If you think about it,
internal combustion engines are pretty old-fashioned.
We're basically driving around
with little campfires under our hoods.
It was inevitable that
they'd be replaced by something better,
and it looks like that's finally happening.
Electric cars are having a moment.
The demand for electric vehicles is booming worldwide.
Sales of electric vehicles are projected
to boom over the next few years.
The EV boom is here to stay.
Electric vehicles are catching on,
and that's great news
because transportation accounts for 27%
of America's greenhouse gas emissions.
So EVs could be one of our biggest opportunities
to cut emissions in the short term.
Now, when we think of electric vehicles,
we usually think of Tesla,
the company that made them cool and affordable, kind of.
And whatever you think about Elon Musk's fashion choices,
or choices in general, his company led the way.
But now, traditional car companies
are starting to electrify their biggest brands,
like Mustangs, F-150s, even Hummers,
which lower pollution while staying equally obnoxious.
BloombergNEF, the in-house experts here on clean tech,
reported that, over the past two years,
global EV sales have tripled,
and they're expected to triple again by 2025.
Unfortunately, they've been slow to catch on with Americans.
We're definitely making progress.
Biden's huge climate bill
included over $14 billion in EV tax credits,
California banned the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035,
and 6% of our new car sales are fully electric.
But to truly take EVs mainstream,
we can't just make it easy to buy them.
We have to make it easy to drive them.
These things have batteries that need to be charged.
And when it comes to charging infrastructure,
America is, again, way behind the rest of the world.
And people won't buy EVs if they turn every trip
to Home Depot into a heart-pounding adventure.
To address this need,
the 2021 infrastructure bill set aside $5 billion
for half a million new charging stations,
which will roll out in the coming years.
So with the government's help,
we're juicing the demand for EVs,
we're juicing the supply of charging stations,
but there's one more kind of juice
we're just gonna need more of, electricity.
Electricity consumption from electric vehicles alone
is expected to grow over 25%.
That will put a massive strain on grids
that were built for a fossil fuel economy.
Luckily, there's a very cool
high-tech solution to this problem,
and it might be my favorite thing about electric vehicles.
It's called vehicle-to-grid technology, or V2G.
Your electric vehicle is basically, what,
like a big battery with wheels, right?
And when it's parked in your driveway, idle,
V2G lets you feed its stored energy back into the grid.
That's good for two reasons.
One, it smooths out electricity use,
so utilities won't have to cover surges in demand
by burning more gas or coal.
And two, you actually get paid for that electricity
that you feed back into the grid.
V2G turns your car into an Airbnb for utility companies.
This isn't theoretical, by the way.
The Ford F-150 Lightning already has this capacity,
and even school buses in California are starting to use V2G.
So it seems like everything about electric vehicles
is finally pointing in the right direction.
But you know there had to be some bad news, right?
We're trying to sell you a TV show.
So here's the catch.
EVs aren't zero-emission vehicles.
For one thing, the grid they're charging on
may be powered by fossil fuels.
But no matter where an EV gets its electricity,
its manufacturing supply chain is very carbon-intense,
especially for its batteries.
One company, Redwood Materials,
is trying to solve this dilemma by teaming up with Tesla
to create a completely closed-loop battery supply chain.
So I went to Sparks, Nevada to learn more.