Science Friday - Planning To Power The Electric Vehicle Boom, Hurricane Ian Aftermath. October 7, 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: October 7, 2022

Hurricane Ian Destroys Iconic Florida House Meant To Survive Hurricanes The Cape Romano Dome House, built in 1982, was an iconic—if more recently unsightly—piece of Florida architecture. The six interconnected domes located in Collier County, Florida, were built to be hurricane resistant and self-sustaining, with solar power, rainwater harvesting, and other innovations. However, erosion and rising sea levels had put the structure at risk, with the structure’s foundation pillars being completely underwater by 2009. Last week’s Hurricane Ian finally destroyed the structure. Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American, joins Ira to talk about the symbolic loss of the building and other stories from the week in science. They discuss possible approaches to repair the damaged Nord Stream gas pipeline, the finding that certain cancerous tumors contain their own microbiomes of bacteria and fungi, and the delicate process of interpreting the behavioral cues of your feline friends.   How States Are Planning To Power The Electric Vehicle Boom California and New York recently adopted regulations which ban sales of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Several other states are likely to quickly follow suit. But the uptick in vehicle demand will also require new infrastructure, and increase demand for mining metals used to produce car batteries. Jessika Trancik, professor at the Institute for Data, Systems and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and David Reichmuth, senior engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Transportation Program, join Ira Flatow to discuss the future of electric vehicles. Plus, Eric Gebhardt, chief technology officer at Wabtec, an industrial locomotive company, discusses the challenges and promise of battery-electric trains.     Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, the future of electric vehicles. California rolled out an ambitious plan to ban the sale of new gas cars by 2035. Others are following, but is our infrastructure up to the task of supporting all these new EVs? And can the new incentives in the Biden Inflation Reduction Act help with the transition? What do you think? Give us a call. 844-724-8255. We are taking your calls live. Yes, we're alive this week. 844-8255. But first, residents of Florida are still recovering from the devastating Hurricane Ian, which brought massive storm surges and flood-like rains. We've all seen the pictures, right, of the boats washed in the middle of the housing developments and neighborhoods with homes flattened or inundated with mud. But off the coast of one of Florida's many islands, there was a small bit of destruction with a bigger symbolic meaning. Here to talk to talk about that and other stories from the week in science is Sophie Bushwick, technology editor at Scientific American right here in our New York studios. Good to have you back,

Sophie. I'm delighted to be here in person. Yes, it's nice to have you. All right, let's talk about this. Tell me about the structure, the Cape Romano Dome Home, or Dome House, was this very cool home. It was constructed in 1982, and it had these six large geodesic domeses all joined together to create a house of about 2400 square feet. And it was designed with that dome shape, particularly because domes are really great at resisting wind. There's nothing for the wind to catch on. Right. So it was great withstanding hurricane force winds. And in fact, in 1992, Hurricane Andrew hit the area and the inside of the house was trashed, but apparently the exterior structure was standing pretty well. But the problem is it was built out on this like spit of land. And as

as sea levels were rising, it just eroded away. So the house, two of the domes were destroyed by Hurricane Irma, but the other four were still standing in the water with partially flooded. And then Hurricane Ian hit and it just destroyed them the rest of the way. Wow. So it was designed to be self-sustaining and survive hurricanes. Yes. Yeah, it had all these cool sustainability things of like gathering rainwater.

It had that dome shape to resist hurricane winds. And it would have all been great. if it wasn't for the fact that it was just built so close to the ocean, that sea level rise really devastated it. Yeah, nature will win out on some of these things. Because we thought that, as you say, this would be impervious to these hurricanes. Yeah, yeah, and it was designed to be, but it was a little hubristic. Yeah, yeah, it has now been destroyed.

But there are also more modern communities that have been better designed for the changing conditions, right? How did they fare? So there's this very cool community called Babcock Ranch that has been designed, as you say, to withstand hurricanes. So the first thing they did is, unlike the Cape Romano Dome home, they built inland, 30 miles inland. They've also built in these retaining ponds so that when it's raining heavily, when there's floods, those can get some of the water before it reaches the homes.

And then the roads of the development itself are designed to absorb even more water. So if it gets past those retaining ponds, it'll still not cause the kind of flooding that were seen in other homes in the state. And it even has other, there's even very cool things like they've buried all the power lines underground so they won't get knocked on by the wind. Great idea. They've hundreds of acres devoted to solar arrays. So they're powered by solar power during the day. And then they've got natural gas generators to pick up the slack at night and in cloudy conditions.

And I'm gushing about it a little bit because all that planning paid off. It did. Yeah. They made it through Hurricane Ian relatively unscathed. In fact, they actually opened up a community center to climate refugees from other parts of the state who had nowhere to go after Ian destroyed their homes. Some good news from Florida. Let's move on to another kind of undersea construction. And I'm talking about the mysterious damage to this Nord Stream gas pipeline, right?

Tell us about that. Do we still know what happened? Are we going to still have to find out? So there's a lot of unknowns still. The damage seems to have been caused by explosions that were. set deliberately. It's unclear who is responsible for that, and it's also unclear exactly how it was done. But in three locations, the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines have been damaged. And pipelines are designed, especially undersea pipelines, they're designed to resist a lot of damage.

You know, they have to be able to withstand a ship's anchor accidentally balking into them or objects falling, seismic activity on the seafloor. And of course, seawater does not play nice with metal. So corrosion is a big, big problem. Yeah. And so despite all of these safety measures, the pipeline was damaged. But luckily, the engineers have planned for that. So they have a couple different options going forward for how they might want to fix the damaged areas. Yeah, because as you say, what, a submarine or a lot of technology would need.

You need to cause that kind of damage. Yes. Yeah, this wasn't the amount of gas that was released suggests that there was like a much more destruction than could be caused by probably a minor accident. Now let's move on to a story that you have this week about possible ways that it might be possible to repair this pipeline. I mean, do we go down and, you know, how do we go down? How do we repair this thing? From the inside, maybe? I don't know. So there's a couple options. So one option is just lifting the damaged part up out of the water and then you take the damaged pipe, replace it with a fresh one, and then weld it on where the damage pipe used to be. And you can do

that depending. This all depends on the depth of the water where the damage. damaged area is, right? Like, you can't lift something up for hundreds of meters, but you might be able to lift it up if it's at a shallower depth. And then the other option is you go down to fix it. So they have these hyperbaric chambers. You're essentially bringing an air bubble with you down to the seafloor where this pipe is, and then you weld the replacement piece into place while you're underwater. It's like how you build a tunnel. Yes. Same kind of idea. Exactly. You bring it with you. You have a story this week about possible ways that it might be possible to repair those. And the other news you have is that there's an intriguing story about the microbiome and cancerous tumors. I saw this being published, but it's not our microbiome. The tumors themselves have their own bacteria and fungi. They have their own. The tumors have a microbiome. That's amazing. Yes. This is fascinating. So researchers had known before that there was an association between bacteria and certain tumors. but they've just done a few really major studies looking at fungi.

And they found that specific species of fungi tend to be found in specific types of cancer and that the type of fungi or the amount of it can be predictive of what's going to happen with that tumor. So for instance, there's one particular species of fungus and it's normally found in pancreatic tumors. Right. But when it shows up in tumors from breast cancer, it's associated with much lower survival. rates. So that suggests it could be a predictor of what's going to happen. There's another type of candida, which is, you know, better known as the fungus that causes yeast infections. And when that's found in certain gastrointestinal tumors, if it's at higher levels,

it's associated with lower survival rates. Well, could this help then diagnose whether or find hidden tumors, right, if you look for the fungi? Yes, absolutely. That's one thing that could it could help with that. It could help sort of indicate, oh, more aggressive treatment is needed because the fungus associated with worse outcomes is present or is there at higher levels. But the thing is, a lot more work is still needed to discover what is going on here in terms of cause and effect? So it's unclear, is the fungus spurring the cancer on? Or is the tumor just an environment where this particular fungus can thrive? I love that. I love that. That's for tomorrow. We'll find out more about it. You have a story this week about predicting human behavior and how we measure how people are feeling.

Explain that to us. Right. So you're probably used to, you know, rating a restaurant after you eat there or, you know, something you buy online. You'll leave a rating. The problem is those, as you know, when you're trying to find a good place to eat and looking at how many stars people have left, it's very subjective. And it's not, it's based on people's feelings. And scientists don't love that. So when economists are making predictions about human behavior, they like to use hard quantitative data like the GDP of a country or what your socioeconomic status is.

But a new study did look at the ratings people give for their own life. So they followed a group of 700,000 people over the course of 30 years. And they periodically asked them to rate on a numerical rating how their job was going, their marriages, and their health. And what they found was that these ratings, these subjective ratings of squishy feelings, were actually great at predicting human behavior. Wow, that is interesting. And something you're keeping an eye on and moving on is a court case in Montana involving kids in climate change. Tell us about that, please. Yes. So this is going to be the first case, the first trial heard in court of young people suing the government in the United States. So there's been a couple different, there's been several different lawsuits of specific groups of children suing state governments and also suing the federal government. But in June, in Montana, they're expected to actually go to court and plead their case.

And a lot of kids, if I remember this correctly, a lot of kids have been saying, you know, you're taking our future away from us, right? Yes. You have no right to do that, right? Yes, they're saying that their rights to have a healthy life without full. fearing for the damage that's been caused by climate change has been compromised by governments continuing to support fossil fuels and other industries that create emissions that spur climate change. So this has actually made it to court now? Yes. And we'll have a decision, perhaps when?

It's supposed to go to court next year in June. So next summer. Okay. Get your breath on that. Finally, we have, how shall I put this? Important news for all the cat owners out there. research into how to tell behaviorally if your cat likes you. Is that actually possible? I know cat owner, I'm not a cat owner, but I know how finicky cats can be. Can you actually tell if your

cat likes you? Yes. So you can. Cats are famously aloof, but you can figure out what your cat thinks of you by, because your cat treats you as a fellow cat. So if a cat is giving you signals that it gives to other cats when it likes them, that's a sign that it likes you. So for example, cats love to rub their scents on things. They have scent glands around their head and neck. So if the cat is rubbing its head against you, it's leaving its scent on you. It's saying, I'm marking you. You know, you're one of mine. Another indication is in the tail. When cats have their tail straight up like a flagpole, that's a positive sign that they recognize you and they like you. Sometimes they also do a tail in a question mark shape. That's another good sign. And one thing cats love to do is

roll over and show their belly to people they like, but they do not want you to pet them there. They're just saying, look, I'm willing to be vulnerable and expose myself to you. Wow. If you go in for a pet, though, they're probably going to call you. How different than a dog, right? Very different. Dogs love that. Dogs love it.

Cats are just signaling you, and then you touch them and they're like, no, no, no, that's not what I meant. That's a cat. Thank you, Sophie. It was good to have you back. Thank you. So Sophie Bushwick Technology Editor at Scientific American. We have to take a short break, and when we come back, we'll be talking about the future of electric vehicles and the impact of new regulations on, you know, which phase out the sale of

gas powered cars in New York and California by 2035. What do you think? Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hey there, podcast listeners. I were here with a simple request. If you're listening to this podcast learning something, enjoying yourself, please go to sciencefriiday.com slash support to make a donation. Our work and this podcast, depends on public support from listeners like you. You know that. You're here listening, which means you find our programming valuable. Any amount makes a difference, even two bucks. But the lasting gifts are the ones we can count on sustaining donations, which we can rely on every year. So please go to sciencefriiday.com slash support to make your gift. Again, that's

ScienceFriday.com slash support. And thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. For years, electric vehicles have struggled to take hold in the U.S. You know about that. Right now, just about 1% of the 250 million cars, trucks, and SUVs on the road are electric.

But that is starting to change and happening very quickly. Just in the first quarter of this year, electric car ownership rose by about 60%. And regulations recently adopted in California are set to turbocharge that number of electric vehicles on the road. The mandate is a gradual phase out of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. New York recently announced it will follow California's lead and several other states are likely to follow suit. So how big of a deal are these new regulations? And is our infrastructure up to the challenge? I mean, can it handle an influx of EVVs?

What about battery production? Can that be ramped up as well? And does Biden's Inflation Reduction Act help to stimulate the transition to zero emission vehicles? Well, we'll be talking about the promise of brand new electric batteries, including trains. We're going to talk about battery trains. Did you know the electric batteries and trains now? They're experimenting with it. We'll talk about it.

Joining me now to talk about the future of electric vehicles and take your questions are my guests. Jessica Transic, Professor at the Institute for Data Systems. and Society at MIT in Cambridge. And David Reikmuth, senior engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Clean Transportation Program. He's based in Oakland. Welcome both of you to Science Friday. Thanks so much.

Thanks. You're welcome. We want to hear from our audience also. Do you have an electric car or a vehicle? If you don't, why not? And are there technology improvements that might entice you? Anything you've worried about also as people adopt electric over gas cars. Our number 844-8255, that's 844-8-25-

Let's get on with our questions. Let me ask you, Professor Transic, how significant are these new regulations in California? What's your overall impression of how they'll impact the clean energy transportation transition? Yeah, I mean, they're really significant. You know, It's basically signaling to the market that this transition is happening. You know, if we also consider New York's commitments, this represents a large portion of new car sales in the U.S. And the U.S. is a large market, you know, globally. So it's really, I think, going to help accelerate the transition to electric vehicles. That transition is already happening.

But when you're thinking about climate change, the question is, you know, how quickly is that transition going to happen and is it going to happen quickly enough to, you know, help draw down greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst, you know, help avoid the worst impacts of climate change. And David, how realistic is this target? I mean, no new gas cars being sold by 2035 in California, New York, and several other states, which are likely to adopt these regulations? Yeah, it's definitely realistic and achievable. You know, One important thing about this regulation, it's not about flipping a switch. It's not about setting a target in 2035 and just hoping we get there. These rules start with model year 2026

vehicles and require 35% of new vehicles to be zero emission vehicles. So it provides that pathway, that glide slope to get to that end goal of 100% zero emission vehicles. And if you look at where we are today, you know, in California for the first half of 2022, we were at 18% zero-emission vehicle sales. And, you know, that's up from just 5% five years ago. So we're really on that path. And if you look broader, if you look outside the U.S., we're seeing other countries moving ahead as well. Germany, for example, is it about 25% zero-emission vehicle sales. So it's something that the auto companies, I think this is a goal that they can meet, but we do need that regulatory backstop to make sure that they do make that transition, and as Jessica said,

as quickly as possible. So is this the push that carmakers need to ramp up their production of electrical vehicles, David? Yeah, this is an important part of making sure that drivers have the option to choose an electric vehicle when they go buy a new vehicle. So this will help provide that certainty that we're going to get those vehicles out there. And what we've seen right now is that some of the auto companies are participating. Some of the companies are moving ahead.

Some are taking a more measured approach. A lot of companies are moving faster outside the U.S., and that's something we need to change because the emissions from the transportation sector are – it's the largest sector for global warming emissions in the U.S. here in California, personal cars and trucks are over one quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. So there's no way to address climate change without addressing personal vehicles. Jessica, historically, one of the big hurdles for people purchasing electrical vehicles is having charging stations, right? To use when you need them.

Are we building up the infrastructure of charging stations too? What will it take to meet that demand for places to plug in? Yeah, so I mean, as David mentioned, it's really about, you know, this sort of pathway to getting there, to getting to a place where the entire fleet can transition to electric vehicles, you know, and sort of achieve these climate benefits. And that process of expanding charging infrastructure is happening already. There's federal funding going into, you know, expanding the network of chargers. There's a goal of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers along highways. You know, it's important to install local chargers, enable residential charging and so forth. So the transition is happening.

It's not without its hiccups, you know, as we go through this process. One challenge is really to make sure that charging is available, you know, for people living in different kinds of residences, not only people that have off-street parking so that they can install charging when they're at home based on, you know, work that we've done. That's, that can be, you know, such an important foundation for people that want to purchase electric vehicles. It means that essentially most of the time you don't even have to think about refueling your car at all, you know. So anyway, I think there's, there's a lot happening in this space, both coming from the private sector and then also with these government incentives, you know, coming in to sort of

again, accelerate that process. Doesn't the Biden Inflation Reduction Act put lots of money into the interstate putting charges in the interstate system? Yeah. And I mean, there's the earlier infrastructure law that, you know, and that funding is already being dispersed to states, you know, with the Inflation Reduction Act, you have further investment in infrastructure. You also have a continuation of and a sort of revamping of tax incentives, tax rebates for people that want to purchase electric vehicles. So I think it's really, you know, we're talking about a shift and how people are driving. Many people drive vehicles every day. The decisions they're making about purchasing, you know, often what's a very large purchase for a given household. You know, so you have to

really make that technology available and sort of accessible to people. But then, also make sure the infrastructure is there to support it. But we really have all of the technology we need to do that. And it's really about making sure this transition process is as smooth as possible. And one thing that people talk about a lot as we get more and more cars is whether the grid, can the grid handle, Jessica, more electric vehicles. Yeah, again, you know, it's important to be deliberate about the transition process. So depending on where you put those chargers and the power that they have. You can basically more you can seamlessly integrate charging into the into the current grid or you know if this is done in a haphazard way you could cause very large spikes in electricity

demand at certain times of day. So you know I can go more into that if if you're interested but we know basically what we need to know about how people move around in their cars where they stop for how long, and then also what the background demand of electricity is, we know what we need to know to place chargers in places where you can essentially get rid of those peaks that would otherwise occur from charging. Yeah, because we're going to have like a rush hour of charging, right, where everybody's going to get home. Everybody's going to get home, they're going to plug their cars in, they're going to say, I'm going to charge, and maybe it's better to then set your car, which I can do in my electric car, tell it to charge at like 11 or,

1 a.m. in the morning. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Or even just make the process even easier for, you know, owners of these vehicles so that it's sort of pre-programmed in. And all you need to say is, okay, this is the earliest time I'm going to have to leave in the morning, make sure my car is charged by then. You know, so that's all very straightforward. And then also workplace charging can be really helpful for regular commuters that can also allow us to use more of the solar electricity that's available and avoid having to install storage for the power grid. So we shouldn't just be thinking about the strains that electric vehicles might sort of exert on the grid, but also the benefits that these vehicles can bring. Yeah. And David, adapting new technologies. This is not going to come without

costs. I mean, the electric cars require lithium batteries, which in turn require mining metals like cobalt. How concerned should we be about the role of increasing the production of electric vehicles on dirty practices like mining. Yeah, I mean, one thing is I think it is a false choice, though, between climate and air and water quality and other impacts. But as you mentioned, you know, as we transition to electric vehicles, it's important to ensure a sustainable and ethical EV battery supply chain. This is a major transportation energy transition.

The likes we haven't seen, probably since the advent of the internal combustion engine and the rise of oil. So we need to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and ensure that this transition is sustainable for our planet as well as for the communities that are impacted by the transition. There's some things we can do. I mean, one is that we need to reduce the demand for new materials. We're going to need materials for these batteries, but there's things we can do to reduce that demand, like having more efficient electric vehicles. So the more efficient electric vehicle is, that means you can have a smaller battery and go the same amount of miles. We can recycle used EV batteries so to reduce the amount of new material that we need.

That's not going to be the solution by itself because as we grow the number of EVs, there just won't be that many recycled batteries available initially. But it's something we can do to reduce the demand. And then we can also reduce driving. So driving and EVs, is much cleaner than driving a gasoline vehicle, but if we switch to walking, biking, public transit, that even is a further reduction. In addition to reducing demand, we can ensure that there's strong protections for communities and the environment at the mining stage. I think that is important, and to make sure that the industry ensures a battery supply chain that is ethical and sustainable. So many calls, so many people want to talk about this, on number 844-724,

8255. Let's go to Joe in Richmond, Virginia. Hi, Joe. Welcome to Science Friday. How are you? Hi there. Go ahead. Yeah, I just got a few comments. The whole electric car thing is, you know, good in theory. It doesn't work in practice. My original trade was inside machines for quite a few years, and I transitioned to the electrical side of industry. Currently work for a power company. I deal with batteries every day all day with mobile substations and various other applications. Electric forklifts have nothing more problems with them. That's not even counting the computer side that monitors the batteries for these mobiles and forklifts, etc.

It's just a battery is a battery. It's not a reliable piece of equipment. You know, it's good for a stopgap application. And I'll give you a real quick example of how the battery thing's not going to work. I'm sure you all know about that winter storm this past winter, where we had, what, 100 miles of cars stuck on 95? Right? Ran out of gas, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, what do you think would happen if all those were battery-powered cars? You'd still be trying to charge them to get rid of the traffic jam. General rule of thumb is if it takes a battery, if you discharge a battery or batteries, six hours, it takes six hours of charge. I don't care what anybody says about quick charge of batteries. There is no such thing. Interesting points. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

Talking about batteries. David, what do you say to that? Well, there's a couple things there that I think that the caller missed. One is that just in terms of the reliability of batteries and comparing them to other products, you know, these batteries are, it's not the same as the battery in your cell phone. The materials are the same. But the batteries in these cars have sufficient. sophisticated thermal control systems and battery health systems.

So they're going to last much longer than the battery in your cell phone. And in terms of the quick charging, I mean, that's absolutely wrong. There are a number of quick charging solutions where you can get a significant amount of charge in 15 minutes to 30 minutes. So that's also really not accurate. Maybe this is just old time statistics. You know, we don't have that much experience with the newer batteries. And the caller was talking about his experience with probably older technology. Yeah.

And I think that's part of the issue here is that we all know how a gasoline car works and we know how to refuel it. And for most of us, driving an EV, it's going to be a learning process. It's going to be, you know, we're going to have to learn how it is. It's not that it may seem it might not be harder, but it's different. And so that's going to take some time. And one thing I think I've seen here in the San Francisco Bay Area is that, you know, there is this positive feedback loop where, you know, once you get more vehicles on the road, your neighbors have an electric vehicle, your soccer coach has an electric vehicle,

your, your, your kids' friends have an electric vehicle. And, you know, you can ask questions of people you trust and know, how does this work for you? Yeah. You know, have you had problems? And I think that gets you more knowledge and also more, you know, you can be more comfortable about making that choice. Something that a mechanic, and I know a caller was a mechanic also, asked me and said to me,

you know, we don't have enough electric vehicle repair people. They're just not trained to, you know, to repair electric vehicles. We have them all over with, you know, internal combustion engines. Are people thinking about that also? creating a team of repair people. Yeah, that's also something that's going to have to change. I mean, there probably would be fewer repairs, especially fewer maintenance. So, you know, if you have an all-electric vehicle, you're not going to have oil changes.

You're not going to change spark plugs. You know, you're still going to need brakes and tires are going to be the same. So you can probably, you know, it's the same technology. but there will be the need for people to build and work on electric vehicles, and those are going to be some different skill sets than for the conventional gasoline vehicles. Yeah, we're going to have to take a break. Lots more calls on our phone lines. 844-724-8255.

We're talking about the future of electrical power. We're going to talk about the electric trains in the next segment when we come back. And believe it or not, did you know that your diesel, local? locomotive is generating electricity to run the train. Yeah, that's what the diesel engine is there doing. Why not swap out a battery for it? Some people are thinking about that and doing it. We'll talk about when we come back. Also taking your call. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm I Refledo. We're continuing our conversation about the future of electric vehicles. We've been just talking about electric cars so far. And I want to pivot to talk a bit about technological advances in electrifying trains. Calling all Sheldon Cookewold My next guest worked to develop a freight train partially powered by batteries. Eric Gepard is the

chief technology officer at WebTech Corporation based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Welcome to Science Friday. Ira, thanks for having me on. It's an exciting opportunity. Well, let's start off by how does this battery electric train work as compared to a traditional diesel-powered train? Yeah. So today we have diesel electric trains and what happens. happens is you have a diesel engine on there. It drives an alternator that creates electricity. We then go ahead and drive the motors, the traction motors underneath that, just like electric fuel today kind of drives on the motors there. That's how we run it. And what our goal is going forward, and we already have one that's been operating out in California,

operated for 13,000 miles, is to replace that diesel electric or that diesel engine with batteries. And how well is that working out so far? So it's worked fantastic so far. So we ran it out in California, along with BNSF and the California Air Resources Board, ran over 13,000 miles, saved over 70 or 6200 gallons of diesel, and saved 69 tons of carbon from being produced. And the way it works is you drop this battery electric locomotive in between two diesel electric, and you kind of hybridize the train that way.

And it's not so much how much are the batteries charged when you start. It's the regeneration it happens during the course of travel. I rode on the train in one of its last runs that we had. We discharged and recharge the batteries three times during that run. Wow. So is it not as simple as just swapping out the diesel and putting some batteries in there? Or is it a lot more involved than that? Yeah, you know, that's a big step, how to manage the batteries, how to do the thermal management on this,

making sure you have the technology so that you always have some energy when you're going up over the highest peaks and you need the most attractive effort during those times. So it is just swapping this out, but there's always complexity in the details of the engineering. So when can we expect to see these freight trains and maybe passenger trains actually being bought up and putting on the tracks? Yeah. Like I mentioned, we've already had one operating. It was a first of a kind operating in the tracks out in California. We now have orders for a number of these throughout the world. So it's very exciting to have this. We'll start shipping next year. And they just give a little more detail about these battery electric locomotives. we're working closely with general motors on the batteries. So we're working with them to utilize technology that they already have. And we're taking the pack from their Hummer, electric vehicle, which they're starting to produce now.

We've modified it slightly to make it ruggedized to run on rails. And then we stack 42 of these up. And so you have 42 times the power, 42 times the energy. of a Hummer in one of these locomotives that we're going to be shipping next year. That is kind of cool to imagine. And I know you have your sights on creating zero-emission trains using also hydrogen fuel cells. Tell me about that. That sounds exciting.

Yeah, that's really the next step. You know, when you look at freight rail overall, it's already the most efficient way to move freight around the country. In fact, you can move one ton of freight, 473 miles on a, gallon of diesel today because you have steel wheels on steel tracks versus rubber tires on asphalt roads. The efficiencies are amazing. The next step is to go to batteries and we can make this even 30% more efficient with batteries, reduce the carbon production by 30%. And by each one of these battery electric locomotives we put in is the equivalent of taking 646 cars off the road,

3,000 tons of CO2 save per year as we do that. But then the completely decarbonize the trains, we're going to need a different energy source, move from diesel to hydrogen, and we're already working on that, both with fuel cells and then also burning the hydrogen inside the internal combustion engine. Wow, Eric, thank you. This is exciting. Thank you for taking time to talk with us today. Great. Thank you, Ira. Eric Ebbhard, Chief Technology Officer at the WebTech Corporation based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We're talking about electrification of all of our vehicles and our cars, our number 844-724-8255 with MIT professor Jessica Trancic and David Reichmuth, senior engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and our phone. As I say,

844-724-8255, and let's go right to the phones. Here we go. Let's go to Brian in New Hampshire. Hi, Brian. Hey, Ira, thanks for taking my call. Great subject. I think there's a few things that I've got in mind about the transition, but of course, what you just had. on mass transit is really the answer. The more we can do with that, the better we all will be. Anyway, if individual vehicles are worried about cost and range and then sustainability, what are we going to do with the battery life cycles, those kinds of things.

And if we get into emergency situations, like with our climate-changing and the latest little thing with Ian, what happens when everybody's on batteries and we have a one solution answer here instead of hydrogen power and other solutions, and we have no place because, we've lost power. What happens then? What are we thinking about? Jessica, David, any answers to our caller? Yeah. I mean, I think that it's, you know, it is important to think about developing a portfolio of technologies. It's great to see all of the work that's happening with hydrogen fuel cells. I think

the caller's point about public transit, expanding public transit, you know, that's a much more climate-friendly way to go than, you know, driving a personal vehicle. whether it's an electric vehicle or an internal combustion engine vehicle. So I think I agree with those points. On the point about the environmental impacts of, you know, mining materials for batteries, primarily lithium ion batteries, are used right now for electric vehicles, you know, when you do a comparison of the lifecycle impacts

of extractive industries, you know, for supporting an internal combustion engine vehicle, you have to extract the fossil fuels from below the ground, all of the metals that go into really any car, and compare that to the life cycle impacts of an electric vehicle. The electric vehicle still does come out, you know, significantly reducing those impacts.

But nonetheless, I think it is very important to think about the impacts of these extractive industries, whether for, you know, metals for electric vehicles, or really economy-wide. So I think that is an important theme to focus on going forward. And what about hurricane disasters? I mean, the survivability of electric systems.

I would think, and I know some homes in Florida that had battery and electric power roof or shingles on there actually survived the hurricane because they were generating more electricity even as the sun came out. Yeah, exactly. And so, I mean, especially when you have this larger battery capacity,

let's say you have a vehicle, you have this large battery capacity, that vehicle can potentially power essential, you know, appliances and, you know, lighting and other essential appliances and homes and also potentially essential services, you know, if we're looking at a community level. So I think there are great advantages to having more storage capacity around overall, and the personal vehicles, personal electric vehicles can be an important part of that. Okay, Brian? Thank you very much.

Thank you for calling. Our number 844-724-825. So many people. Let's go to, where are we going to go to next? Let's go to Rachel and Topeka. Hi, Rachel. Rachel, are you there? Hi.

Hi there. Hey, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Okay, well, I did want to touch on what David was talking about in regards to the oil changes, the spark plugs, things like that we won't have to deal with, but we're going to have a lot more computer software issues. with these vehicles. We can't just take it out into our garage, see if, you know, husband or dad can help us out, figure out what's going on or even, you know, women and men both know what to do under the hood, so to speak. But we're going to get a lot more software issues, computer issues with these vehicles. We're going to have to find mechanics that are trained in these certain fields that are just hard to come by. I'm in rural Kansas. I'm going to have a hard time, number one, finding somebody that can do the work, figure out what's wrong with my car, diagnose it, when I have to pay Buku bucks. Do you know that? Do you know that for a fact?

Oh, I'm guessing. Oh, okay. If we're going to have a lot more software in these electric cars, we're not going to have the manpower to fix them. Like, it's easy to go to a mechanic here 15 minutes down the road. There's quite a few to choose from. But if I have an electric vehicle here in this small town, Kansas, what am I going to do? I'm going to have to drive about 45, 50 minutes down the road. road to PICA to hopefully find a mechanic that can diagnose the issue and then how much more

am I paying? Rachel, Rachel, do you know that some mechanics are coming to electric owners' homes on their driveways and fixing their cars from some of the car makers? How much do they charge per mile to come out to my house 50 miles away? I don't think they, well, I don't know. It's good question. The people I know who do this don't charge anything except for the repair. But it's a good point.

It's just something to think about, you know, we're something to think about Americans. how what are the what are the we need to come up with solutions for problems like this right we're going to have to think about these things just small town america how are we being affected um and just one more thing that first caller had a really good point sounds like he's up to date um you know his experience he's he's working with these batteries he's saying hey wait a minute they're not reliable you're going to be i feel like that was and i told you so a moment 10 years down the road he's going to say i called i told him so because i know david spoke on you know well, it's not true that their fast-charging batteries are out there,

but I want to hear his response to David's response to his call because I think it sounds like he does have some experience in batteries today and how they're just not reliable. What are we going to do about that traffic jam from the winter storm he mentioned? Rachel, I got to go. I got to go. These are all great points. I thank you for calling it.

And these are all, Jessica, things that we're all be thinking about, right? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, you know, it's, with any new technology, there are questions. You know, it's important to think about the service side of it. As David mentioned, the maintenance costs and also the types of repairs and maintenance that you'll need will go way down. But, of course, you know, even with internal combustion or gas vehicles today, things can go wrong with the computer system. that happens today. It could happen with electric vehicles too. So, but I think so far, people are reporting a pretty good experience. And also, like you were, you know, touching on repairs that can happen potentially at home. Also, you know, not having to think about refueling your vehicle on like 97% of days. You don't have to spend the time doing that. So I think there can also, yeah, but I, you know,

these kinds of conversations are important. and, you know, there's going to be growing pains with any new technology. And so it's not to say everything's going to happen, you know, without any hiccups. But we already see that with the cars we drive today and the price increases and fuel and so forth. You know, it's just, yeah, this is the world we live in. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking about the future of electric vehicles with Jessica Transoc and David Reichmuth. also taking your calls that we have I think we can fit in another call let's let's let's try to do that

let's go to Colleen in Dixon California hi Colleen hi hi hi hi hi go ahead I'm wondering if anybody has taken into consideration being in California the harvesters and stuff that are out in the field that run on diesel and when they run out the truck comes to them refills and goes if they're they already cost hundreds hundreds of thousands of dollars just to buy the machinery in order to switch it over to a battery would just be cost prohibitive for the farmers. And then on top of that, there's no way when they run out of juice that you can bring a power plant out there to recharge them. And the time-wise is prohibitive too because a lot of times these fields need to be harvested that day. They don't have

time to recharge them. David, how do you answer that? Yeah. So, I mean, what we're talking about here in the regulations that we're talking about are for the passenger cars and trucks which are just a large section of our global warming emissions but we do need to address you know larger trucks off-road vehicles trains we need to address all parts of transportation and the solutions are going to be different for different vehicles and so you know plug-in vehicles might work for some vehicles for some like delivery trucks we've talked about hydrogen there's also advanced biofuels. So there's going to be a role for different technologies.

We're going to have to figure out how to reduce the emissions from that, but it doesn't have to be the same technology for every transportation application. It's probably going to be different. You know, putting on my engineers hat, I mean, I want to see these different technologies like hydrogen and biofuels because there probably isn't going to be one solution for every vehicle out there. But for the passenger vehicles, it's, certainly seems that the battery electric, the plug-in vehicle, is probably the right solution

for most applications. You know, transition is a tough thing, right? I mean, you're talking a whole paradigm shift here, aren't you? When it's hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a machine, you know, anyway, to try to switch it over or to buy something different, it would be really cost-prohibitive for the farmers and it would put them out of business. Or the price of our food would triple or quadruple. So it doesn't mean that the immediate transaction.

transition is going to happen, as you say, for all vehicles, but for the vast majority of vehicles, the cars and trucks. Yeah. Even the trucks that service, I don't know if you've really seen on a ranch, but, you know, there are many, many vehicles that takes to run an operation. And it just seems like even those would be hard to have to charge. Yeah, I saw a report this week that Pepsi is ordering a whole bunch of fleets of the new, Tesla is coming out with this new semi in December. They'll be ordering these new trucks that no one has seen yet. We have run out of time. I want to thank both of you for taking time.

So much to talk about. We have to talk about this a lot more in the futures. But I want to thank my guest, Jessica Transic, Professor at the Institute for Data Systems and Society at MIT in Cambridge. David Reichmuth, senior engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Clean Transportation Program. He's based in Oakland. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today.

Thanks for having me. Thanks. Yeah, thanks so much. You're welcome. And that about wraps up this hour. Here's Kyle Marion Viterbo with some of the folks who helped make this show happen. Our radio producers are Christy Taylor, Kathleen Davis, Shoshana Bucksbaum, and Rasha Aredi. Diana Montano is our experiences manager, and I'm community manager, Kyle Marion Viterbo. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Kyle.

PJ Leatherman composed our theme music, and we had helped this hour from our able and talented audio engineers, Lisa Gosselin and Kevin Wolf. And of course, if you missed any part of the program or you'd like to hear it again, subscribe to our podcasts or ask your smart speaker to play Science Friday. And if you'd like to email us, yes, the old-fashioned way, you can email us SciFry at ScienceFri.com. And we're active all week on all kinds of social media. You can find us there. Have a great weekend.

I'm Ira Flato.