The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Will You Buy An Electric Vehicle in the Next Five Years?

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

Part two of our Smoke, Mirrors and The Truth two-part series on how our personal use of energy is changing.  This week the explosion in "EV's", electric vehicles.Robert Lockhart is an EV hobbyist and he helps Bruce and me navigate the EV story.   We also start SMT with a discussion about vaccines and ask why Canada is so far behind the US in putting vaccines in arms. 

Hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. It's Wednesday. You know what that means? It means smoke, mirrors, and the truth with Bruce Anderson. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. This is The Bridge. It's Wednesday, and that means it's the, you know, broadcast within a broadcast or the podcast within a podcast, as we call it. And we call it Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. And Bruce Anderson joins us from beautiful downtown Ottawa. Peter, it's great to be a podcaster within a podcast. Good to see you again this morning. Good to see you and good to talk, as we're going to today, about electric vehicles. It's kind of the second part of this two-part thing we did.

We started last week talking about the possibilities that we're heading towards the end of oil production. It was a really intriguing podcast, broadcast, and it led us to today's topic, which is what appears to be an explosion in the use of electric vehicles. But we're going to hold on for just a couple of minutes before we get to it, because I want to start off by talking about vaccines. It's been an interesting week on this subject, because on the one hand, we now have three vaccines in Canada, and we're on the verge of having a fourth with the addition of Johnson & Johnson, which is expected at some point in the next week or two. When that happens, four vaccines for a virus that just a couple of months ago, there were none.

So on the one hand, that sounds like, wow, that is great news. And it is great news. On the other hand, you look at the numbers in terms of vaccine administration, how many have actually been administered. And in Canada, yesterday, we passed the 2 million mark, which sounds pretty good when you first look at that number. But then you compare it to where the states are, and they're over 75 million.

So that's quite a gap. And it does leave some people saying, how come if the Americans Americans who've got so many things wrong on the pandemic can be so right on vaccine administration and we seem to be so far behind? You got an answer on that? Well, I do. I have some thoughts on it anyway. I don't know if there are answers, Peter. And I do think it's good that we're going to talk about this. I know it's kind of the early part of March and this is normally the time of year when canadians are really ruminating about why the leafs have faded again and why they're not going to make the playoffs

hasn't happened hasn't happened that's normally what people are talking about but this year is different i think a lot more people are focused on on the vaccine i think it's the big question for a lot of people and just to be clear i am an optimist in a pessimistic time when it comes to this kind of thing i know that there's a lot of reason to feel kind of grim some mornings in the dead of winter and wondering when those shots are going to be available for us but i do think it's really good news to see a number of more vaccines come online in Canada. And I think a million doses delivered this week, roughly maybe 900,000 plus and the same number expected for next week. I think in the United States, I'm glad you made

the point that America got a lot of things wrong this week. We saw the governor of Texas declare that Texas was 100% open, which a lot of health experts are thinking is going to lead to some serious problems down there. All of the influence and the buying power and the bully pulpit and the back room negotiations to get those manufacturing systems worked up. And yesterday, I think it was yesterday, the announcement that Merck, a competitor of Pfizer, was going to collaborate in the production of that vaccine. That's really good news for America, and I think by extension, it's really good news for the world. The more vaccines anywhere, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Okay, but you're still not answering the question. Why are they so far ahead?

Or do you know? I mean, it's a tough one. i saw the prime minister being challenged on that on on nbc on the weekend and he didn't have an answer well i think it's got to have to do with the uh the buying power of the u.s if you're if you're going into a any kind of a sales situation and you offer to buy up a giant amount of the capacity in advance with money that allows for that manufacturing capacity to be built out for those trials to be paid for you're going to get better terms um uh when it comes to delivery of that product i don't think there's uh to me it's not a big mystery. I mean, I do think that if we had had domestic manufacturing capacity, we probably would have been in a better situation.

But you and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. How much better would our situation be? And do we really know what it's going to be? second question, because just yesterday, President Biden accelerated the timetable by several months in which he said Americans who want a vaccine will be able to get one. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if that's what happens here, too. I think we're at the beginning stage of a manufacturing reset that has the potential to be good for Canada and good for other parts of the world. So I guess I'm not obsessing very much about what could have, should have, and would have been had different decisions

been made some years ago. Okay, let me ask you this one because I know this is an area that you care deeply about, not only because you actually care about it, but you're actually in the business of it to some degree, and that's advertising. I've watched the Americans of late.

They're really going to town on having TV ads on about, you know, get your vaccine. If you can get it, get it. And they're using celebrities, and they're hammering away at that message hard. Now, I know, at least in past discussions, you've talked about the need in Canada for that kind of messaging. Are you seeing enough of it as yet?

Or is it going to need a lot more to ensure that people get their vaccines? I think we'll probably need more. I don't know if we'll need a lot more. And I don't know exactly when the right time is, because really what you do is you want that kind of messaging to really ramp up when we're just about at the point where there are more doses available than arms willing to take them. And maybe that's going to be July. Maybe it's going to be August. It's impossible to say at this point in time, but advertising, go get your vaccine now when people can't get it isn't going to be productive use of energy. I think that I'm personally interested in using that time to really understand how the passage of experience affects hesitancy in Canada. Right now it's about 37% who say, I'd rather see other people take it

first, or I'd probably prefer not to take it, but I could be persuaded. And it's under 10% who say, I won't take it at all. There's no question that I'm ever going to take it. And so that 37% is the focus for me. I think given how Canadians generally are on this, which is that they consume information and they think about it carefully and they try not to let their politics get in the way of it, I think that 37 is going to shrink naturally because hundreds of millions of doses will have been delivered around the world and people will not see the side effects.

But communication after that to help people hear the voices of doctors and medical experts to say this is safe that will be helpful and also for younger people who tend to feel a little bit invincible messages that sort of say look if you want to travel again if you want to go for whatever reason you might want to go and see the Leafs if you want to go back to a Leaf game or if you want to go see baseball a much better game and the you want to go see baseball, a much better game, and the Blue Jays included, then getting a vaccine is a way to speed that process along. I think those kinds of messages will be helpful too. Love the one yesterday with Dolly Parton getting her vaccine and the whole stitch she did. Yeah, but you bring up a good point too about

musicians and artists, and you live in Stratford, and the Stratford Festival is a good point, too, about musicians and artists. And you live in Stratford, and the Stratford Festival is a good example, right? I think that people, lots of people have passions that they're experiencing denial of. And I think giving our artists a chance to put their voice into the market if they want to, not to be political, but just to say, we can do what we do, and you can enjoy what we do and we can do it all together instead of remotely over Zoom or streaming or whatnot if people get the vaccine.

I think that's going to be an important part of it too. All right, Bruce, thank you for that. And that's our little hit on vaccines for today because you can't bore this subject. Everybody's anxious one way or another on the vaccine question, and they're looking for information. So we're trying to help on that front. Now, we are going to switch over now to our promised discussion

on electric vehicles, because I'll tell you, if you have an electric vehicle, then you already know the story. If you don't, my bet is you're probably going to be seriously considering having one within the next five years. Okay, the main topic for today on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth is electric vehicles. You know, when I used to plug in my car, I don't have an electric vehicle, okay? But I did used to plug in my car i don't have an electric vehicle okay but i did used to plug in my car and that was about almost 50 years ago when i was living in churchill manitoba and you had to plug in your car at night to engage the block heater to keep your you know your engine area warm overnight in the temperatures of you know whatever they were back then then they were considerable in the temperatures of, you know, whatever they were back then, then they were

considerable in the minus, you know, 30, 40 range. If you didn't plug your car in, it was not going to start the next morning. That was for sure. So I've been through the experience of plugging in my car, but that was just like a normal plug. Electric vehicles, that's a different game. And that used to make a lot of people shy away when this whole era started but things have changed and they're changing considerably so i want to talk about that this week and it's interesting who i chose to talk to because when i first mentioned electric vehicles on this uh podcast broadcast a year ago um you know i got some mail but one of the one of the pieces of mail that i got that i found most intriguing came from a fellow by the name of robert lockhart and he

lives in ennismore ontario and if you've never heard of ennismore if you imagine a map you see where oshawa is and you see where peterborough is well if if you go northeast of Oshawa or northwest of Peterborough, you're probably going to bump into Ennismore. Well, that's where Robert lives, and Robert is a voracious reader on the subject of electric vehicles. It's like a hobby for him. He's not bought into a particular side on this thing.

He's just an interested guy on the topic of electric vehicles, and he has a mountain of information. He started feeding it to me. And so when today, there are any number of different people I could have gone to, but I wanted to go to Robert for Bruce and I to talk to about the whole issue of electric vehicles, where we are today, and where we talk to about the whole issue of electric vehicles, where we are today and where we seem to be heading. So enough babble. Let's get to the, uh, let's get to the discussion, um, with Robert Lockhart.

Here it is. Okay, Robert. So, you know, I, I watch a lot of sports, especially on the weekends. I watch a lot of live sports, whether it's hockey or golf or basketball, or this past weekend, even watched some baseball, which was nice after a long time going. But what I found interesting, aside from the games that I was watching, was that an awful lot of the ads these days are from different auto manufacturers and they deal with electric vehicles which would seem to indicate to me that we are at a point here on this story of movement away from you know traditional energy related carbon driven vehicles to electric vehicles. You study this stuff. Am I right? You're absolutely right. I've noticed the

same thing. I counted the other night there were over half a dozen commercials by three manufacturers all focusing on electric vehicles and that is a big change and it is a direct reflection of the fact that the major automakers who are now starting to get into the game uh chasing tesla and and others who are principally only sell electric vehicles because they're they're about to make such a huge investment in electric vehicles they're realizing that they have to match the market up with this supply that's going to be coming and so part of that is their advertising campaign and i was quite frankly, why it hadn't showed up last year, but it is coming now. And with General Motors and Ford in particular making the big announcements in the past few months about their investments, Ford is looking at $27 billion worth of investment between now and 2025.

General Motors looking at 27 billion volkswagen volkswagen group 50 billion when you add up all of the automakers it's well in excess of 300 billion dollars that they've committed in just the next five years for the development and and manufacture of electric vehicles so you know right now there's over seven million electric vehicles in the world uh last this past year set a record um 320 uh 325 000 325 million um yeah vehicles were sold uh you know in in the past in the past year and uh i would i would assume most of those are are tesla or would i be wrong in that no you you're the tesla certainly was a large uh um contributor to that but the chinese market

makes a lot of electric vehicles that we never see they're the biggest manufacturer of electric vehicles in the world the second largest consumer last year after europe so um they're big but we just don't see their vehicles um they're not exported to the to the north american market um there may be some hesitancy to buy them given our current political situation but certainly they are the biggest the biggest uptake but last year europe overtookook them as the biggest purchaser of electric vehicles. Germany, they increased by, I think it was, let me just check my notes here, 254% increase between 19 and 20 for Germany alone.

So the focus is on Asia, the focus is on Europe. North America is lagging way behind. We're running 3.5% of electric vehicle sales or electric, or vehicle sales or electric. The U.S. is running about 4%. So we have a long way to go. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But I think we'll catch up eventually.

Robert, I've been looking forward to this conversation so thank you for getting together with us i've been really interested in one um reference point for me which is i remember when japanese i'm old enough i think maybe all three of us are old enough to remember when Japanese cars first started to enter the North American market. And there was almost a bit of a cultural, not quite rejection, but there was a sense of these will never catch on. They're too small. They're made somewhere else. They don't have that kind of nationalistic made here credentials that the North American cars did. And then they really took off.

Lots of people bought them. Lots of people really found that they were well-made, that they were well-suited to their desire to save a little bit of money on gasoline and that sort of thing. And it took a long time for North American auto manufacturers to really kind of get in the game with the kind of vehicles that the Japanese were successful at selling. So here's what I want to ask you. If we think of this as a bit of a race between the Europeans, maybe the Chinese or the Asian auto manufacturers and the North American auto manufacturers,

I, like you, have noticed the large investments that the North American companies have declared. Do you think they're going to be competitive? Or do you think they're going to be competitive? Or do you think they're going to find themselves making cars that are just not quite what the consumer is looking for, which happened to them in that earlier episode? Well, it's only time will tell. I mean, when you look at what General Motors has done, I mean, know, more than a decade ago that they, you know, in fact, it was in the late 1990s that they came up with EV1, which was the first electric vehicle leased to folks in California as a test vehicle. It was a two-seater, had about 100 miles of range, was hugely popular by the folks who had the privilege of having one for a year or two or three.

And then something happened, something sabotaged it. A lot of rumors about big oil, who knows what happened. But the vehicles were not only discontinued, they were taken back and disassembled, almost like the Avararo disappearing, you know, that kind of thing. We don't want anything that good coming along fast forward to um to general motors introducing uh the volt first of all which is a plug-in hybrid and then the bolt which is a fully electric vehicle but they did not increase production to the point where they because they had an opportunity they had a one-year advantage over tesla the model 3 hadn't been introduced yet they could have raced into the market with millions of those vehicles they didn't because i don't think they were ready

so the proof is going to be in what happens in the next few years um ford and general motors have made this commitment um we'll see how well they do most certainly in north america and probably in europe everyone is chasing chasing Tesla as the leader. And if it hadn't been for Tesla, we wouldn't be where we are today. There's no doubt about it in my mind. Let me ask you this kind of consumer question here. I, you know, let's say I'm living in Halifax and I'm taking my family on the cross-country tour. Post-pandemic, we're going to see the country where you're going to learn about Canada.

And I climb into my electric vehicle. Am I going to make that trip? Are there enough places where I can charge up? Is the battery life in the electric vehicles of today, can it handle a trip like that or would that be something that you couldn't consider yet? You can absolutely do it right now. The Trans-Canada Highway has been completely electrified every 200 or less kilometers. There's an electric charging station or a group of them petro canada and tesla have both electrified the trans canada highway at the moment according to natural resources canada

there are over 13 000 charging stations in canada now now that's in over 6 000 locations some will have more than one what we call a charge point which is like the hose that comes off the gas tank. This is the cord that comes off the electrical charger. And so there are over 13,000 of them, and it's growing by the week. You know, Canadian Tire, Tim Hortons, various other restaurants, hotels are all getting into the business. Now, most of Canada's major highways and and in the united states as well are completely covered with electric uh charging stations um in some cases like in my city of peterborough there are more electric charging stations than there are gas

stations if you if you if you count the charge points um but most people don't know about them because they're hiding they're not not. Teslas are quite obvious. Petro-Canadas are quite obvious. They're strong architecture in their design. But most of them are a box tucked at the back of a parking lot somewhere or two or three charge points without a lot of fanfare. But on your car, every vehicle has in their display the complete layout of all the electric charging stations across Canada. And with Tesla, for example, you can put your finger on the screen. Let's say it's in Pickering, and you're in Peterborough wanting to get back to Toronto, as our son does,

and he'll touch the map, and it will say, okay, there's the charging stations in Pickering and there's 14 of them. It tells you there are three cars there right now charging and you'll use 20% of your battery between the time you leave my home and get there. When your vehicle, before it arrives with the Tesla, it starts to warm the battery up because it knows you're arriving at a charging station so that when you get there the battery is ready to receive the charge faster um so um all of this in fact the tesla virtually will drive you to the the charging station itself but are you are you are you going to end up at the charging station with i i know it tells you how many cars are ahead of you in the line but the more electric vehicles there are out there unless they they really move on the number of charging stations

are you what do you have lineups uh for for charging how long does charging take do they and do you just like pay with a credit card like you do gas how does it work well you have three questions there so the first one is um so far we're in pretty good shape i'm hearing that in california where of course the uptake has been much much higher than it has in any other place other than british columbia in all of north america um there are starting to become some log jams at charging stations and so more are going to have to be built. And the U.S. government just announced in the last couple of weeks that they're going to be investing in half a million charging stations over the next while. That's just one player in the field. Car companies, General Motors and Ford are going to be putting in their own.

Volkswagen has Electrify America and Electrify Canada. And they're putting in thousands of charging stations. So we've got to find this. It's like a chicken and egg. What comes first, the purchaser of the EV or the charging stations? And it's a balancing act. So that was the first question. The second question was, how long does it take to charge? And that varies depending on the vehicle, anywhere from as much as 45 minutes to as short as 10.

Depends on the charging station itself. The most powerful ones are 350 kilowatt. The weaker ones are down in the 50 range. Some vehicles cannot charge on a 350 like a tesla can and some of the new vehicles that are coming out like the new ionic 5 is going to be able to do that it's coming up from hyundai this year um so and it will charge um from 20 to 80 in 18 minutes um so the charging time and what time and what you're finding is that most charging stations are located where there are other things.

So there's a restaurant, there's a coffee shop, there's a mall. And so the idea is you time your stop around what else you want to do. There's also an app that you have that um that decided through plug share which is a company that maps all the charging stations in the world but also on your vehicle and it will plan your trip for you so let's say you're wanting to go from toronto to florida it will plan it for you and tell you where to stop how long it's going to take you how much longer it's going to take to travel um if you're with your charging built in and it's usually about take you, how much longer it's going to take to travel with your charging built in. And it's usually about two to three hours it adds to your trip.

But if you work that out around hotel breaks, hotel stops at night, restaurant breaks, you're going to be fine. You're not going to take you very long, very much extra time at all to make the trip. And the other thing that most people don't realize is that 80 to 90 percent of your charging is done at home it's not done on the road so the need for charging stations is only for people who are traveling more than 400 kilometers which is the average range of an electric vehicle today yeah robert i was going to jump in on that point too we did a couple of studies at abacus one for clean energy canada another one for the Max Bell School at McGill. And we were really struck by how in a very short number of years, mostly, I think, because of peer-to-peer communication, not so much advertising by governments or by the auto manufacturers, but people knowing somebody that has an electric vehicle and talking with them or sharing the experience and learning about it.

And one of the things that we were seeing was that range anxiety, the idea that if I get this car, I won't be able to do my daily or weekly or occasional driving without running into some inconvenience around charging, that range anxiety was really dropping quite quickly, in part because people were going, oh, yes, of course, I'm going to charge mostly at home. Most of my trips are short trips. And when I do have the long trips, I'm hearing that there are more and more of these charging stations. And I agree with you that we're going to need to ramp up that infrastructure. I think the other thing that people are kind of observing, and I'm curious your take on this, is that more and more large companies, especially as they try to grapple with their environmental responsibilities, are switching out their fleets. And so there is more visibility for all of that kind of thing. And there's infrastructure being built alongside that, too. One peer-to-peer conversation has been people saying,

you know what, I realize that with this electric vehicle, almost nothing breaks down. And the maintenance costs, as well as the fuel costs, are a lot lower than for a combustion engine. Is that your sense as well? Oh, absolutely. Right now, it still costs more to buy an electric vehicle or lease an electric vehicle than a comparable gasoline or diesel vehicle. You know, upwards of $10,000, $15,000, depending on the vehicle. But the savings per year are in excess of $2,000, just in fuel alone, assuming that you travel, you know, 20,000 kilometers a year. But the other big thing is the maintenance.

There are 99.9% fewer moving parts in electric vehicle. The motor has one moving part. They figure they'll last for 160,000 kilometers. And the battery will last for, they're predicting, upwards of 16 years. Now, it'll lose about a percent per year in terms of its ability to recharge and give you range. But the overall cost is dramatically less. So your fuel costs alone, if you look at electricity, it's about, you know, one fifth the cost of gasoline. So, you know, your average fill up is $12 to $25. And that'll get you anywhere from, you know, five, four hundred, five hundred kilometers of driving.

Right. So what I've been kind of seeing in the in the research, the consumer opinion is that people used to look at these cars because they thought they were the best car for the planet. And now they're looking at them and saying, well, they're probably the best car for the planet, but they're also maybe just the best car for me from a cost and a durability standpoint. And I think that in part is why the auto manufacturers started to look at this business and say, we better get on this because people aren't just doing this who are motivated by altruism or concern about climate change. They're doing it because they've kind of come to understand that these are maybe the best vehicle for the money that you can get. Well, certainly within about two years, three at the most, the cost of your electric vehicle, just the straight-out purchase price,

is going to be at or below that of a gas or diesel-powered vehicle. When that happens, we're going to be climbing up the hockey stick. And you know the old story, if you start slow and then you hit the elbow where the stick joins the blade, and then it takes off at about a 60-degree angle. We're pretty well there worldwide right now. I was just looking at a graph this morning that shows worldwide sales of electric vehicles, and it's already on a 60% trajectory. It hasn't happened in North America yet, but worldwide we're there.

So if you couple the fact that your electric vehicle will cost less than a gas vehicle, and, oh, by the way, you you save over two thousand dollars a year in maintenance and fuel costs um who would not want that plus the fact that the electric vehicle is an exciting vehicle to drive we uh we have a plug-in hybrid uh toyota prius prime we've had that for the last couple of years and we graduated from a hybrid vehicle to the plug-in hybrid and now we're ready to move to the all-electric. When it's in electric mode, we get about 50 kilometers of electric driving every time we leave our house. And it is so smooth.

It's drive-by-wire. And as soon as the electric, the battery portion drops to the point where it kicks over to the gas electric hybrid mode you you you feel like that the gas pedal get a little heavier because now you're you're activating the gasoline engine but while it's in electric mode it feels like you're flying like it's just this smoothness and when i drive our son's tesla it's the same thing and with his vehicle you can drive with one pedal you never touch the brake because he sets the regenerative braking so that when you take your foot off the pedal the car slows down to stop and and that is now becoming something as well so what it allows you to do is eat more range out of

your out of your battery if you use the regeneration of the engine braking to recharge the battery. So you can add another 50 or so kilometers to your range every time you're out. Which you see on some Formula One cars. I guess some of the racing sector has really been pioneering in that area too, right? That I don't know. But the other thing that's really interesting is that electrification transportation has gone to every mode of transit from airplanes to snowmobiles even personal watercraft are being electrified now um you know trains and boats of all kinds big trucks line electric which is a canadian uh quebec-based

company is even building the cab for for semi trailersilers. So the 53-footers you see running down the highway, they now have a cab for that. They have electric garbage trucks. They have electric pickup trucks, electric buses, of course, for transit and school buses. And there are four companies in Canada building heavy-duty electric vehicles. We could be a world leader if we get on it.

We could also be a world leader in battery production because we have all the raw materials in canada to produce the batteries so canada has typically exported its raw materials and let someone else make all the money in manufacturing we should be doing both and there's a very strong push for that right now so we'll see how that where that goes all right robert this has been fascinating and clearly you know your stuff even though you don't really have a dog in the hunt so to speak you're just a guy who's fascinated by this story and a guy who at the moment as you said you know you're you're still driving a hybrid you haven't gone 100 electronic so it's the last question or electric sorry i keep using the wrong word um the last

question of i got less than a minute on this uh so what are you waiting for what are we waiting for what are you waiting for personally you and your wife you you haven't gone 100 electric well two things so one is the lease on our vehicle isn't up until September. That's a good reason. But the other thing is there are three or four vehicles coming on the market this year into Canada that are so intriguing that will challenge Tesla. That we're looking at them before we make our decision. And we're going to buy our Prius out, going to buy the lease out so that we we've got a bit of wiggle room in case the vehicle is delayed in arriving or in case we decide to give it a few

more months to have a good look at the three or four new vehicles that we haven't been able to touch yet there haven't even been very many reviews on them yet independent reviews but they look really intriguing so um that's what's the only thing that's holding us back is which one to buy. That's it. I tested, I know Peter, you want to wrap it up, but I just want to say, look, I want your cheat sheet of those vehicles, Robert, if you can share it with us, because my lease is up at the end of August. I've tested a Tesla. I loved it. Um, I have a few concerns about Elon Musk musk and supporting him but i'm going to try and kind of watch what he does but i'm also interested in this in whatever the alternatives

are and i do see it as a fast developing market so i'm actually serious i want to know what other cars well i will um you're worth looking at i don't want i don't want to um to mention on air who I'm looking at, but I will certainly, through Peter, send you some information on what I found, and then you can do your own follow-up. That sounds like a good deal. Robert, it's been a treat talking to you. Really, really appreciate it. You got us all thinking, obviously, on this question.

It's a good one to be thinking on for lots of different reasons. So thank you. Most welcome. It's a good one to be thinking on for lots of different reasons. So thank you. Most welcome. It's been a pleasure on my part as well. Yeah, great to meet you, Robert. Thank you. Okay, bye-bye. Robert Lockhart in Ennismore, Ontario. And as I said, this subject,

electric vehicle is a hobby for him. But man, he knows his hobby. And it was fascinating to uh to listen to fascinating conversation uh now it's not just people like you and me are listening to this so are investment analysts they're watching very closely what's happening on the electric vehicle market and uh they think it is on the edge of a huge boom. I mean, it's already benefited Tesla, as we all know their stock prices have gone up like rockets. But in terms of overall,

the tech analysts are looking at the electric vehicle market and they're seeing big things. They're suggesting, and I'm referring to an article I saw on CNBC earlier this week, they're suggesting that the stocks in electric vehicles could soar as much as 50% this year, could grow into a $5 trillion market over the next decade, they are suggesting. So, and in 2020, market research for Fortune Business Insights valued the electric vehicle market, that's last year,

valued that market at around $250 billion. So, EVs, not just the way of the future, seems to be the way of the present. Okay, a couple of notes about what's coming up tomorrow. Obviously, you've got the bridge, and Thursdays we usually focus on what we call a potpourri, a lot of stories that we want to catch up on during the week. And also Thursday is the second episode of Good Talk

with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. That's at 5 o'clock Eastern on Sirius XM, channel 167. That's where you'll find it. And later it'll be up on a podcast. That will be a podcast that you have to subscribe to. Initially, though, we're going to make it available for anybody who wants to listen to it to get a sense of what good talk's all about it's an hour of good talk with chantelle and bruce and i tomorrow we're going to take a run at the whole issue of where we are in terms of the country's

economy when you look at it in terms of the budget we got a budget a federal budget coming our way probably in the next month and we have a huge debt and a huge deficit how do you square all these things at a time you're trying to encourage the country to spend money to help bring businesses out of the decline that the pandemic has caused so it's an interesting discussion we're going to have it because we've got a history of dealing with this issue in this country and it's an interesting discussion. We're going to have it because we've got a history of dealing with this issue in this country and it's not always the same. And it's becomes a question of, do you care about how much money we owe? Friday, it's the weekend special. And we're looking for your thoughts on whatever you want to talk about. Some of you may have been inspired by this discussion on electric vehicles. If you have, please send in your thoughts on whatever you want to talk about. Some of you may have been inspired by this discussion on electric vehicles.

If you have, please send in your thoughts, your comments. But on any subject, do that to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. That's it for today. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again in 24 hours.