Our Electrified Future with David Reichmuth

Can the grid handle a 100% electric world? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice explore the carbon impacts of electric vehicles and achieving zero emissions with chemical engineer David Reichmuth.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chuck Nice?

  Some guy pulled up to the charging station and he was looking at me like, "You dick. I can't believe you're at the 350 charge."

• 0:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, this is the future of street fights.

• 0:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Got Chuck Nice with me. Chuck, how you doing, man?

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  Hey, what's up, Neil?

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, professional comedian and actor.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  Yep, acting like a comedian.

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Acting like a comedian. How's that working for you?

• 0:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, you know, it's it's nice work if you can get it.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So today, what a topic today. Long overdue. It's our electrified future.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's everybody's thinking about it. It's always in the headlines. What path are we gonna take as civilization in order to protect the very-

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  To survive.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To survive, to survive.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  Basically, let's be honest, we're we're on the path to doom right now if we don't change.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, I will be here after climate change, but civilization won't. That's the difference. Everything we've built that we call civilization, it's not clear how that will survive.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  It's gonna be everybody who survives and Kevin Costner.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, oh, in in-

• 1:33Chuck Nice?

  Waterworld, Waterworld.

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Waterworld. Okay, nobody saw that movie, so that I don't know.

• 1:37Chuck Nice?

  No, that's true. It's a it's an obscure reference, you know.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I carry some knowledge in this field, but for this kind of topic, we need expertise, like centerline expertise. So we comb the landscape. We comb the universe, in fact, and we found we found a PhD chemical engineer named David Reichmuth. David, welcome to StarTalk.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Thanks, thanks for having me.

• 2:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And did I say your last name correctly, please?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Got it spot on.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, very excellent. You got a PhD in chemical engineering specializing in electric vehicles. This is a thing. And you're a senior engineer in the Clean Transportation Program of the Union of Concerned Scientists. I remember these folks from way back, deep Cold War era. So tell me what, who they are and what you all are doing today. And presumably you're still worrying about nukes.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I mean, that was the genesis about 50 years ago in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some MIT scientists concerned about the militarization of science, especially around nuclear weapons. And, you know, and since that time, you know, we're looking at, how do we bring the voice of science into policy? Not just in terms of weapons, but now in terms of climate change and the environment as well.

• 3:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. You got a lot to be concerned about there, David.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 3:07Chuck Nice?

  You got a lot, you got a lot on your mind there. You got a lot on your mind.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're very concerned people.

• 3:14Chuck Nice?

  Very concerned. A bunch of guys in lab coats sitting around stroking their chins.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. No, Chuck, I can see the crossover point. Will they become, when they become the Union of Pissed Off Scientists?

• 3:28Chuck Nice?

  That's what we need. That is what we need. We need the Union of Pissed Off Scientists. I love it.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  I think we're already there.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there you go, there you go.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  But we already got the website, so we'll keep the name for now.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you focus on energy analysis, transportation sustainability, both of things we need maximally in our modern civilization. And of course, they overlap. And zero emission vehicles.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 3:57Chuck Nice?

  Which, which true zero emission, you can't start with the vehicle, right? True, true zero emission, we got to start with the grid.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where the energy is coming from, right? I mean, that's, that's, okay. But let's back, let's back up for a minute. You specialize in transportation. What fraction of our carbon footprint as civilization comes from transportation at this point?

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh, good.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if you, if you look at the US, um, you've got manmade sources of climate pollution. Transportation is the largest single sector. It's over a quarter of all human caused emissions in the US. And when you look at transportation, over half that comes from passenger cars and trucks. So passenger cars and trucks alone are more emissions than, than residential and commercial buildings put together.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what about, when you say trucks, you mean even, even trucks for distribution of goods?

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  Is that, are you talking, is that CDL commercial trucks? Or is it, you say passenger cars and trucks? Is that like our big, our big pickup trucks and stuff?

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  We're, we're talking about the, the pickup trucks and SUVs in, in, in our driveways.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, there you go.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  So when we talk about the half the emissions of transportation coming from passenger cars and trucks, we're just talking about regular old pickup trucks, not, not the three trucks.

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Yeah, everyday person driving around is half of all emissions. That's, that's insane.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Half of all transportation emissions.

• 5:23Chuck Nice?

  And half of all transportation emissions, yeah.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the other half comes from what form of transportation?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Well, that, that's, that's sort of your, your larger trucks and then plane, um, shipping, rail, but, but really it's, most of that, that is going to be your, your larger trucks as well. So it's, it's the on-road transportation is really the, the bulk of emissions.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As the senior, uh, member, the three of us, the old fart, uh, I, I, I have deeper memories than you guys. I remember when air pollution simply meant the air was dirty. So now, now the air is pretty clean, all things considered, clean in terms of transparency. But we now think of CO2, byproduct of, of combustion, burning fossil fuels, as a pollutant of sorts. Uh, is that fair to say? And, and? And do we add that to what is still a polluting forces in our environment such as the burning of coal?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, you can look at it in terms of climate pollution and look, I mean, there's because it's such a huge part of our emissions, there's no way to like reduce our climate change emissions without doing something about passenger cars and trucks. I mean, there's also the air pollution that comes from these vehicles and they are cleaner than than the vehicles of of thirty years ago.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of my childhood, yes. Okay.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  But there's still, you know, there's still, you know, air pollution that is causing, you know, health impacts from these vehicles. So, yeah, a lot of it is is coming from this fine particulate matter. And so you want to end it's particles that are it's PM two point five is a technical term. It's particles that are smaller than two point five microns or micrometers.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So micron is a millionth of a meter, if I remember correctly. Is that correct? Okay.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, and just sort of context, like, so if you have hair, it's about seventy.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you have hair.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  Seventy microns is a.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hypothetically, if one had hair on their head.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pull it out.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  I don't take that for granted, but yes.

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh. For those just listening, our guest today is bald.

• 7:40Chuck Nice?

  Well, not not bald, he's Patrick Stewart distinguished.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  So that's about seventy microns is the average human hair and and so we're talking about particles that are two point five and smaller, so really, really tiny particles. And these particles are coming from the exhaust, but in most cases are not coming directly. It's it's actually nitrogen oxides, volatile organic gases combining in the atmosphere, making combining with sunlight, making fairly tiny particles. And then those particles are going deep into your lungs.

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  And that's coming.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because of how small they are.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they can they go past, you know, all of the filtering that you have naturally in your nose and and even in top of your lungs and they get deep into your lungs, they can even cross into the bloodstream. These are really, you know, that's where the most health impacts from air pollution is coming from these tiny particles. And it's not, when you say air pollution from vehicles, everyone thinks, oh, like a big rig, like, or a bus belching, you know, a black cloud, or, uh, you know, an old car that's burning oil. But even a new car, it doesn't look like it's putting out this pollution, it is leading to these really tiny particles that, that lead to asthma.

• 9:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, asthma, yeah.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:07Chuck Nice?

  So, and, and, and the latest, the latest research that I read, because I read a lot about pollution, for climate change mostly, but still, is that the previous thinking was that it, it triggered asthma, but now the thinking is that, uh, traffic pollution is causing asthma, particularly for what you just said about the tiniest part of your bronchials, uh, I forget the name of it, alveoli or something like that. Um, that's where these particulates end up lodging. And, uh, so it, it actually causes asthma.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, it's not just asthma. I mean, asthma is the most, you know, like, when you think about breathing in particles to your lungs, you think asthma and you think, you know, sort of lung disease, but it's, it's also cardiovascular disease, it's low birth weight. Um,

• 9:55Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  It's, it's a lot of different impacts beyond just asthma, but, you know, this is, these, this is pollution that, that shortens people's lives.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So David, civilization is killing us, that's what you're saying?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  No, I'm saying that.

• 10:08Chuck Nice?

  I love that he went, no, I'm not saying that at all.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  No. I'm, I'm saying we, we, we, we were exposed to this pollution, some of us, um, more than others. And, um, and we can get into that if you want, but, um, but we have now these options to, to reduce that. And so that's where I'm like.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So one of the options we've been told is switch over to an electric car, like the first of zero emissions at the car.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I get that. All right, but they had to build the car. The car has weird ingredients in it that regular car, quote, you know, the ICE cars, internal combustion engine cars don't have, and that electricity is coming from somewhere, and I don't think it's all from solar panels yet. So tell me about how green a green car really is.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, that is something that I've spent a lot of time doing analysis around. And so, you know,

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're the right guy for this question.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  I am the right guy. So first, let's look about like, you talked about the tailpipe pollution and that. Yeah, so a fully electric vehicle, obviously, no tailpipe, no tailpipe emissions. That's that's an easy one. And but, you know, Chuck, as you said, hey, that's maybe not the whole story. That means that it's a it's a zero emission vehicle, maybe at the car tailpipe, but not overall. And so what we need to do then is we look at the life cycle analysis. So we need to do an apples to apples comparison of the looking at the whole process of getting that car recharged and compare it to refueling a gasoline car, because that's what we're trying to see if it's better than, right? That's the

• 11:53Speaker 02

  current technology. And so that means for an electric car going upstream and looking at, okay, what are the emissions from power plants? And then beyond that, like, if it's a coal power plant, a natural gas power plant, what are the emissions from getting that coal out of the ground or getting that methane out of the ground and getting it to the power plant? And so you have to add up all those emissions and then compare them to the same thing for a gasoline car. Obviously, you're burning gasoline in the car. So we have those emissions that are coming out of the tailpipe of CO2. But you also have all the emissions of getting crude oil out of the ground, and then getting it to a refinery, turning it

• 12:33Speaker 02

  into gasoline, getting that gasoline, you know, to refueling station. And so there's all those steps as well. If you do that, you find that electric vehicles have, you know, not zero total emissions, but they have much lower emissions than than a gasoline vehicle. So if you look at where EVs have been sold in the US, they have on average, the average EV has emissions about equal to an 88 mile per gallon gasoline car, if one exists.

• 13:04Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's amazing.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's that's based on the average EV. If, you know, and it does depend on where in the country you are. Some places are going to be cleaner than others. If you look in the average EV in like the northeast part of the US, it's equal to about 110 miles per gallon emissions, gasoline car emissions.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting to think about it in that metric because that would tell the auto manufacturers, keep using gas, but make me 100 mile per gallon car. And then it's, then you're, you're, you're right.

• 13:41Chuck Nice?

  You're equalling out.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're equalling out.

• 13:43Chuck Nice?

  Achieved equally.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  The only problem is you can't do that. There's like physics. I mean,

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  That pesky thing, that old pesky thing, physics.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What physics have to do with it? Come on, David.

• 13:58Chuck Nice?

  With the physics.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, the maximum thermodynamic efficiency of a combustion engine and.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's pretty low. It's very low.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  I mean, we're getting, you know, we're pretty close to, you know, you can get a, you can get a gasoline car that gets up into the 50s mile per gallon range, right? With with some of the the non plug-in hybrids, but you can't really get further than that without doing, you know, a significant size change in the vehicle.

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got a fast story, which is a little bit of an off-ramp. So we've had steam engines like forever, right? So why did it take until 1903 to make an airplane? Which is just another engine, but now it's flying. And the problem was to get enough power out of a steam engine. Required a steam engine that was so heavy, you could never get enough power to fly the damn thing. Okay, and so all the experiments people were doing would say, oh, that'll never work. That'll never work. It was not until we had the internal combustion engine that the Wright brothers then put that in the airplane. And now you it's much lighter compared with the power output. And then you then you had airplanes. There it was.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so the airplane was invented very shortly after the internal combustion engine car was invented. And so so it's physics, the physics. You can't you can't make a light enough steam engine to do this with.

• 15:23Chuck Nice?

  Are you saying that the the moment that we go fully electric, we're going to have flying cars?

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't think I said that, did I? David, I you didn't hear me say that, did you? I don't think so.

• 15:46Chuck Nice?

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• 16:27Chuck Nice?

  It has room for you, your people and your things with five seats and a trunk, otherwise known as a front trunk. Experience the freedom and thrill of the drive while knowing your needs can still be met. Learn more about the all electric Ford Mustang Mach-E SUV at ford.com/suvs/mach-e. Due to high demand and global Supply chain constraints, some models, trims and features may not be available or may be subject to change. Check with your local dealer for current information. For the zero to sixty miles per hour in three point five seconds,

• 17:11Chuck Nice?

  Ford test data is based on a typical industry methodology using one foot rollout. Your results may vary.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, what about, you haven't mentioned access to the rare metals or other components of not only the battery, but also the significant computing load that an electric car carries.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we also looked at sort of what are the emissions from building electric vehicles? Because as you said, like there are the emissions involved in making that battery. And so when you look at manufacturing a gasoline vehicle, manufacturing a electric vehicle, the emissions for building that electric vehicle for global warming emissions are higher. And so there's sort of this emissions deficit. But you pay off that debt in about, it depends on whether you're looking at a pickup truck or a car and depending on where you are. But on average, for a pickup truck in about a year and a half of driving and about two years of driving for a car.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  And so overall, if you take in both the driving and the manufacture of the vehicle, if you compare an electric pickup truck to a gasoline pickup truck, it's less than half the total global warming emissions, even when you consider the manufacturing of the battery.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now what, so now that's assuming that the electric grid is being fed by traditional coal or gas. So if you can have an electrical grid that is green, either from tidal or wind or solar. And because I tell you, I had this moment some years ago, twenty years ago, I was driving an electric car, test driving an electric car. And I did it at a power station. And one of the, I was going to call it spigots, but no, but one of the stanchions at the power station connected to their nuclear plant. And so we charged up this car from the nuclear plant and I drove around and I felt

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  so zero carbon footprint in that moment. It was a remarkable feeling in that moment. I said, wow, not a single charcoal bracket was harmed in or not a not a single gallon of gasoline was used to make this happen.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's a great point because all the analysis I've done is based on sort of historical data. So the most recent data I could get from the EPA is from 2021. So we're kind of looking back now a couple of years when we do this analysis. And that grid is getting cleaner over time. We've been at UCS, we've been doing this analysis now for

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  UCS is

• 20:09Speaker 02

  At Union Concerned Scientists, we've been doing this analysis now for over 10 years. When we first did this analysis, the results were a little more mixed, you know, because we had almost half the power in, you know, in 2009, almost half the power in the US coming from coal. That's now down below 20% of the power coming from coal. Renewables are now higher than than coal in the US. So we're making this transition and those cars are getting cleaned up. And the cool thing about electric cars is that, you know, if you buy a car five years ago and the grid gets cleaner, that means the emissions are

• 20:54Speaker 02

  going down over time.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, for your car?

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, for your car. So it's not just like, you know, if you want to get a gasoline car that's more efficient, that has fewer emissions, you have to go out and get a new car that's, you know, has a higher MPG. Your electric car is going to be plugging into the same plug, but it's going to be getting cleaner as we clean up the grid, even those old EVs are getting cleaner.

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's amazing. So the book I read called Turning Oil Into Salt, and I forgot the two authors, co-authors of that, where that made a fascinating point, which was you have a car that requires

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oil products, so gasoline, it'll only run on gasoline. So wherever your oil comes from in the world, you know about it because it's a strategic commodity. Salt used to be a strategic commodity because it was the only way you could preserve foods from one harvest into the next spring. And so your life depended on knowing where this all come from and how much it cost. And in fact, the northern soldiers bombed the southern salt reserves during the civil war as a strategic move to continue the stranglehold on their ability to fight. So today, do you know how much your salt costs? Do you even care? Do you know where it comes from?

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know and you don't care because we have 12 other ways to preserve your food. Refrigeration, freezing, canning, it goes on and on. And salt is like a one of a dozen or more. So the thesis of the book was if you have a car that does not depend on gasoline, that could run on 30 different types of fuel, then the gasoline is no longer a strategic commodity. It just has to compete with 30 other commodities. Well, how big an engine do you have to have so that you can put anything in it and have it still run? Oh, no, just make an electric car, plug it into the wall, and on the other side of

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that plug is the sources, the multiple sources of energy that are competing with each other. There's an open marketplace, our demands, what they supply. And so an electric car does run on 25 different sources of fuel. Is that a fair understanding of this, David?

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that is one of the huge advantages, that you can make electricity from cleaner sources and we can make that transition. And it doesn't mean, you know, your electric vehicle still plugs into the same outlet.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the two authors there, I've got Anne Coran and Gail Luft. So they're the two authors of that of that book, Turning Oil Into Salt. I thought it was a brilliant thesis there. So David, are you at odds with oil companies here? Why don't they just convert to green or is that what they're already doing?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I don't think any of the petroleum companies are interested in accelerating this transition to electric vehicles. I mean, they You know, I think that, you know, at one point it was, you know, that these, these vehicles can't work. Nobody's gonna want them. Nobody can use them. Uh, I think now that the opponents of electric vehicles are more in the mode of, yes, yes, yes, we'll make this transition, but let's just do it as slowly as possible. You know, we have, we have thirty years of oil that we'd like to, um, pull out of the ground and burn.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. If, if fracking, if fracking goes, goes unchecked, it's more than that. Right?

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then after, after we do that, then yeah, then we can make that.

• 24:28Chuck Nice?

  And we'll do it. Yeah. And we'll all be dead. But guess what? I don't know who we're gonna sell the oil to.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  We'll just, we'll just be living in a hotter, less hospitable world.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, David. So, so let me ask, let, let, let me come at this another way. Uh, I just try to stay open here to, not so open that my brains spill out, but I want to just make sure all options are covered. Uh, you go back a hundred and twenty years, there were horses everywhere. Uh, I'd see the old pictures in New York City, the horses everywhere, horse drawn carriages and cabs and everything. And there's horse poop everywhere, manure. And so the cities stank and there were flies and they, and there were no supermarkets then. A lot of food merchants were just on the street. So the flies were in the food. And when I grew up, you didn't complain if flies were everywhere because that's just how everything was. Even in the deli, the flies all are, all right. You didn't want

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the flies, but you lived with them. You get rid of the manure, okay? Then you get rid of most of the flies. So how are you gonna get rid of the manure? Well, you can put something in the horse's feed. So maybe the flies don't like it. You put less bulk in there so they poop less. There are all these solutions and the solution really was the car. Okay? But no one was saying, let's, let's invent a car so that we don't have flies on my deli sandwich. It was, there was just progress. So, I recently saw a, a, a, a, a news brief on this startup company that wants to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, they, they have this, this array, this like phased array of the raw ingredients that has everything except CO2 to make limestone. And they blow the air across it that this substance, this powdery substance grabs the CO2 and makes limestone. And then they take the limestone and bury it into the earth. These would be CO2 scrubbers, I think we call them. And if one of these was at every power plant, then we could control, in an act of geoengineering, control the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. And if we did that, and if we could do it, then you could burn as much oil as you wanted, until there's not a drop left. And it will have no effect

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  on climate change, provided we, this doesn't run away from us. So is there any thinking along those lines?

• 26:55Speaker 02

  Well, I think what's a lot cheaper and easier is not putting the CO2 in the atmosphere.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the atmosphere.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Than trying to pull it out. And so that is, so the best thing you can do is just avoid it altogether. If you can walk, bike, take transit, take your electric bikes, go whatever, that's the best thing you can do. The second best thing is to not burn the gasoline, not burn the oil at all.

• 27:22Chuck Nice?

  So really, that the solution to the anecdote that you gave Neil is get rid of the horses.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the 21st century version of that.

• 27:36Chuck Nice?

  Just get rid of it. So, yeah, yeah, it makes sense. I mean,

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, but David, David, David, I live in the in the real world here, and I interact with the public daily through my social media platforms. And I care about how they think, because I, knowing that enables me to communicate more effectively. All right. So that my message is received with receptors that I know lives within them. And what I can tell you without hesitation is, there's always some fraction of the population that's ready to change and modify their behavior and do whatever they gotta do for the good of the earth. And then there's the rest of everybody that says, I don't want to change a damn thing.

• 28:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for example, go back 150 years, we were still slaughtering whales for whale oil. Whale. Right, to burn our lamps and everything. And the blubber was highly valuable. And there were people that didn't want to kill these majestic creatures. Were they successful? Not really. Yes, we stopped killing whales, but not really because they're saying no. We stopped killing whales because we found oil in the ground. Okay, we found oil in the ground to burn instead of having to go out and risk our lives. Because that required no risk of life. Risking our lives with Ahab and the great wife. Moby Dick. Moby Dick, right, right? His name was Ahab, right?

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Captain Ahab. Captain Ahab. So, so once again, things changed because, not because you got billions of people to change their behavior, but because some form of discovery, technology, some addition to our civilization did not require you to change your behavior. So.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I mean, you are right in that this, you know, we, it's an amazing amount of change in a really short period of time. Look, if you look 15 years ago, the only people that had electric cars were people that basically had to make their own electric cars.

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there were people who played golf, people who played golf.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Golf carts.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  But there's a few people out there making their own like electric cars in their garage. And then, and if you look at maybe like 10 years ago, you really had to go out of your way to get an electric car. There was only a few available. They, some of them weren't really great at being a car. And you had to go out of your way to do it. And there weren't, there weren't a whole lot of them sold. If you look at today, we got in California, over 25% of new cars are plug-in electric vehicles. We are getting past the early adopters. We're starting to get into, you know, really into the mainstream, at least in parts of the US.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wait, David, just so you know, don't be so surprised because, back to the horses, New York City went from all horses in 1905 to basically all cars in 1920. You couldn't give away a horse 15 years later. And civilization was built, literally and figuratively, on the backs of horses for thousands of years, and they were gone within 15 years. That was surely a bigger transition for anybody around at the turn of that century than going from combustion engine to electric cars today.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  David, are you concerned, do I get to use that word in this way? Are you concerned about people's range anxiety? About whether they're gonna run out of battery and there's no place to refill and then they're stranded on the road? They can't even walk to the nearest station with a can.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  Gas station and get a can of gas.

• 31:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And bring the can of gas back.

• 31:46Chuck Nice?

  Excuse me, do you have a 25-mile-long cord?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  The issue of where do you charge? For most of the people buying an electric car today, it's pretty simple. You charge in your driveway or your garage. And you...

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so instead of filling up in the road, you fill up at home?

• 32:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so that's part of the thing is that you don't... If you're driving, a lot of the cars right now have over 200-mile range. So for most of your driving, everyday driving, you're commuting to work or visiting, for me, visiting family in the Bay Area. It's not really a question of where do you charge. I charge in the garage and then, you know, if it's low on range, I plug it in and next morning it's full.

• 32:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're good.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  It's really simple. Now, we do need those public charging stations so you can take those longer trips easily, or if you don't have the ability to charge at home. And so that's something that is happening right now is building out that charging infrastructure so that more people can use it.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm going to add to this. When I was growing up, and we saw a lot of plays, I grew up in New York City, the playbill always had multiple ads for cars. And they always showed people driving on an open road and it said, "Take a trip today. Go, take a drive. And it's Sunday, take a drive." And I just thought that was the natural order of the universe, that when you got a car, you just found a place to drive to. The car wasn't a utility, it was an expression of your freedom. And I don't see that happening anymore. I don't, people say, "Oh, let's take a drive for 100 miles and look at the scenery and then come back." I don't see,

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  or maybe it's still happening, I don't see it. It could be that this range anxiety is a leftover from people who were thinking about taking a 200-mile car trip, but today just wouldn't do that anymore. You get on Zoom and talk to people, you know, what are you doing that for? What's the need? Yeah, why are you doing that for? Because you've got to be in the car with your family. Come on. Is that it? Okay. So David, maybe there's fewer trips that are even necessary.

• 34:12Speaker 02

  Well, I think there is the case of like, I mean, look, people buy an electric car, they want to be able to see like, "Hey, can I get from Oakland to Boston? You know, can I drive there?" It's like, You know, are there enough charging space?

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not that they ever did before.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go on.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Or not that I ever will, right? If I need to get to Boston, I'm probably gonna go to the airport. Uh, and, uh, and I don't want to have to drive for, for days on end to do that. But, you know, I think that people want to be able to see that. And it's something that, you know, this is a transition that, that is, you know, we are still on the first steps of this transition.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  And we are, there are, there's federal funding for, in the bipartisan infrastructure law, over seven billion to build out charging stations in the U.S. A lot of the car companies are investing in charging, uh, infrastructure to make sure that you can make all of those trips. Now, it's gonna be a little bit different than a gasoline car. You might have to do a little bit of like planning or, or at least see like where the charging stations are, especially right now.

• 35:21Chuck Nice?

  They have apps for that now.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:22Chuck Nice?

  I have an app. I have an electric car. It's an app. It tells me when I get in the car, the first thing it says is where I can go charge.

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't, why don't the traditional convenient marts all have electric charging stations? Or do they? I haven't noticed that. The charging stations tend to be in other places.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  I mean, it's, it's, it's a, there are different, there's different reasons why different charging stations are in different places and it depends on who's buying the charging station, whether it's a car company or a, a for-profit, uh, you know, third-party charging company. But I think part of it is just that, like, it is gonna take a, just a different, slightly different mindset. And we are people that have, where the norm is the gasoline car and the, the electric vehicle is the weird thing and I have to do research, I have to figure it out.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Like, if you go, you know, like, if we go to, if we went to a car dealership and said, like, I'd like to buy a gasoline car, they wouldn't spend time telling me, well, here's how you refuel it. Like, you know, here's how it happens.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  But.

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the map of gas stations for you.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Right. But, but I'm, you know, if I was, if I was maybe not an expert on EVs and going to, I might have those questions, right? So it's a different mindset. Like, my daughter's 18. She learned how to drive on electric car. That is the normal for her. When she was going, she went off to college this, uh, this fall. And there are rental cars on her campus. And I was like, oh my gosh, do you know how to refuel a gasoline car?

• 36:48Chuck Nice?

  No, no.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  And I had, we had to go to a gas station and, and like, okay, here's, you know, you, you take the, you take the nozzle out, you put here, here's how you do it. And, and, you know, that is just, you know.

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, you don't want her to be one of those people who likes the smell of gasoline. You know, there's some people, but who are those people? I don't know who those people are, but they exist for sure.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  I mean, I know for, I mean, also for an 18 year old, like, uh, instead of spending $70 at a gas station, charging at home every day, every night is, is, is a great, is a great deal.

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, plus often the, the, the electric rates are lower at night. So it's very natural.

• 37:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To plug in your car overnight.

• 37:29Chuck Nice?

  Kilowatt hours are much cheaper at night, which is why you gotta plug in, plug in at night, charge overnight, guys.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. In any event, it's going to be cheaper than, than gasoline.

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is the compatibility among different, uh, charging stations with the cars people buy? Because with all the gas nozzles, they match up no matter what brand of car it is. So did we have this issue coming into this brand new marketplace?

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. So most, most of the chargers at home were, were the same type. Uh, when we look at chargers though, for the fast charging, we had essentially three different plugs. Um, one plug that the Japanese car companies were using, one that the US and the European car companies were using, and then one that Tesla was using. Um, now, pretty much all cars and all manufacturers from 2025 and onwards have said they're going to use the North American charging standard as the one plug. So right now there's still this diversity of plugs, but going forward, that's all going to standardize to one fast charging plug.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. That's, that's, that's very hopeful. And I, I know we're still in the early days of this marketplace. But right now, if you compare the price of an electric car to that of an internal combustion, there's a very big gap there. So is, are electric cars a rich people's game? And will that ever change?

• 38:51Speaker 02

  I mean, as we're, as we're getting more and more models out there, we're going to see both, you know, luxury cars and we're going to see more recently priced electric vehicles. One thing that is going to help is that the federal tax credit has, is, is going to make that initial cost of the, the electric vehicle more competitive with a gasoline vehicle. Starting in, in January of 2024, a lot of car companies are going to be able to offer that at the dealership. So you don't have to wait for your tax return. You're just going to get that just as, as, as part of that, you know, taken off the sale price of the vehicle.

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is the federal government basically investing in, in the stability of its own energy future.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you foresee a, in, in the near future, not only tax incentives, but also the overall drop in price, you foresee?

• 39:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're, we're seeing battery prices come down. And I mean, they've, they've dropped dramatically, dramatically in the last decade. And I think that's still going to happen as we start building more batteries, have that price of the batteries come down, which makes the price of electric vehicle come down. The other part of it is that the upfront cost of these electric vehicles is higher, but the cost of recharging these vehicles is much lower than buying gasoline. So on net, you're going to be able to have a total cost of ownership that's less, but it is important to have those incentives.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And less maintenance and repair, of course. Less maintenance and repair.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  No oil changes for the fully electric vehicles, no spark plugs. It's, you know, it's a pretty simple electric motor. So there's not really much maintenance. You know, you still have to change the tires, but you gotta put the windshield wiper fluid in, but that's about it.

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. All right. So what about, is there still talk of possibly swapping out a battery so that you don't have to wait the duration of time? Because not all charging stations are, are, are created equal, right? Depends on the voltage. And as I understand it, David. The charging rate goes as the square of the voltage, right? And so if I understand that correctly, so you want as high a voltage charging station as possible, and then it goes rapidly, uh, maybe in the time it takes you to have a cup of coffee.

• 41:15Chuck Nice?

  It's great.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the extent that those are not available, you can't on a trip say, I gotta sit here for two hours and charge while I twiddle my thumbs. Uh, I, I, I would have finished my cup of coffee in 15 minutes. So what is it? Do you guys have a response to that on the grid?

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. So, um, the latest charging stations go up to the 350, 350 kilowatts. Um, and the, the, the, there's also a part of it that's dependent on the car. So some of the cars are built around an 800 volt architecture that can accept, um, the maximum rate of charge. And so those cars are cars that you can go from, say, 20% charge to 80% charge in, in less than 20 minutes. Um, and so that is-

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all you need, right? That's all you need.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that is the case where like, hey, like if you've been driving for, for two or three hours, yeah, like it's not bad to take a 15 minute or 20 minute stop, stretch your legs, get a cup of coffee, et cetera. And so I think, I think that is part of it is that, you know, as we look into the future, more and more of the cars are going to be capable of doing those faster charges where it's, yeah, it's going to be a little bit longer than, than, um, than filling up with gasoline. I don't know. When I, when I take road trips with, with, with my kids, uh, you know, the, the, the, the gasoline stop is not the one that, that extends my trip. It's the, it's the having to stop for the bathroom, having to stop for snacks, then stopping for the bathroom again.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  And so those are the stops. Uh, and if we're talking about going 400 miles or something, then, you know, you're probably going to make a stop anyway.

• 42:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, maybe too. And like you said, the fast chargers are amazing. They, they charge you like, like you said, from, first of all, you're never going to zero because the, the car won't let you. It, the app tells you, hey, man, you gotta go here and charge. And secondly, so you're down around 20%. You're going up to 80%, you know? And sometimes even, uh, and it takes about 20, not even 20 minutes. The last time I did it on a 350 kilowatt charger, uh, it, it took me nine, 18 minutes exactly.

• 43:24Chuck Nice?

  And I went to 92%, I remember. And the only reason I stopped is because some guy pulled up to the charging station and he was looking at me like, you dick. I can't believe you're at the 350 charging. I could see he wanted that charging station because there was only one 350 kilowatt.

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, this is the future of street fights.

• 43:46Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. So I saw him about to park and I wait, I motioned to him. I was like, yo, man, I'm gonna leave and I just stopped. So, you know, I mean, but at some point you won't have that. At some point, I, I envision a time, and maybe it's me just being super optimistic. But I envision a time where municipalities will invest in charging stations. So instead of parking meters, you'll plug in, you'll pay your parking meter and a charging fee and the, and the city will make money that way. You know, I could totally see that happen.

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop trying to give advice for how New York City can get more parking fees out of me.

• 44:24Chuck Nice?

  I know, that's true. What is wrong with me?

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop that. Stop. Okay. Um, David, we gotta sort of land this plane here. I got a couple of final questions.

• 44:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wait, this show is over?

• 44:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 44:34Chuck Nice?

  It can't be.

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. Okay, so David.

• 44:36Chuck Nice?

  This is so good.

• 44:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  David, uh, can the grid handle 100% electric cars? The electrical grid, the power grid?

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it will be able to if we do this right.

• 44:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That doesn't sound very encouraging. We will maybe if we sort of might be able to. Because that's because, because be careful what we wish for. You want everybody to have electric cars, you have electric cars. Now we have to have brownouts or blackouts because the electric car is definitely drawing more power than my air conditioner did in the summer, right? When they're telling me to, to, to unplug stuff because the power grid can't handle it. So.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What assurance do I have that on the other side of that equation, on the other side of the plug, the power is going to be there for everybody if everybody switches over?

• 45:25Speaker 02

  I mean, that's a great example because your air conditioner, I mean, you need it when you need it, right? Like you, you need it at maybe at, at 4:00 PM on a, on a summer day.

• 45:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Um, and, and you don't, you're not really interested in changing that to, to using it at 4:00 AM. Maybe. And so that is the thing is that most EVs are going to be parked for over 20 hours a day, maybe 23 hours a day. And they're probably going to, even at home, actively charge for maybe two or three hours, even if you've been driving around.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it spreads, it spreads that out. Okay.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  If we can be smart about when those cars are being charged, like you only, if you only need to charge for two hours, you know, it doesn't need to be at the same time.

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so I'm making this up, but the power company could then strategically price hour by hour what your fees are, forcing people to respond to save money by charging their cars at different times of day.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just got an email today from, from Marin County Electric, uh, or Marin Clean Electricity that, that had an offer that if you said, okay, I need, if you have, use their app and say, okay, I need to have my car fully charged by 7 a.m., but you get, but you, the power company, get to pick when, they would give you a rebate. Cause that way they could.

• 46:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Money back.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  They could pick, and the great thing is that that lets you actually get more renewables on the grid. Because hey, look, if there's more wind power, or if it's during the day, like, you know, it's, it's 10 a.m. in the morning and air conditioners haven't kicked on yet, but we have lots of solar power, charge the vehicles then.

• 47:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  So you can sync up renewables and.

• 47:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the, with the source of power that it is without having to store it. You can just distribute it through the 24 hour cycle. That's brilliant.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like obvious, but completely brilliant.

• 47:23Chuck Nice?

  At some point, the grid will be smart enough, won't it, to, to actually, uh, kind of almost as a collaboration with the homeowner, to tell you, hey, you know, or to look at patterns and find for you the best time to do everything.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that's where we need to go. It's, but it's going to require that the car companies, it's going to require the utilities, the regulators, all sort of working together. I mean, right now, it's not an issue, but we want to lay the foundation so that when we do get all those electric vehicles out there, that this is all worked out and we're not trying to figure it out on the backend.

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So have we solved this other than just batteries? Is there a more inventive storage mechanism for daytime solar power? Or, or does it have to be used as it gets generated?

• 48:10Speaker 02

  I mean, I think the easiest thing is that if we can use it when it's available, that is the best thing. And that's where EVs, both in passenger vehicles, also larger vehicles, trucks, school buses are a great example because they only get used usually like twice a day. And the rest of the time, they could be sitting there being charged. The other thing that we can do is that if everyone has a big battery in their driveway or garage, is that we could even go one step further. Instead of just controlling when they charge, we could have them send power back to the grid when there is the peak load. So that is the other step is sort of not just controlling when they charge, but can

• 48:54Speaker 02

  they actually feed power back? Or if there's a power outage, can they power a home or even help power a neighborhood? This all falls under vehicle to grid integration. And it is incredibly important thing that is where we're just starting to sort of figure out the policies to make that happen.

• 49:14Chuck Nice?

  And real quick, is there any, any plans to have like photovoltaic skins on a car so that the car itself becomes a recharging source?

• 49:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the daytime.

• 49:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 49:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The car stranded at night, okay? But, okay.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. There are people that have looked into that. There, there's a few models that have looked into doing that. But in general, it's hard to get enough, you don't have enough area to really recharge the car. You need more area. And also, the other thing is you have to be parked somewhere that is where you can use that. And, and it might not necessarily be at the right angle. Whereas if you have panels on the ground or on a roof, you, you can angle them correctly and they're going to get sun, oh, when it's sunny.

• 50:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we have a StarTalk episode of those guys who had the solar powered airplane. Do you remember that? It was a few years ago. And that was interesting.

• 50:15Chuck Nice?

  Transatlantic flight.

• 50:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And because they can fly above the clouds, of course, and get air. And then they talk about if they get high enough by sunset. Then they can, they'll slowly descend like over hours and hours, but and get sort of low, but not too low for the sunrise to kick in and pick them up again. It was an interesting sort of dynamic about that. But anyway, yeah, and, and their skin is, is our solar panels on, on the airplane. Because of course they have wings. There's a lot of surface area there relative to a car, of course. Yeah.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can make a solar powered car. It's been done. They, I think they had a race in Australia like decades ago, uh, where they did that. Um, but it involved having like one person laying down in this very flat aerodynamic car. Um, and so maybe not, um, practical for, for.

• 51:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not ready for prime time yet. Okay. Guys, we got to close this out. David, this has been delightfully informative and I'm glad to know that you and others of your brethren exist in this world, being of course concerned about. Uh, David, how do we find you, the Union of Concerned Scientists online? Where, what's your website there?

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, we are at www.u cs usa dot O R G.

• 51:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And does it include, do you collaborate with, uh, other, other countries?

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, most of our work is, is based in the U S, but we definitely, you know, have, have some work, uh, in terms of like.

• 51:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Dr. Reichmuth, thanks for being on StarTalk.

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks for having me.

• 52:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Chuck, good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. All right. This has been StarTalk, a Union of Concerned Scientists edition, telling us about the future of an electrified world. Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.