Sabine Hossenfelder promoting fossil fuels over electric vehicles

How can someone claiming to be a scientist and having 1.3 million followers be promoting gasoline cars as the future, while being sponsored by environmentalists?

Sabine Hossenfelder is a YouTube queen: she has 1.3 million followers.

And yes, she has a PhD in particle physics. It is kind of cool. I get it. And I would not try to correct her on particle physics.

But my impression is that she gets most of her followers by being a populist contrarian, using her aura as a particle physicist to sell an often bad take on anything.

From transgenders, to heat pumps, to climate change, to drugs, to autism, to 5G, to long COVID, to free will, to plastics, to… you get the picture. Every time she is there explaining it like she’s the worlds greatest expert. And often her take seems… original, and not necessarily in a good way.

I don’t know about all that other stuff, but on fossil fuels and electric vehicles - my field of expertise - I can say with some certainty she is utterly confused.

But before you jump to conclusions too, you might want to read the rest of this post.

I first heard of Hossenfelder when she created a stir by claiming that we will burn all fossil fuels until they run out. But that that is ok because would use technology to hoover all CO₂ up from the air.

The problem is that this CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) technology is very power hungry (because physics). Hoovering up fossil fuel wouldn’t work because the amount of fossil fuel needed to do the hoovering would emit more than the hoovering would remove. And it’s expensive. So it will only work in conjunction with low carbon energy and the only affordable way to use it is to stop emitting CO₂ at the same time. It was an utterly nonsensical idea presented with utter confidence. Many climate scientists where outraged. But she got attention. So mission accomplished I guess. (For more on this click the tweet.)

I thought that would be the extent of our interaction but yesterday she published a post extolling the “genius” of a car that “tanks fuel and drives electric”. She thinks that’s the future because:

1. The grid won’t be able to handle EVs.

2. There will not be enough charge points for EVs.

3. Sales of EVs are plummeting.

The wretched thing got 230 thousand views in the first 23 hours. And since my unpaid side-job is debunking misinformation about electric vehicles (mainly on twitter, but I thought this was a nice reason to start a substack) I feel compelled to explain why she is wrong on all counts.

By the way: the first 15 seconds are kind of a give-away: she claims that she used to be against EVs, then she became a fan of EVs, and now she is against EVs again. This kind of flip-flopping is not what you expect from somebody who actually researches things thoroughly before making videos about them. I’ve been pretty consistent on EVs since wrote my first book about them 15 years ago, because the science and physics of EVs don’t change overnight once you know what you are talking about.

But that’s not the point, you see. The point is to hook us with the implicit question: “Why did Sabine change her mind?” Together with the pose on the thumbnail you see above it’s perfect for YouTube clickbait. I think that explains why she has so many followers while she makes rubbish videos like this.

1. The grid has problems… that EVs can help SOLVE

She spends the first 2.5 minutes (her longest segment) complaining about how the grid needs to expand, and how that’s hard and expensive. The most specific thing she says is that the grid can’t handle all cars being EVs and mentioning all sales in the EU should be electric by 2035.

Just to be clear: all NEW cars should be electric by 2035 according to the European Union. However, that would mean ALL cars would be electric around 2050. Most EVs will actually be sold after 2035 according to those plans.

Furthermore, I used to work for a grid operator and I talk with the Dutch grid operators weekly because grid congestion is indeed a big problem and I’m one of the experts trying to solve it. We think grid congestion - while a big problem now - will be mostly solved by 2035.

But that’s not all! More importantly EVs don’t cause grid congestion if you use them smartly. EVs are actually batteries on wheels with an extremely flexible demand. On average they need to charge about 2 hours a day and are used 1 hour a day. That means over 20 hours a day are left to shift their demand. And this is exactly what will happen. I’ve been modelling charging behavior for over a decade now and worked on the worlds leading open charge point protocol OCPP while employed by ElaadNL. So I don’t think this is the case. I know.

In practice they will mainly charge during the middle of the day (when there is excess solar at work) and/or during the night (when there is excess wind at home). They will do this for two reasons. First because the energy is cheapest on those hours. And who wants to pay top dollar for charging their car when they can get cheap electricity off peak? Second because the grid doesn’t have a problem off peak. We should have a flexible tariff to reward people for taking grid conditions into account and that innovation is progressing slowly (don’t get me started), but in the meantime the reward (apart from cheaper electricity) will be that you will only get a permit to install lots of charging stations when you provide smart charging to customers so it doesn’t cause grid congestion.

This is the way forward according to anybody that has actually studied as far as I know. The icing on the cake is that multiple studies show that EVs could lower the grid cost per kWh because their demand is so flexible: when your neighbor charges his vehicle in a smart way he is paying for part of the grid investment while causing less investments than other appliances. This brings down your grid costs.

So the main argument of Hossenfelder really needs to go straight out of the window.

Or wait… maybe we should hold on to it just a little bit more. Because the flexibility that EVs offer will be able to improve the business case for wind and solar. New cars will increasingly be able to deliver power *back* to your home or the grid, thereby flattening peaks. This is called V2X or V2G for vehicle to grid. It’s also called bidirectional charging. This is not pie in the sky technology but something offered on all new models from Hyundai and Kia. The lead developer from Korea assured me this when they came to the Netherlands recently and the EV9 is only the start. Tesla’s new Cybertruck also does V2G. I’m pretty sure it will be mainstream in five years tops.

So my expert opinion is that by 2035 EVs will HELP the grid. Not hurt it. The grid argument of Hossenfelder actually means we should aim for MORE EVs, not less.

2. Charge points will follow where EVs go

Until the 3:43 mark she complains we will not get EVs because we need more charge points and you cannot implement them with a snap of your fingers.

That is too vague to criticize specifically (as intended I guess) but let me put it into perspective. A charge point costs less than 10% of an electric vehicle (including installation) and lasts longer. Hell, in a pinch you can simply charge your car using the supplied cable. (It’s what I still use because I’m holding out for the price of a smart charger plus home battery to come down.) It can be a problem in a specific street or neighborhood for a couple of years if you can only use public charging, cannot charge at work, and don’t want to use fast chargers. But that’s about it.

And by the way, I’ve actually modelled roll out strategies for chargers in the Netherlands for a while now (here’s a symposium on our first model). Of course I could be wrong and Hossenfelder could be right. Nobody can predict the future for sure. But I think it’s safe to say I have a bit more experience with the issue.

3. Sales of EVs continue to rise quickly

Her third argument is that EV sales have dropped. It’s not really an argument but hey, it’s her video. Let’s use the picture below: does that seem like dropping sales to you or are you clever enough to discern a pattern? (Thanks Jan Rosenow and the IEA.)

And by the way, did you know that EV’s use 4x less energy and that their higher upfront price is mainly caused by the price of the battery? And that batteries will be in oversupply the coming years and their costs are falling fast? (They’ve already become over 10x cheaper since I started studying them.)

I guarantee you that when you do the math (I do this every year or so) you will see that they are not only better for the environment but are also rapidly getting cheaper than fossil fueled cars. Now it’s close and often they can’t quite manage without subsidy. But long before 2030 you will pay a lot more for the privilege of driving in a slow and polluting car.

And by the way: EVs emit around 4x less CO₂ now and close to zero in the future and that’s kind of a big deal that Hossenfelder deems worthy of exacly zero words.

Why the hell is Planet Wild paying for this fossil fuel propaganda?

She then confides she is a “terrible person”. But it’s not for misinforming her 1.3 million followers. No, it’s because she used their money to buy a hybrid vehicle.

What follows now is an advert for the Nissan Quashqai with the “genius” (according to her) marketing slogan: “Tank fuel. Drive electric.” It’s basically the same as the infamous “self-charging” ads by Toyota that Hossenfelder seems blissfully unaware of. Instead it immediately had her sold because:

1. The town where she lives has only one charge point and she doesn’t own a house. (That’s her personal case and I have the feeling that there’s more to this story.)

2. It accelerates like an electric car. But most importantly… wait for it…

3. It uses fossil fuel. It uses even more fuel than a regular combustion engine car, but that’s no problem since it accelerates like an electric car.

“Looking at hybrids made me realize just how great hydrocarbons are as energy carrier” she happily explains. She even goes on to say eFuels like hydrogen, methonal and ammonia are bad but gasoline is absolutely great, partly because “it smells so nice”. So it makes climate change worse but she couldn’t care less because it accellerates well and gasoline smells nice.

She then seamlessly transitions to promoting her sponsor Planet Wild that is dedicated to restoring nature. And no, this is not parody.

Maybe somebody should ask Planet Wild why the hell they are paying for his fossil fuel promoting clickbait. And maybe they should make it their next mission to vet their paid promoters a little better.