The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) published a report last week that didn't get nearly enough attention. It was called Charging Infrastructure Challenges for the U.S. Electric Vehicle Fleet and it laid out a big problem.
If there's large-scale adoption of electric vehicles in the US, annual US electricity production will need to rise by 40.3%, the report says, with some states needing to increase production by 60%.
There is almost nothing in the works in the richest country on the planet to fix that and it takes years -- sometimes decades -- to build power generation. Countries are already warning people not to charge electric cars when there's a risk of blackouts
In addition, they estimate the US will need more chargers for long-haul trucks than there are parking spaces for them currently in existence.
As I've written about before, the raw materials needed are staggering and the report estimates that the US alone would need 6.3-34.9 years of production of some commodities, ranging from cobalt to graphite, lithium and nickel.
