Transcript of my conversation with Mats Larsson 11/18/2023
Speaker 1: Mats Larsson
Speaker 2: Mark Puls
[Speaker 2]
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of Knocked Conscious. Today, I have the honor of speaking with Mats Larsson. He's the founder of Global Energy Transformation Institute.
He works with the transformation to electromobility regarding electric vehicles and all the infrastructure required to make that happen. So we become a 100% electric society. It was very interesting conversation.
He spoke about a lot of interesting topics. Be interesting to take a listen. I hope you enjoy it.
And here it is. Welcome to Knocked Conscious. I feel like we've just had deja vu because of technical difficulties, but welcome again, please tell me who you are, what do you do, and how can we help you today?
Tell us how you can help out the world.
[Speaker 1]
Thank you, Mark. I'm a business consultant since 30 years, and I've spent the past 18 years exploring the amounts of resources that will be needed in order to change the world's transport systems to electric vehicles, and I've realized how much electricity, how big investments in the power grid reinforcement that will be needed and how extensive the charging infrastructures will need to be in order to facilitate the charging on a daily basis of all the vehicles in the future that will need to be charged if countries decide to turn to electromobility 100%.
[Speaker 2]
So in looking at some of your information, it looks like it's going to require pretty large amounts of energy than what we currently produce, is that correct?
[Speaker 1]
Really large amounts of energy, absolutely. It's amazing that politicians and business leaders so far haven't realized what type of investments will be needed because, for example, in the United States, you will need to double the power generation in order to facilitate the charging of all cars and trucks and buses, and that means that you will need to add another 4,000 terawatt hours of generation on an annual basis to the 4,000 terawatt hours that you already produce in the United States. And 4,000 terawatt hours, just for you to come to grips with the figure, is equal to the production of 350 nuclear reactors or 1.2 million wind turbines.
[Speaker 2]
Wow, 1.2 million wind turbines and, wow, 350 nuclear reactors, obviously you'd be thousands of coal or other gas and other kind as well.
[Speaker 1]
Really big amounts of coal, of course.
[Speaker 2]
Wow. So with all these current changes in energy in Europe, how are they addressing a lot of these changes? Are these changes being addressed to the level that you're looking at?
[Speaker 1]
Well, as you know already, air regulators in California and the EU and the UK government have all decided to ban the sales of fossil fuel cars from 2035. And that means basically that the production of gasoline cars or diesel cars, as we also have in Europe, will need to cease or be reduced dramatically because no such cars will be sold in these areas from that year. But unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if politicians and business leaders have realized what this will mean in terms of investments.
So no one except for myself and a few other people on the planet have started to explore the magnitude of these changes and the complexity of the change programs that will need to be set in motion. So there are enormous change programs ahead of us in order to achieve this.
[Speaker 2]
So there are 350 nuclear plants. How long does it take for a nuclear plant to be constructed?
[Speaker 1]
Well, two days ago, the Swedish government decided to build two new nuclear reactors. They decided they will not build it themselves, of course, but we will make sure that two new nuclear reactors will be built in Sweden. And they estimate that realistically they can come online in 2035.
So with the planning process, the construction process and the other processes that will be needed, commissioning, for example, they will take 12 years and that is only for two reactors.
[Speaker 2]
And that's just for two of them. But still, I mean, that's still a long, that's a decade, over a decade, right? That's a pretty big chunk and we don't even have the planning for it yet.
So we have to get to planning and also getting the implementation of not two of them, but possibly up to 350 of them. So that sounds like a fun challenge.
[Speaker 1]
I don't think the industry, the power plant industry has the resources to build so many in parallel either. So, and there are, there will not be enough resources to build and install them in parallel. So they will need to be phased over quite a long period of time.
At present, I think you have, well, something like 130 nuclear reactors or something like that in the United States. So it's way past what you already have.
[Speaker 2]
Right. Well, it's interesting. Well, I, I'm curious because there's an alleged uranium issue eventually at fuel, fuel for the actual nuclear reactors.
I know it doesn't use much, but the earth doesn't also have much either, right? So it's also, that's a scale issue, but I'm curious how that translates over time and how that works. I was, I was watching an Elon Musk interview with Joe Rogan.
He said that for solar power, it would take a hundred square mile, a hundred mile by a hundred miles. So 10,000 square miles of solar panels in the United States for it to power the United States. That doesn't sound like that much, a hundred miles by a hundred miles, but that's a lot of area.
So that sounds like a lot of, cause I know that energy's constricted by the amount of energy per square meter by the sun. So it's like a limit, it's not, it's limitless in the production of it, but it is limited in its capture of it, I guess, in that way. Right.
So, so there are other ways. Are there any predictions of solar panel? You know, you said 1.2 million wind turbines. What kind of, is there any solar panel equivalent to that or any kind of?
[Speaker 1]
No, I haven't calculated that. I've, I've, I've done these calculations of nuclear reactors and wind turbines because there, there are direct numbers of, of both in, in the operation. And it's so easy to, to illustrate because when I started this 18 years ago, I, I found it difficult to explain to people what, what's a terawatt hour.
What's 100 terawatt hours. So it, one nuclear reactor became a unit of calculation for me rather than the image of a building.
[Speaker 2]
So, it's, it's, it's impactful because a nuclear reactor people can, they viscerally get some kind of, you know, literal reaction from it, but absolutely.
[Speaker 1]
And, and the, the amount of wind turbines I've got from Germany over the past decade or so, they have expanded their wind power generation tremendously. So they now have 30,000 on shore wind turbines and they generate 100 terawatt hours per year, which is a very convenient figure. They have 30,000 generate 100 terawatt hours.
So you have, you need four, 4,000 terawatt hours. That's 40 times the German number of, of wind turbines, which makes it a good number, the calculations.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah.
[Speaker 1]
1,000, 1.2 million. Yes.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. 1.2 million. I think you said it correctly the first time.
So that, I mean, that's, that's really interesting. And I don't know if you've heard, but there was an offshore wind turbine company that just, uh, collapsed or went bankrupt. It said they couldn't afford to do it off the shore of Jersey, New Jersey.
Oh, and there have been, right. And there've been some of those offshore challenges with whales. I don't know if you've heard about the construction creating some challenges.
There's some really interesting echo, you know, and environmental issues that, for example, offshore wind turbines are causing. Actually we've had on-term wind turbines issues with birds and things like that makes sense. But, um, I, this isn't to, you know, discourage anything.
This is just to give it the full picture. Once again, I'm not, you know, I'm not here to push, push anything or another, but I'm curious about, um, so we're, we're getting to the point where that is now. This is on board electric batteries.
Are there other ways of electrifying that aren't where the batteries on board?
[Speaker 1]
Yes, there are, but well, you need to have some capacity on board, but you can, well, yeah, something, right. Some way to transfer to carry to, you can charge in various, in different ways. But there are, for example, um, technology is being developed that for electric roads where cars and trucks can be charged, uh, as they drive.
So dynamic charging can be done via tracks in the road, either, um, either, uh, conductive tracks or inductive tracks. And there's a Swedish company, uh, and the French company offering, uh, uh, conductive tracks. Uh, there's an Israeli company offering inductive tracks, and then there are German companies offering, uh, uh, overhead cables, pantographs in, uh, above vehicles.
So you can, uh, you have three different technologies and the, um, overhead cables of course, are only, uh, possible to use for trucks and buses, but, um, inductive and conductive tracks can be used by either, uh, either type of vehicle.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, wow. That's, that sounds really interesting. Uh, are there any stretches of highway?
Is there a mile that there's a test of, or where, where would that be? Where would these things be located?
[Speaker 1]
They've so far been tested in various parts of Sweden. Um, there's a test. There are three different tests, uh, roads in Sweden, one in the north for, uh, uh, pantographs, uh, one in, uh, around Stockholm for, uh, inductive tracks, uh, whether Israeli, uh, technology is tested and one here in Southern Sweden for where the Swedish company along road is located, where they test the, uh, uh, conductive tracks.
But that's only, they're only been tested for half a mile or so of stretch of road. And they can charge over like half a mile, um, half a mile stretch to go, um, their entire route, uh, in a local transportation network for buses, for example, and then they go back and they, they can charge again along that stretch of, of road if they go slowly over that, uh, that stretch and the technologies can actually also be used, uh, for stationary charging. So you don't need to have cables, uh, because cables can be an occupational hazard for people who, um, for drivers, for example, truck drivers, taxi drivers, other, other drivers that need to, um, uh, connect, uh, the charging cables all the time and may trip over cables.
Uh, and with, with tracks in the surface, uh, below the vehicle, you can get rid of cables, you have a much, much, uh, better, uh, work environment, and you also reduce the risk that the driver will forget to connect the cable and not be able to drive away again when they need the K once the, the, um, vehicle has been loaded or unloaded, uh, or when the passengers have, uh, entered the taxi. Uh, and you find that, oh, we, we, I forgot to, to attach the cable. Uh, I need, we need to wait here for another 15 minutes for the car to charge.
[Speaker 2]
That's pretty impressive of those technologies. Do you have anyone that you think is preferable over the other two of the other two of those three? Just to, just the reason I asked that is because it would make sense to standardize, because then you could get car companies to build an electric Autobahn certified vehicle, right?
And then it works on all Autobahn rated, whatever, you know, kind of thing.
[Speaker 1]
Yes. I think it makes, makes sense to have, uh, electric road systems that work for both cars, trucks, and buses. Uh, so I think the conductive, inductive, uh, tracks make the most sense.
Uh, but the, uh, inductive tracks are installed below the road surface while the conductive tracks are installed, installed on top of the road surface. So the, um, the, um, inductive tracks have slightly higher losses of electricity. And since we're talking so big, um, amounts of electricity that's going to be used here, uh, 7% loss of power because of the, um, higher or lower efficiency of the, the charging, um, infrastructure means that quite a lot of, of power and quite a number of, uh, nuclear reactors or wind turbines need to be added to, to the equation.
So I'm partial, not only because the company that is Swedish, but also because the technology is, uh, more, uh, energy efficient and, uh, has less losses.
[Speaker 2]
So, um, aesthetically, I would think the inductive would be aesthetically pleasing or the most, uh, in that respect. So I could see that being more of a political issue of how it looks in a city, right, in a futuristic city. Do we want the gaudiness of a conductive system, right?
Or the beauty and the cleanliness with, with that loss. I mean, 7% is a huge loss. So just from going to conductive to inductive, that's interesting to hear that much of a loss.
[Speaker 1]
Yes, absolutely. And it seems both technologies are quite easy to install. You mill a track in the road, uh, and then you, uh, install the, um, the tracks, uh, so you mill, uh, uh, rift, ridge, uh, or yeah, it'd probably be a width.
[Speaker 2]
That'd be something where there would be some conductivity of some along that, even if it's just a strip of it.
[Speaker 1]
A hole in the road surface, basically. And then you, uh, install the, the track, uh, the metal track into that and you fill it with, uh, uh, asphalt or, uh, some other, whatever you use for a road, uh, for the road surface.
[Speaker 2]
Right. And the conduct would, and the conductor would actually make more sense because if it say it's parked on the side of a road that is conductive versus having to go wirelessly, cause there'd be a loss of conduct of electricity over wireless, right, converting from that, charging it wirelessly to wired and the safety of plugging it in for your commercial applications.
[Speaker 1]
Yes. Uh, excellent. Absolutely.
That's, um, there are pros and cons of both technologies, I think, but, uh, the, uh, uh, energy efficiency is a big, uh, a big advantage. There is a next step being taken now to install a longer stretch of the conductive track with, uh, uh, from Elan road, um, the company Elan road has nothing to do with Elon Musk. It's because the Swedish word for electricity is El and El on road is, uh, that is amazing.
[Speaker 2]
What a coincidence, right? What a coincidence.
[Speaker 1]
But, but there, there is going to be a, uh, a stretch of a mile or a couple of miles to be installed outside of Paris as the next test, uh, uh, project for the conductive, uh, installation.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. So you've written books. I understand.
I know you have six of them that I know of, but I think you mentioned before that you might have a couple more. So share, share, share us your, your light, your first book, your evolution, your, your latest. And, and I'd love to hear more about that.
You know, the literature you've written out on it so we can share it with people to look it up.
[Speaker 1]
Yes. Thank you. My latest book is called how building the future really works.
And it was published in August this year and it's available at a discount, uh, right now at, um, amazon.com. So that is really the, uh, uh, it's discussing how technologies like space technologies, computer technologies, um, air plane technologies and other, um, other tech, well, mobile phone technologies, et cetera, have been developed in the past and how we are, how we need to learn from those experiences and from those projects, uh, when we, when we plan the projects of the future. And I started this journey with a book called global energy transformation that was published in 2009.
And in that book, we, I, I explored the different fuels that could be used and the different systems that, that would have to be developed in order to drive a large share of all vehicles on, um, renewable fuels. So that's, that discusses bio biofuels, um, electricity and well, hydrogen and other opportunities. And I found that that electricity is the only possible fuel that can be produced in large enough volumes to drive all cars in any country with, because biofuels, uh, that you make from either, um, either, um, uh, corn and things like that.
Yeah, exactly.
[Speaker 2]
Well, the challenge is also you're burning things. Remember just biofuel is still a burn. It's not the conversion, like a hydrogen car and it's not electricity.
So there is still a conversion of creating emissions.
[Speaker 1]
Absolutely. So that's, and there is a limit because we can't use very much of our agricultural land to grow, um, crops for energy production. And in order to produce enough biofuels, we'd need four times the entire, the world's entire area of, uh, of agricultural land to, to, uh, fuel all trucks, uh, all cars and buses in the, in the world.
So the amounts of oil that we use are 100 million barrels every day, 33 billion barrels per year. And that's a huge amount of oil that can only be replaced, uh, completely by electricity. Uh, so, and doing something else, uh, or starting the development of a biofuel, biofuel, um, transport system on a large scale would be foolish because we couldn't, uh, couldn't go the, the, the entire distance with that because we'd only be able to power to, to fuel like a couple of percent of the world's vehicles.
[Speaker 2]
Right. That totally makes sense. Excellent.
So, um, you, you said, you mentioned you wrote a couple novels as well. In addition to the six books.
[Speaker 1]
Yes. Uh, I wrote two novels in Swedish because a couple, say 10 years after I'd written the first book, I realized that this was really difficult to grasp for, uh, people who didn't have the time to sit down and take in these numbers, there are big numbers, there are, they are, um, well, it seems that there are, it takes some effort to, um, um, sit down, think through it, to realize the size of, uh, of.
Vehicle fleets, like you have the scope is pretty massive. When you think about how many vehicles and mass in the country or in the world, you actually have 285 million cars in the United States. And to fuel all those with electricity, you'd need, um, you'd need some 6,000 kilowatt hours per year per car.
And to do that, that equals 1,400 terawatt hours of electricity only for the cars. So that amounts to the generation of 125 nuclear reactors. And then you'd need as once more, the same number and again, some to, uh, fuel the power, other things like electric, like air conditioning.
I know that just for the transportation. Oh, just for the transportation, for the trucks and buses and so on. So you'd need 4,000 terawatt hours in, um, uh, in total to, um, uh, power your entire, um, vehicle fleets.
And I suppose also to cover the need to have electricity for battery production, but that's only where the three 50 comes. Yes, exactly.
[Speaker 2]
So that's three 50 on top of current energy production. Correct. Correct.
This is just for electric mobility.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
That's astounding. That's a big number. So yeah, it would make sense.
You'd want to write something in a little bit more of a readable text than just throwing numbers like that at you. Cause they can get very overwhelming.
[Speaker 1]
Yes. I wrote the novels in Swedish, uh, because, uh, at the time I tried to convince people over here to, uh, regarding the complexity of the efforts and the need of the effort, because I tried to illustrate also the values that are at risk here, because the previous generations have actually built a society here that we have to take care of, and we need to make sure that we don't damage it in a way that.
For example, that could cause irreparable damage. Uh, if we make decisions about the changes, uh, or if we fail to make changes where they are needed, we could cause irreparable damage to, um, economies to, um, to, uh, job markets to, uh, the ability of, of people to continue to leave, live their lives in the way they're used to.
[Speaker 2]
Well, the petroleum industry is a huge market. I mean, they're like, we talked about, it's a requirement. Plastics, all these other things are made with the petroleum's petroleum pieces.
We, we need that now as fuel stations, gas stations disappear, that economy is going to shift somewhere or it's going to have to, so that's where the concern comes in is how that, how that's going to happen. So, you know, there's so many economical factors that go in. Have you considered anything economically in general about the economics of it, of electrification?
[Speaker 1]
Yes. Um, actually I decided yesterday to, uh, uh, that my next book would be called the, uh, uh, economic consequences of electromobility. And I will, in that book discuss the various economic processes that we set in motion by doing these changes.
We set in motion processes that will affect auto in the auto companies, like Ford, General Motors. Uh, they will be deeply affected and impacted by the change to electric cars and they will lose that opportunity. If, if like, uh, petrol gasoline cars are banned, they will lose their, uh, opportunity to, to sell what is not, what are now their cash cows, uh, gasoline cars, and they have to instead take on, uh, Tesla as a competitor head on and, uh, try to make, make money producing electric cars, which of course Tesla does with excellence, but, uh, for the moment, uh, Ford, for example, have projected, uh, uh, a loss of is it's $60,000 per, uh, electric car vehicle that's sold, uh, in this year.
So it's a huge loss.
[Speaker 2]
And I know they shut, I thought they pulled some funding toward, they pulled some money from, from some electrification because of the challenges they're having.
[Speaker 1]
Yes, absolutely. They've, uh, drawn down their investments in this area due to the, um, the changes. Um, all of the incumbents have different problems, uh, tackling this, um, this, um, transformation because Volkswagen, for example, they say, well, the, the CEO of Volkswagen, uh, convened a meeting digitally with all his 1,000, uh, top managers, uh, two months ago.
And he said that the roof is burning, which is a German phrase indicating that everything is at stake. And he said, uh, that, uh, they need to, um, cut down on spending in all areas, not only because they have invested too much in electric cars, but because they also face a strong competition from, uh, uh, other manufacturers and so on. But clearly, uh, auto companies in Europe, as well as in the U S, um, find it very difficult to handle the current development and they make losses from, uh, many seem to make losses from electric cars.
Ford is the only, uh, auto company that has organized its electric cars in a separate business unit so that they have to report, um, the profits and losses of that unit specifically.
[Speaker 2]
They meld it into the rest of the, like GM could melt it into the rest of their profit and loss statement and balance that out. I like that though, because Ford's always been pretty innovative. I mean, for they've always been pretty ahead of the curve to keep it separate might be the good way to do it because they can then either justify it or figure out ways to streamline it and things like that and keep them both running.
[Speaker 1]
Absolutely. But it also makes it possible for external people like us and, uh, and journalists to monitor to monitor their exact losses from, from the, uh, electric car business. So it's, uh, I believe it's, uh, there are both pros and cons to doing that.
[Speaker 2]
It's a double edged sword, especially because you can look at a number of many different ways. I mean, yes, you can look at a loss, but you could also look at, it's called an investment. There is an investment needed to all new changes, technology.
So it's not, it's not ultimately a loss of it pushes technology.
[Speaker 1]
This happens all the time.
[Speaker 2]
Uh, I remember spending $3,000, $4,000 for a television and now I can get the same one for 500.
[Speaker 1]
So yes, the difference here is that there is one company that got. The business model exactly right for the moment. And that's Tesla.
[Speaker 2]
Uh, they, they have, they build an electric car company. They didn't build a car company or they didn't, they didn't convert. They built it literally for the purpose of, of that.
So they, it's specifically designed for it.
[Speaker 1]
Yes. And they only have a very narrow range of models. Uh, so they only have that.
They, they can have the advantages of scale of having few models and big sales of each model. Whereas a company like a Volkswagen, it said that they had started to develop, um, 20 or 25 different models of electric car to fill the various niches where they have cars at present, uh, which they need.
[Speaker 2]
Were they not using the same platform though? I mean, that, that would be, it would make sense if that were the case. Obviously a heavier vehicle would require a little bit bigger battery, but if you had a standardized platform and just put a different top on it or whatever, it would, it would make sense if that were the ultimate, but to your point, making five or six different platforms would be even almost challenging.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I think, I, I don't think they could use the same platform because in order to have a full range of, of models, they'd need to have both small models like the Polo and bigger models.
[Speaker 2]
I wonder if you could have batteries, maybe plug in, plugging in between them, say it's like a skateboard model. And then you have like, you could do like a table leaf, right. On a, on a, on an Oak table for a dining room table, slide it in this way.
And you can slide in vertically or horizontally to make it a wider or longer vehicle, just thoughts. Anyway, but it's interesting. I don't know if you saw Joe, uh, Elon Musk on Joe Rogan this recently, but I would ask that you, that you check it out because he's, he spoke to this exact problem you're talking about.
He said, man, you, there isn't a movie about manufacturers. You talk about Tucker and all these designers. He said, manufacturing is the single biggest challenge because it can only go as fast as its worst part.
Right. Million moving parts. One part you can't get the whole thing shuts down.
He said, manufacturing, he said his new plant was just, has been absolutely challenging and whoever can make those types of things happen. Those are the real geniuses.
[Speaker 1]
So yes, to your point, it's a big problem. I have solved a number of very intricate problems with our manufacturing. Uh, and I'm sure they've transferred experiences from SpaceX and other, because the challenges in the, uh, in the auto industry are extreme because they, there are high volumes.
You need to produce at very low cost, very long series, and you need to reach a highly competitive price of the entire vehicle. And I think Tesla, they, they haven't, they may not produce the best cars in the world, uh, if you look at them from a, from a, uh, design perspective and so on, but they certainly have. Nailed the business model for, uh, entering the electric car market.
And it, it is definitely very challenging for incumbents to, uh, try to build or try to compete against Tesla with coming in at a later point with a more fracked fracked fractioned, uh, or, or diverse, um, well set of models that they, they need to replace.
[Speaker 2]
Right.
[Speaker 1]
So, so, so the way Tesla has built its business around a few, a small number of models is completely different to how, uh, general motors Ford and Volkswagen have built their business around a wide range of different cars, wide range of different, uh, um, setups for the different models.
[Speaker 2]
Absolutely. Makes total sense. Well, uh, we're, we're probably coming up on a little bit of time.
I'm so grateful for you to, to come on the show. Welcome to the Not Conscious family. Is there any, are there any final thoughts, anything you'd like to share before we call it a day?
[Speaker 1]
Well, I think we've, we've covered most of the things that are, uh, that I had in mind, I'm really grateful for, uh, to you for inviting me on the show. And I, I really think that your, uh, the theme of Not Conscious is, is great. It's a spot on because what we need to do here is to knock people conscious.
They need to become aware of the challenges of, um, electromobility and what the types of investments, the scale, the complexity of these changes. So, um, I think we need to, to knock a lot of people conscious here and try to find ways of getting through to decision makers in various parts of society.
[Speaker 2]
Absolutely. I couldn't say it any better. So thank you so much, Mats, for joining us.
I'll put all your information and links on, uh, on this site, everyone. Thank you again for joining Not Conscious. Welcome again, welcome again, Mats, to the family.
And, uh, hopefully we can have you again on, uh, after you, uh, write your next book or something like that, and we'll definitely talk another time. Okay.
[Speaker 1]
Wonderful. Thank you very much, Mark.
[Speaker 2]
Thank you so much. Have a great day.
