

And then there was Tesla getting off the ground.

This was all happening in 2010, and this is when this documentary was made.

And the first model years were eleven.

By the way, there is a Cadillac ELR, I think it's called, for sale in Vagina, which was based on the Volt platform.

They only made a couple thousand of these things, so they're kind of rare.

But it's a really good kind of plug in hybrid Cadillac with all the luxurious Cadillac.

What's it going for? I'm not sure.

It was still kind of incoming.

I saw a little thing on the web.

But anyway, so Carlos Gon, a controversial figure, and there's no particular conclusion in the documentary because he managed to escape Japan and go to Lebanon, where he is originally from.

And he has, I guess, not been extradited or anything, so he's never gone on trial.

So no one really knows what the full story is.

But there was another executive at Nissan that was sentenced to, for helping to COVID up his salary.

They were trying to keep his salary quiet because it was quite high.

So somebody at Nissan did do time for that.

And then the pilot, like the guy who was like a US special forces guy who got him out of the country, he ended up doing a couple of years of time.

I hope it was worth it, buddy.

Yeah, I hope it was worth it.

I don't know.

I mean, I assume he was well paid.

Carlos has got a lot of money.

When you're that rich, you're going to throw it to millions really quickly.

Just take them, just get into freedom.

Quite clear on why he ended up back in Japan and in jail when Carlos Gonz has managed to not go back.

Well, I think the pilot, he probably had a business there.

He probably had a relationship with Japan if he was able to.

I mean he could be, but he was an American.

But they didn't really explain that.

But yeah, so they made the point a couple of times that in Japan the conviction rate is 99%.

Wow.

If you are arrested in Japan, there is a 99% chance that you will be convicted.

So the documentary sort of implies that there's something kind of hinky with the Japanese justice system.

Well, that's why you flee.

You don't wait for your trial and that's why you flee.

Basically the charge is the yes.

Like as soon as you're arrested, it's game over.

And Carlos Gon, in an interview after he got out, he barely did 150 days in solitary confinement when they first arrested him, what he says were inhumane conditions.

No butler.

It's inhumane.

No butler.

But, like, his hands were cuffed in solitary confinement for, like, 150 days.

Yeah, I probably would have done the same thing.

Guilty or not guilty? Yes.

He felt like he wasn't going to get a fair trial and very luckily managed to escape.

So he was in a case that they said was an instrument case.

They pretended that they were musicians and it was a big square case, but they said it was some type of an instrument and it couldn't go through the scanner because it was sensitively tuned, like it had just been tuned or something.

And you can't put it through the scanner.

I can just picture them putting it through the scanner and seeing the Carlos Scone in there, all curled up.

All curled up.

So? Yeah.

I don't know.

It's only about 90 minutes.

It's an interesting little dog.

Well, he is guilty, Brian.

I've looked at the evidence and it seemed pretty over.

Pretty compelling case.

I don't know what the punishment would have been for him, but why was he in solitary confinement? I don't understand that if he was, but also, why would he need to embezzle money? Like, his salary was nine, he was making €9 million a year.

Why would he need to embezzle money? I don't know.

Maybe a gambling dance.

Maybe he was paying for the Leaf program.

I don't know.

Who does? I don't know.

Well, let's get out of the show.

Cop 27, wrapped up in Egypt, and that's been a mixed bag of stuff for them.

I'm not going to talk about it too much, but what did you think about how that went? Well, it's how these things usually go is that there's lots of optimism and then it's ultimately a compromise.

There's always a compromise at the end of it, because this is a UN climate summit with hundreds of countries and getting everybody to agree.

I don't know, sounds like it was not the best, but also not the worst.

I see this as a very crucial time because there's a lot of fossil fuel bad things going on.

They're trying to claw at what they can to make as much money as they can, and they would be happy to throw the climate down and our targets with it.

So Bloomberg had a story on it.

They said the United Nations climate summit just barely avoided ending in a deadlock.

They went into extra a day or so afterwards.

And the final compromise left big doubts over the prospect for new efforts to curb emissions.

I quote, despite attempts by big powers like the United States, India and the European Union, the agreement failed to raise ambitions on reducing emissions.

That could mean the world misses the one five degree Celsius warming target that enshrined the 2015 Paris agreement calls to phase out all fossil fuels, not just coal.

Which is all they could come up with.

They couldn't touch fossil fuels and to peak global emissions by 2025, which is likely to happen anyway according to the IEA.

We're shot down by many nations who export oil, and I'm proud to say we have a bad record, Canada on this, but we didn't oppose it.

Even though we are a big oil exporter.

I'm sure it had a different government been in power.

That would have been the case, probably.

So while the phase down of all fossil fuels didn't make it to the final text, momentum grew around the idea that wasn't even in the cars before the summit.

As many as 80 countries now support it.

So we're moving towards banning fossil fuels, basically.

We're getting closer to that.

There was like a damage fund as well, right? That was a big part.

I agreed to put in money to a fund for the countries most affected by climate change.

Yeah.

And that's all I'll talk about on that.

But we'll update some more stories as we go.

Here what's happening with $250,000,000 in Canada, right? Yeah.

So I think we mentioned this before.

There's a few more details.

So there is a Greener Homes grant here in Canada that I've applied for, and they have now expanded the program with another component to it, which is to switch people from heating oil to a heat pump.

So there's an extra $250,000,000 now in Canada.

It's a separate stream in the Greener Homes grant, and it won't technically be available until early 2023.

But this is mostly for people in Atlantic Canada, where heating oil is apparently a fairly common thing, rural properties, and everybody gets heating oil delivered.

It's not a thing around here at all.

We don't have this here.

No, even though we have lots of rural properties.

We have natural gas.

We have the government who did that.

Right.

We have a government utility.

That's kind of why we have government utilities here.

But if you're in a rural property, I think it's mostly propane here.

You can get your propane tank filled up.

But anyway, this is up to $5,000.

It's only for middle and lower income Canadians.

And the twist on this, too, is you can get the money upfront, usually with this program.

Wow.

You apply and you spend all the money and then you get a reimbursement.

But just because it's meant for middle income and lower income Canadians, you can actually get the money up to $5,000 upfront to switch you.

And the potential is to save, like, according to them, as much as $4,700 a year on your heating costs.

So what would a heat pump cost? Have you done any looking into it for your own house? As much as like 2025 grand.

But I think for a heat pump, it depends.

We need, of course, these super frigid cold heat pumps.

I think in Atlantic Canada it's not as cold, and hopefully it wouldn't cost as much, maybe 10,000 or $15,000.

But yeah, you get the money up front.

And I checked in on the this is sort of similar and in line with what's happening in America with the biden.

What's that called? The IRA.

The Era.

The IRA.

The inflation Reduction act that starts on January 1, 2023.

If you want to get a rebate on your heat pump in the US.

It's anything installed after January 1 so you can get after the factory bait for yourself.

Not going from an oil furnace.

Right? Yeah, I'm going to go through the normal program, and I think I'll get up to 5000 as well for myself.

It's too bad, though, because that would be hard for somebody low middle to finance ten grand if they weren't pressing.

Yeah, and I guess that's why this program is that way.

In Atlantic Canada, rural properties are probably fairly inexpensive, so you can have lower income people that own houses and they're going to be in trouble.

But yeah, you can get the money upfront, which is very cool.

And yeah, very much in line with what's happening in the US with the Inflation Reduction Act.

So I encourage everybody to check your local jurisdiction, your local state, your local province to see what rebates are available.

And things are really going to get rolling in 2023.

So basically, they're starting with the biggest bang for the buck is so the biggest savings would be for people with oil furnaces, so they would be most compelled to make that switch.

Right.

And heating oil is one of the things that's really gone up in price with the recent inflation that we've been having.

I was doing some research on this this morning, and I said that heating oil heats up twice as fast as you get more bang for your BTU, basically that it really heats up fast anyway, but probably causes more pollution than natural gas.

Yes, natural gas is relatively clean as far as fossil fuels go, although there's a lot of methane in there.

The new priest finally was announced on Wednesday in Tokyo and in the La auto Show, and there's been lots of speculation about it, so I've been kind of curious.

Ultimately, though, there are actually Prius fans out there who are saying, wow, it's great, look at this.

And what do you think? I've got a picture of it up.

Well, I love the styling.

Like the design road that Toyota has been going down the last few years, I just do not like.

And they reached a kind of an apex with that excessively angular design of the Prius.

So I think they had kind of no choice but to go in the opposite direction.

But it almost looks to me like they designed it to be an EV.

Like, EVs are often designed for aerodynamics.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah, they did.

They cut down the roof line for that very reason, because there was no other way to gain efficiency.

So it's just a huge shame it's not a full EV, because it looks like it could be.

It looks a lot like the original Hyundai Ionic, which was a very aerodynamic shape.

So I love the direction they're going.

This is a huge improvement in terms of the style, I think, of the Prius.

But just a shame it's not fully electric.

It just feels like that would have been the correct move on it.

Yeah.

Obviously, you refresh the models every few years and it's totally time for a full EV refresh.

And that's not what this is.

Now, some people make the argument that at the moment in time that we're in right now, that a plug in hybrid, which there's a version of that right? There's a plug in version of the Prius.

Some people think they all plug in.

They don't.

They're basically just a hybrid power train, which utilizes an electric motor to be more efficient.

But it's all gas during the energy.

So the plug in version has gone up in range from pretty significantly.

Basically, the energy density of the batteries have gone up.

It's taking up the same space to go from, I think it was, 40 range, which is a lot more usable.

And in Canada, we would get the full $5,000 off.

So that means you've heard it here first, because no one else has said this.

The plugin.

Prius prime PSE e v will be cheaper than the normal prius So why would anyone buy a Prius rebate? This is the situation that was like that in California when the Prius Prime first, there was no point.

I mean, even if you don't care about plugging it in, why would you buy it? Because you have to resell it.

You have to have a residual value.

You might as well have the one that costs more.

So it makes no sense for them to sell anything but the Prius Prime in Canada, and they also went with more horsepower, which I thought was a bit weird.

Yeah, they really bumped up the horsepower.

Finally, after 20 years of being mocked by truckers, by bumper stickers on truckers.

Yeah.

So it's quite a lot faster now.

But of course, that cuts into the miles per gallon a little bit, but not too bad.

Yes.

Overall, though, I think it could be more efficient than it is.

But the zero to 60 is a lot faster.

Way faster.

Yeah, that's fun.

But here's my big problem with it, and that is that it sits lower.

And then my wife has a Prius if you're new to the show.

And that's her work car that she has to have inspected constantly because it's used for work.

She takes social work clients around in it.

They're not going to even talk about pricing or announcing it until sometime in the first half of next year as far as the prime is concerned.

So that doesn't do me I need a car now.

Brian should go buy that.

Buy that Caddy.

Yeah, you should actually look into it.

It could be fun.

You'll ever may launch ice cream from cow free dairy in a year.

This is an update to a previous store because we've been talking about precision fermentation.

And here it is, Brian.

Here's the headline.

You wait for things to happen and then there it is in front of you.

Yeah.

And the dairy industry likely to be the very first of the animal based products to be severely disrupted.

Here's a clip from the robot who reads the Bloomberg stories.

The company is working on a process called precision fermentation that uses substances like yeast and fungi to produce milk proteins in a VAT.

A product could be available in about a year.

If successful, unilever could be the first major food company to create an ice cream made from cow free dairy, dubbed lab grown milk.

In a burgeoning industry dominated by smaller startups, a consumer giant like Unilever developing a precision fermentation version of one of its major brands raises hopes that the technology can scale up and be cost effective.

The idea is that it's going to be cheaper and then also cleaner.

Much cleaner.

Yeah.

I think a version of this ice cream already exists because there was a picture of Tony Siba eating some of it in that last YouTube video that he put up.

So I think this does exist, but it's probably kind of expensive and only in health food stores.

Whereas Unilever would make it a mass market product.

It would probably be quite expensive.

Yeah.

So right now, the ideas he says by 2030 that the proteins in milk is going to be replaced by fake stuff, precision fermentation, and it's going to be cheaper and dairy is going to go bankrupt.

And this is the first sign of that happening.

They're doing it.

Maybe they'll advertise it as an expensive but greener option, I'm guessing.

At first, yeah.

And more expensive at first, but I think eventually, ultimately cheaper.

And unlike beyond meat, there really will not be a difference.

It will be identical.

It'll be very identical.

Yeah.

Because you're mostly tasting the fat and the sugar.

The milk protein is a minor part.

I think most of it is water.

It's 10%.

That's not water.

 

That's the part you replace.

The others are fats and sugars, which are easily replaced, obviously.

Yeah.

Anyway, speaking of Japanese automakers, Mazda looks like it could be, and I'm not convinced of this, but it could be doing something significant.

They could be the first of the Japanese automakers to actually set a target.

That is reasonable.

Mazda is raising its EV sales target to 40% by 2030 and they're investing $11 billion to accelerate this transition.

Sounds like they got the memo.

Yeah, well, we were making fun of them for their MX 30, which is.

A very low range electric car.

They are down to selling, like, only a handful of them.

So they've been a real laggard.

And so this is their first step up to the plate.

I mean, it's not maybe what it should be, but it sounds like they're getting the idea.

Right.

That's something.

It's probably too late.

I don't want to be a naysayer, but at least they have a target.

Hopefully they survive.

Brian 505.

I've sold more brownies at bake sales than they have in these cars.

It's 100 miles of range, 160 range, which is in today's market, no good unless it's a cheap car.

But it's 33,000 us.

Yeah, that's a lot of money.

You expect something for that.

I mean, you can get a Leaf, you can get a Chevy Bolt that does way more mileage than that and probably is a more capable car.

Yeah, for maybe only slightly more money.

And they even said this EV has been sold out, so you can't find one.

So there was a demand there.

There's going to be some Mazda fans who want to go EV.

But anyway, this is a story about VW maybe delaying their EV plans.

Like, VW was maybe one of the great hopes of the EV transition.

And now the CEO's been replaced, right? Yeah.

As we reported, they're on track to deliver 500,000 EVs this year, which is a significant amount.

That's way ahead of everybody else except for Tesla.

Herbert Dies was their CEO that put all this in motion.

He really had a radical vision for VW and really felt like it had to be a radical remaking of the company or, you know, they were going to run into problems.

And so yeah, so he started a lot of ambitious programs that have gotten them to 5000 EVs a year, which is significant.

But he was sort of moved out recently as CEO, and the new CEO is definitely scaling back these plans to be much less ambitious.

I don't like that.

No, I think Herbert Dees was on the right track.

And you what, like with Mazda? So Mazda wants to sell 40% EVs by 2030, but that means there's going to be people to buy the 60% of EVs that are gas in 2030.

No, it doesn't work that way.

Doesn't work that way.

When EVs are available, people are not going to want the gas cars.

So I don't know.

The new CEO of VW seems to be betting that such things are possible.

And every car commercial on television is electric.

Can you buy the cars? Not so much.

Not so much.

But for some reason, we're in this weird time where, yeah, all the car companies are vying to look like.

Then there's Toyota, who says, we're electrified.

That's enough.

Right? Electrified.

So, VW, they've got the second generation platform that they were planning to come out in 2026.

They call this their trinity.

EV.

And now it's going to be more like 2030.

Under the new CEO, 26 might have been difficult to actually achieve, but if you're moving the goal post down to 2030, even 2030 may not be moving it up to 2024.

And hey, you may not make the deadline, but the commission should be moving up anyway.

So that's a three year delay, basically.

Or worse.

Let's hope not.

And that's no good.

We can't deal with that.

And it was already a kind of a target that wasn't even as gracious as it should be.

They've got a lot.

It takes a lot to turn a giant ship like VW around.

I don't know.

They're the best at it.

The biggest car company in the world are the best at it.

They are manufacturing in and out well.

They do really well to get up to 5000.

That's impressive.

I think what they're not getting is what you said, that once the pendulum sort of swings towards EVs and that the weight starts to get on the teeter totter on the EV side, look out, it's not going anywhere else.

It's going to chip way over and then you're going to be caught with your pants down.

So who's going to be able to provide those cars? Hopefully? Well, Tesla, you and I are already at the point where we would never in a million years consider buying another gasoline car.

But we're still kind of the outliers.

But every year the percentage of people who won't consider a gas car just goes up.

Yeah, and it is regular people are considering EVs.

And there's people around here with pickup trucks.

I'm reading about them all the time.

Their neighbors are, their business associates are, their clients are.

This becomes normalized very quickly now.

It's really going to pick up.

Yeah.

So, moving on to Tokyo, the governor of Tokyo, this is Eureka Koiki, has suggested everybody wear turtlenecks to help reduce their energy bills.

Okay.

It's sort of a funny thing and a fun thing to make a joke about off the top of the show, but I'm in favor of this.

There's an energy crisis going on.

Everybody's going to be struggling to make enough power, make enough heat.

Can I make a turtleneck work? I mean, not everybody can.

Yeah, I don't think I own any turtlenecks, but everybody.

The idea is that dress warm and you can save money on your electricity bills, which are going up in Tokyo, just like they're kind of tending to go up everywhere is in my neck.

That's the coldest thing, though.

I mean, really.

Well, the idea is here's the quote, warming the neck has a thermal effect.

I'm wearing a turtleneck myself.

And wearing a scarf also keeps you warm.

This will save electricity.

This is what the governor of Tokyo said around the house is true.

He wants people around their tiny little Tokyo apartments to wear a scarf.

I mean, it sounds radical, but why not? We have a problem here.

I don't know what it's like in other places, but we often have this problem in North America where like, office buildings particularly often have very poor heating or cooling that can't be controlled very well.

So there's often a problem around here where people have to wear sweaters in the summer because the air conditioning is ranked too high and nobody can seem to turn it down.

Or I've actually heard of people who have electric space heaters under their roof.

Yeah, I've seen that it's really bad in the summer.

I've seen that it's too cold because the air conditioning is too high.

That's not good.

Yeah, so you're overusing the air conditioning and then some poor employee has to use UTC heater to sort of gain back the energy.

So I think this in many ways, used to be like a common sense thing where people just dressed warmer in the winter because it was kind of common sense.

But then you go to work in an office building where the heat is all wonky, so maybe it's too hot in your office in the wintertime and then you just end up wearing a Tshirt instead in the winter.

It's all messed up.

I wear fleeces and sweaters inside the house now, but that's because I'm getting old, right? Yeah.

I'm still turning up the temperature tin more than it should be.

And then I'm also wearing those things.

That's not good.

I do the same thing.

Yeah, it's not good at all.

I can't laugh, by the way.

Otherwise I'll go into a coffee and fits.

I don't sound anything funny.

Well, Brian, as you know, the World Cup has started.

And I know you don't have world cup fever, but I do.

Is that what you're suffering from? Sure.

I took a title for my World Cup fever this morning.

Argentina lost to Saudi Arabia and the biggest upset in World Cup history.

Some people say, wow, I'm sorry, Argentina, if you're listening.

In fact, this is probably way too soon for me to even bring it up, but I apologize anyway.

Of course, all the coverage, it's been announced like ten years ago that they were getting this.

So a Qatar, which is a small nation state with oil, was accused of using their oil money to spend on the World Cup and bribe.

And there's been some people who've actually been, you know, charges and so forth.

There's a new Netflix documentary.

I won't make you watch it, but it's there.

OK on FIFA.

This is a tiny Middle Eastern autocracy with a population of barely 3 million people.

How do they get the world's biggest sporting event? You know, like, this is by far the world's biggest sporting event.

It happens only every four years, but the temperatures there in the summer are 50 degrees Celsius or 122 Fahrenheit.

And that's when the World Cup you normally played during that time and I, as you know, was in Death Valley when it was that temperature.

And I could only get out of my healthier, man then, and I could only get out of my car for ten minutes at a time.

My kids could do 1213.

But then you're like facing the Grim Reaper.

He starts to encroach on your area, looking for you, to kill you, because you can't play soccer in that, I guess.

They spent $200 billion of their petrol money on this games.

They've built eight stadiums.

One of them I'll talk about in a minute.

That's a little bit different than the other ones.

It's recyclable, we'll just put it that way.

But yeah, they've got air conditioning.

The temperature is only 24 degrees with like 64% humidity.

These games have been checking on them.

So, yeah, it's perfectly reasonable for soccer.

But I read you a bit from the Atlantic here.

It says Qatar might now be home to about 3 million people, but the proportion of actual Qatari citizens who lived there is a little more than 10%.

So there's hardly any.

The rest compromised some very rich expatriates of other nations and a huge army of poor migrants up to 6000.

And some may have died, by the way.

This is a whole separate issue which is not part of our show.

But my God.

My point is that this is the pinnacle of oil decadence.

And to think that thousands of lives were not cared about and lost from other countries to make this destruction of everything and we'll never have this again.

This is peak oil.

I don't think we'll see crap like this ever again.

This is the moment in time where it's all going to fall apart.

They did not have any infrastructure, they're not a sporting nation, they didn't have a fan base, they had nothing.

But they were very rich with their oil money.

But Brian, their new money, they haven't had this money for very long at all.

Guitar has had huge reserves of natural gas, which was discovered, I think, quite a while ago, maybe the by Shell, but they just left it there because they couldn't do anything with it.

They had all this natural gas and nowhere to get it anywhere.

So in the was this coup, I think the leader of the country, the King or whatever the term they use for it, left to go on vacation to England and his son took over.

Which is why if I'm ever in that situation, I'm never leaving because my son would take over in a second.

He was just sorry, Dan.

But he did a good thing for the country in a way, because he invested in liquefied natural gas tank so that it could be transported on a ship.

So when you cool it natural gas.

It's like transporting oil on a tanker.

But it's ridiculous how much -165 degrees celsius or something like that they are now the third richest country in the world.

And they learned how to extract natural gas from the ground much more cheaply.

So even after they cool it and put it on a ship, a tanker full of natural gas is four times cheaper from Qatar than if it originated in the United States through their normal channels.

That's why they are so rich, is because their gas is cheap, even though they have to do that.

So they started a sovereign wealth fund, though this is the shocking part that I didn't know about.

Even though they blew 200 billion on these Games to make them a respectable country, which is not working out, by the way, because all we're doing is talking about how crappy they are, the LGBTQ rights and everything like that, and the fact that they can't serve beer at the games.

And they yanked that privilege two days before.

So they started a sovereign wealth fund like Norway did, and they have $300 billion in it because they saw the writing on the wall.

They knew that our Canadian jurisdictions here who have oil in the provinces don't think that way at all.

They think spend, spend oil forever.

But when you had something they didn't always used to have this.

So they've only had it since the 90s.

So in that short time, they've got a 300 billion dollar sovereign wealth fund and they're building up infrastructure.

Part of the game spending is that to make it for an investment possible.

And I don't know that that's going to work, especially with their human rights problems, that a whole lot of people are going to go there, but they are planning for the end of oil by diversifying their investments around the world.

So, yeah, that fund is going to do all kinds of things around the world.

So there's been of course, it's supposed to be a carbon neutral World Cup.

And it's a joke.

It's a bloody joke.

Here's a clip from Bloomberg.

Organizers estimate that the World Cup will emit three six megatons of carbon dioxide.

International flights in and out of Doha will account for the majority of emissions.

However, organizers argue that this World Cup will be more energy efficient than others, since fans won't have to fly to different venues and can instead just take public transit.

The sticking point is always the flights.

Most Olympics and World Cups, it accounts to more than 85% of total emissions.

So that surprised me.

I guess it makes perfect sense when you hear it, but it's not the building of these eight giant stadiums and you know, all the infrastructure around it, it's the flights and during the actual Games.

And it's the same with the Olympics.

It's a very carbon intense thing when all these people do that.

Yeah, when you got to travel so many people around the world, that's what you do, you fly.

Now, the game today was in stadium nine seven four, which is built with shipping containers it's not entirely shipping containers.

It's like steel girders and shipping containers.

But the 400 seat stadium can be disassembled and rebuilt elsewhere.

So this is the world's first tear down build a back stadium, supposedly, and apparently, if everything goes on shipping containers, it can be shipped anywhere.

Yes.

So this will be available for my Ikea soon.

Quite the price, but yes, it was designed by a French architectural firm.

Other things they're trying to do is they have built solar farms to offset the emissions from the games.

They're using electric buses, an electric mass transit.

So that's good.

They're not burning their own product, and they are supposedly buying carbon offsets, but they're way behind on that.

Brian yeah.

So Domino's Pizza has announced, and this sort of falls into that category of story that we're going to have to stop reporting soon, because this is just going to be business as usual very soon and maybe is already.

But Domino's Pizza in the US.

Has ordered 800 Chevy bolts, and they're kind of custom painted with the Domino's logo and everything.

And they've got about 100 of them so far.

And these are going out to Domino's Pizza locations in the US.

So they will eventually have 800 fully electric delivery vehicles for the fleet of pizza delivery vehicles.

And of course, they're doing this because it just makes sense.

And the bolt is not a particularly expensive car.

So imagine all the money they'll save on gas.

This is just the EV calculation that every business in the world is going to be making when it comes to fleet vehicles.

I wish on your Domino's app, if you could select an EV to have it delivered like you can on other apps for a ride sharing, that would be nice.

Do you ever eat domino's? Never.

I would think he would hate Domino's.

That would be an anti Brian pizza right there.

No, when we have excellent pizza to choose from in our city, I don't see a reason to use donald okay, well, I agree.

The pizza shows up in advance a lot of times where people have some there.

Okay, so Joe Biden has promised $13 billion for the US.

Power grid.

So this is part of the green spending from the US.

And as we talk about frequently on the show, the grid all over the world is going to need some upgrades.

And so this is a decent amount of money, $13 billion to upgrade the grid.

And as we go greener in the next couple of decades, it's important to get the foundation correct first before we do that.

So this is a nice, like, really forward looking thing.

I think that the US government is doing $13 billion available to do grid upgrades around the country.

So I think that's great.

It is subsidizing what they could probably do themselves, though.

How do you feel about that? Yeah, well, I mean, it's a weird thing about all of this spending.

Right.

Because companies like Tesla don't even need subsidies, really.

Their cars are profitable already and yet they're going to benefit from these subsidies.

So it's always a bit weird and taxing fossil fuels.

A carbon tax, it would probably have been the better way to go with all of this.

But however it gets done, there are certain things politically that are difficult to do.

Like a carbon tax.

Yes.

It wouldn't necessarily be my first choice for how to deal with it, but at least they're dealing with it.

Let's dip into the mailbag.

Brian.

This is a message from Nick.

Hello, Brian and James.

I live in New England, and recently got a 2022 Ford Mac E.

That is an electric vehicle, small crossover.

Right.

My battery life, as he calls it, was originally at 230 miles.

He means range.

So the range of that car when he first got it was 230 miles or 370 colder out.

It is 170 miles and 274.

So it's a lot.

About 100, roughly of range.

So I know about range decreasing in colder weather.

My question is, does the range come back when the weather gets warmer? With the cost of new EVs, a range of 170 miles is not acceptable.

Fan of the show since day one.

Thanks.

Wow.

Thanks.

How many episodes? 140.

Congratulations, Nick.

Thank you for sticking with us.

So, yes, I would be bold.

Enough to say that I think, James, you and I are the two leading experts in the world on EVs and cold weather.

Yes.

You've come to the right place, Nick, because Alaska has nothing on us.

We're in the Southern Canadian prairies where it gets to -40 and it has recently not this year, but it has and -40 celsius is the same as -40 fahrenheit that's where the two scales cross over.

Yeah, it does get that cold here.

So I don't know everything about how the mach e battery meter works, but yeah, usually the range on any car is calculated on your recent trips.

So if your recent trips have been in the cold then your car is going to be smart enough to figure, okay, well, the next trip is going to be so I assume that range will come back in the summer.

Of course it will.

But in a way, Brian, this is a stupid question for us, to us, for people like us.

But that concerns me that the people buying EVs, really, that there are things that this would be scary to somebody nick's, obviously an EV enthusiast, but a regular person who doesn't care, who just goes out and buys their next car, might be very concerned about this if they don't know about it.

That's right.

You're going to look at the range thing.

Now, the one thing I can recommend is I don't know if you can do this in your car, but in a Tesla you can change the battery to percentage rather than miles.

Or kilometers.

So when I first bought my car, it would give me the range in kilometers and started around 400 km.

But then you tend to get obsessed about that range and every time you plug it in, it's like, oh, it's 5 km less than it was last time I charged it.

So I just switched it to percentage.

And so then you don't end up obsessing about that mileage.

But then if you're going on a trip, you use the trip calculator.

And the trip calculator will tell you in a Tesla that gives you a graph that says, okay, you'll get at your destination and your battery will be 20%.

And that's what you monitor.

And sometimes it's a little bit off in a Tesla.

Now these days, about 5% error.

Is that's pretty good though? Actually for this they are getting better.

It used to be about a 10% error where it would tell you, oh, your battery will be 20% at your destination and then you'd get there and it would be more like 10%.

Yeah, is way worse though.

So we're slowing down that's one tip.

Yeah, it's switching it to percentage and not worrying about it.

Now when you get to the summer and it is not giving you the same range, it is always possible that your battery has cells that have deteriorated or something.

So it is something you have to keep an eye on, but presumably that will come back.

Yeah.

And the way we do it on the Leaf is you put in the little data reader you buy on Amazon.

It's a bluetooth device.

For $20.

It hooks up to an app for your car that's made by a third party.

Mine is called Leaf Spy.

Tesla is a little different because they have a different connector.

I don't know how you guys do it or even if you need to, but there would be if you got into this, you can see how your battery is doing and know the state of health of it, but this means nothing.

Okay, so let's say you lived in Hawaii where it's the same temperature every day.

If you drove like a mad person for a day or two, it would show that you have a lesser battery, right.

Because you're driving with a heavy lead foot.

But if you're driving like a nun, then you're going very slow and gentle and that's going to show a higher range.

It's not really showing what your battery is capable of, it's just what it's capable of based on your recent driving.

And that is a weird concept to get around to people.

And also I mentioned too, it is typical for batteries to lose range like battery degradation.

And the typical formula seems to be you are going to lose about 5% of your battery in the first couple of years and then it kind of slows out.

So I assume my battery has lost about 5% of its capacity but I don't know exactly how I would confirm that.

Yeah, and it's not something you should obsess about.

You should know that when you buy the evidence, buy bigger than you think you need, and then you don't worry about that.

Right.

That's always a good thing.

But there's lots we can talk about here very quickly.

Okay.

Now, the first thing is that in winter, a gas car loses range.

You just don't notice it.

You're not thinking about that.

Right.

There's many factors.

There is the dense winter air, so your aerodynamics are off.

This affects EVs a little bit more because they're more efficient.

And they're also usually more dependent on the aerodynamics of the vehicle for efficiency.

So if you put winter tires on, that's going to be less efficient, for sure.

That could lose you 10%.

It could lose even more depending on what your tires there's the snow on the ground or ice on the ground.

The fact that it's just not a smooth, rolling surface.

It's like if you're pedaling a bike through snow, it's going to be harder to pedal that bike.

There are different factors like that the battery becomes less strong in cold weather.

When the battery is cold, it's chemically not capable of holding as much of a charge.

It can't hold as much of a charge, the battery, in colder weather.

And don't forget that you're using your battery to heat your cabin.

That is a lot of heat.

Even if it's a heat pump, even if it's just not that cold, but a little bit cold, you're still using a lot of energy.

In fact, it's different in every car.

Your car is a PTC heater.

Mine is, too.

So it's just like a toaster.

It's like red hot elements heating up.

That's the least efficient.

And then the heat pumps.

Sometimes there's both a heat pump and a PTC heater.

Sometimes there's just a heat pump that uses less energy, but it's still using energy.

Brian yeah.

When I checked in, the Mustang Machoe does not have a heat pump heater.

So it has a normal oh, really? Heater, which is not as energy efficient.

So you're definitely going to lose range with that.

Yeah, you're definitely going to use range.

Unless you're using it to make these long trips on the highway, then that's when the only time you really need to concern yourself.

Unless you have a long commute, for the most part.

If you can charge every night at home, just don't think about it.

Nick.

Don't think about it.

Enjoy your fast heating car and your efficiency and how wonderful it is.

And, you know, keep us up to date, too, as you drive it through the winter, because we're not in the worst part of winter yet.

Drop us a line again and how you like the car and how it made it through the winter.

Yeah.

And it's really only on road trips that you ever need to think About It.

If you're just driving around the city like you said, you charge at home, you're always going to have enough.

With Tesla, they spaced the superchargers about 150 km apart.

Roughly.

It varies a bit.

So that's about 100 miles apart.

If you're going to go nick on a road trip.

You want to make sure that there is a charging station.

Roughly every 100 miles and you should be fine like around here when it does get -40 I don't think it's going to get to -40 where nick is so he's probably not going to have to worry about it.

But they based on about right.

So mine.

I've got the standard range.

Tesla model.

Three and it can just barely make it between chargers when it's -40.

If it's only -20.

-15 celsius.

I mean it's not constantly -40 but we call that the worst case scenario around here.

Okay.

EV drivers call that you want to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

We've gone years without it getting that cold.

Yeah.

And then the last couple of years, it's gotten a few days.

That cold.

So you want to be prepared for those days.

And it's usually only that cold overnight.

But last winter, and this was covered on the podcast, I drove up to Saskatoon and The Daytime Temperatures was -36 Celsius, which is about -32 Fahrenheit daytime Temperatures.

This was at Noon, and that's what I had to drive through and just kind of barely made it in my Standard Range car.

Yeah.

So that's an issue.

And another thing to keep in mind is if you are doing highway trips so that in winter it charges slower, the battery can't take the charge as fast because it's like regenerative braking too.

You can't put your brakes back into the battery pack as well when it's cold.

No, that's kind of the biggest thing for me because summer road trips, I'm only spending about 20 minutes at the charger.

But the winter road trips in these cold conditions, it's more like you're spending an hour at the charger.

And at that point, it gets annoying.

And I'm at the point now where if this winter, I have to drive up to Saskatoon and it's -40, I'm going to take a gas car because I just don't want that.

I have to wait an hour at the charging station.

The worst case scenario in the worst place in the world is what we're talking about.

And we tell people around here that you could lose up to 50%.

It varies from car to car.

I've heard somebody talking to about 17% in his ionic five when it wasn't too cold.

Okay, but that's, like, the worst worst case scenario.

Now, if you're driving around the city and you do 60 miles in a day, at the very worst, and you have 170 miles, who cares? You plug in at night, it's going to charge the same way as it always does.

If.

You're on the highway and it takes you a half hour to charge, it might take you an hour to charge.

And that's a major change, too, in habits to be aware of.

Yeah.

And of course, electric cars, they're not as efficient on the highway as they are in the city.

Higher speeds are tougher for electric cars.

You drain the battery a lot faster.

And I really wish that when they publicized the range for electric cars, that they did a highway figure and a city figure.

I think that's the way it should be done.

But they don't do that.

They pick a number kind of somewhere in between the two.

Yeah, but you'll get used to this, Nick.

There's a lot of weird little things that people fret about when they try something new.

I did it.

Brian did it.

It's normal.

We EV owners tend to think too much, but just enjoy the car.

You'll get used to it.

And tell your friends about it.

Time for the lightning round of fast paced look at the rest of the news.

And Brian, we've overstayed her welcome, which is good because I don't have a lot of stories.

This week.

Rivian starts international deliveries of the R one T, rather, and the R one S in Canada.

So you've seen one here, right? Yeah.

It must have been an American one that drove up over the border, because I saw one on the road.

But yeah, officially, deliveries of the Ribbean just started in Canada.

Now, post the IRA, the inflation reduction at next era expects wind with storage will cost $14 per megawatt hour United States later this decade.

This is only because this act was passed.

And solar with batteries, $17 per mega, 1 hour.

This is down because of this act.

This is how much the IRA is going to affect everything and speed things up, if I may say.

Yeah, for sure.

This is a Brian story.

I can't believe you didn't see this one, Brian.

There's a induction oven maker who has added a battery to their stoves.

Lithium battery.

This is because, I guess some of these induction stoves use a lot of draw, right? Yeah.

And some places aren't wired for it.

And you'd have to get an extra panel if your panels full.

So they've solved that problem.

Interestingly with putting a battery in a stove.

That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

So the big draw when you need it comes from the batteries.

Well, we talked about this before in terms of heat pump, water heaters, because that's a similar problem with those, because you tend to need a few thousand watts to run those, I think up to 7000 watts to run an induction cooktop.

So that's a lot of juice.

It's one of the reasons I did a panel upgrade on my house.

But it cost a few thousand dollars to go from 100 amp to 200 amp.

So I guess the idea is you can charge up this battery and so it can draw more power.

You can sort of just plug it into in a regular outlet, as it was, but with the battery have much bigger output.

Right.

So that solves that problem.

But it's just weird, that sort of appliance with a battery in it.

And I imagine it adds to the price, but it's cheaper than maybe rewiring your house, if you want to do that.

So I thought I thought it was quite interesting BYD the Chinese, mostly EV maker and bus maker has sold as 3,000,000th, Bee, V or PHEV.

I thought that was an interesting milestone.

Some are plug in hybrids, but that's still an impressive number.

Oh, it's time for a CS.

Past 636 fossil fuel lobbyists were preying on government delegations at Cock.

 

Oily bastards.

That's a lot.

Scotland approves a 38 megawatt solar plant next door to a closed nuclear plant.

And guess how much the objections were in the community? Zero.

No objects were their objections.

Will they put up a nuclear plant? Probably.

Probably.

Some concern solar.

Not so harmful, not so scary.

A village in the French Alps this is from CNN demolishes its ski lift because there's no snow left.

It hasn't snowed in years.

lack of snow meant that the last time it ran was about 15 years ago, and just for one weekend.

And since then, it has not been.

This is sad.

Sad.

This is why the Winter Olympics will now be held in Qatar with fake snow and perhaps potato flakes.

Finally, this week, India is looking to produce its own solar modules to meet all of its demand and then some.

That's right.

India requires a lot of solar, and they want to make it themselves.

You know, it makes sense.

Perfectly capable country of ramping up something like this.

I'm looking for takers for a $2.4 billion in government aid to offer stimulation to domestic manufacturing of solar equipment.

They want to do all of their solar and export all as well.

That's great news.

That is our time for this week and a bunch more.

I apologize to myself more than anything.

My body wasn't ready to go long.

It was ready to go short this week, and I went long.\

So see you next week.

See you next week.

Bye.