The Mysteries of Your Subconscious Mind & Is An Electric Car in Your Future?

Speaker 1 Today, on something you should know, what not to do when you see someone have a heart attack or stroke. Then, your subconscious brain, how it works, and how it's different from a psychopath's brain.

Speaker 2 There's another part of the brain that's called the amygdala, and the amygdala is very important in situations of anger but also situations of fear.

Speaker 2 And one of the things that we see in psychopaths is their amygdalas don't work, they're not scared of of being caught.

Speaker 1 Also, what every man needs to know about personal style. And are electric cars in all of our futures? So far, it's been a bumpy ride.

Speaker 3 All of the traditional car makers are still losing a lot of money on electrics.

Speaker 3 And so you're kind of at this crossroads where do I lean into this thing that's killing me on a financial statement because I know I can't fall further behind China and Tesla?

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Speaker 1 Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 1 What to do

Speaker 1 in an emergency situation. That's what we're going to start with today.
Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 1 The Daily Mail had an article online the other day that I thought was really worth mentioning.

Speaker 1 It was a couple of ER doctors wanting people to know what to do in the event that someone that you're with or you yourself are having a heart attack or some other medical emergency.

Speaker 1 Because a lot of people do the wrong thing. The first thing is don't get your phone out and call a friend or a loved one or Google the symptoms or plug it into ChatGBT.

Speaker 1 All of that wastes time. If someone falls to the ground with what looks like a heart attack, call 911.

Speaker 1 If you are having an emergency, don't drive yourself to the hospital. More than three-quarters of ER patients arrive at U.S.
hospitals in their cars rather than in an ambulance.

Speaker 1 If you can't feel one side of your body, that is not the time to drive yourself or get someone else to drive you to the hospital. You need an ambulance and some hospitals have particular specialties.

Speaker 1 Some are better at strokes, some are better at heart attacks, and first responders know that and can make sure you go to the right place.

Speaker 1 Many Americans don't call an ambulance for fear of the cost, but not calling one could be a huge mistake.

Speaker 1 The doctors also said to make sure that the patient and the loved ones who come to the hospital with the patient all have cell phones with them.

Speaker 1 The patient might need to call someone, and all of their contact info is probably in the phone. And if you take someone else to the ER, stay with them.
Don't just drop them off and leave.

Speaker 1 You could be a valuable source of support and comfort, and you can advocate for the patient and help ensure that they get seen faster by doctors. And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 A A lot of research is going on to help science learn more about the human brain, how it works, what it is about the brain that makes you who you are, what drives you to do what you do, and a lot of this new research is really fascinating and worth knowing about because, well, it affects everything you do every second of your life.

Speaker 1 Here to explain and discuss this is Alan J. Hamilton.
He is a medical doctor, a brain surgeon actually.

Speaker 1 He holds four professorships at the University of Arizona and he's author of a book called Cerebral Entanglements, How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives.

Speaker 1 Hey Alan, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 2 Hello Mike. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 So anything having to do with understanding the brain, I think people find interesting. I find it really intriguing.

Speaker 1 And so let's start with where are we right now when it comes to understanding the brain.

Speaker 2 I guess the first part is to say, well, what do we know now that we didn't know before? Okay.

Speaker 2 And the thing that we know now is with brain imaging, we can actually look at the brain when it's feeling things, when it's thinking, and we can see the subconscious and the conscious.

Speaker 2 So the very first thing I would say that blew.

Speaker 2 everyone away was

Speaker 2 how small the conscious world is in our brain compared to the subconscious world. So to give you

Speaker 2 some numbers, you and I are having a conversation and we're sitting in chairs and we're talking. That takes up 200 bits of information every second.
That's the capacity of the conscious brain.

Speaker 2 By comparison, the subconscious brain is 11 million bits per second.

Speaker 2 So there's this incredible vast world of subconscious machinery that's going on in the background background that we're completely unaware of and that and our brain takes a lot of responsibility for editing it if you will

Speaker 1 and those 11 million bits of information are doing what's it doing using up those 11 million bits of information things like what

Speaker 2 it's filtering the entire world and it's making decisions about what's important and what isn't important. So I'll give you a very concrete example.
You and I blink.

Speaker 2 Our blinks last about one to 200 milliseconds, and we blink 30 times every minute. Okay, so when you and I are talking, we don't see the world going on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 that's

Speaker 2 because the brain says, you know what, it's not important for you to know about that. So I'm going to edit it out.
That's just one example of all this subconscious

Speaker 2 information that's flowing around. Conscious information is what you and I are aware of.
Subconscious means we just don't, we're not aware that it's happening.

Speaker 1 So when the brain says that's not important for you to know that you're blinking, so I'm going to edit that out. How does it know that? How does it know to edit that out?

Speaker 2 Well, first that's got a lot of millions of years of experience.

Speaker 2 It also could make the argument, well, if I let you see the world blinking, flashing on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off, that puts you at a disadvantage.

Speaker 2 It also does things that we don't usually get to see.

Speaker 2 Let me give you an example. There's a syndrome that we call cortical blindness.

Speaker 2 It happens with carbon monoxide poisoning. It happens with certain kinds of strokes.
But what happens is the conscious part of the brain that

Speaker 2 sees vision, which is at the back of our head, it's it's destroyed. So we have no longer have conscious vision.
So those people are blind. They can't see, they they can't read,

Speaker 2 period. But if they walk into a room, they will not bump into a piece of furniture.
And if I throw a ball at them, they can catch it.

Speaker 2 Even though they're completely blind. So you say, well, how is that possible? Well, what you're seeing in that...

Speaker 2 in that event with cortical blindness is you're seeing the subconscious processing of vision that the brain carries out all the time separated from the conscious reception of vision which is what what we're aware of.

Speaker 2 So that the brain's literally cleaved the two apart, but you can see how sophisticated it is.

Speaker 2 And for you and me, everything that we're thinking, doing, experiencing, processing has a conscious component and a very, very significant subconscious component.

Speaker 1 So why is this important to know? Since all of this is kind of going on behind the scenes, the brain is telling you you don't need to know about this. Why do we need to know about this?

Speaker 2 Because it actually makes so many things understandable,

Speaker 2 from things about falling in love to things about

Speaker 2 psychopathic killers to things about laughter, to things about how we process music. All those things have these huge subconscious components and conscious, smaller conscious awareness.

Speaker 2 And we combine them every moment of our lives and so we're both the subject and the active component in this process and and and that's the brain brings us into existence so we can experience and our experience brings the brain into existence if you if you think about it like that

Speaker 1 so talk about falling in love i'd love to hear i'd love to hear about how that works

Speaker 2 well falling in love the brain takes love romantic love very very seriously.

Speaker 2 And the reason is it's found it's a good idea to have a pair mate and then stay together because they do a pretty good job of bringing up the offspring. So what happened was nature took,

Speaker 2 the brain builds on things that are already there. So nature took a molecule, one of my favorite molecules called oxytocin.
Oxytocin is a huge molecule, and originally it was for

Speaker 2 letdown of breast milk and for uterine contraction. So it was related to birth.
Okay.

Speaker 2 But when mammalians evolved, mammalians had young that were very dependent on the mom to help bring them up, feed them, and defend them.

Speaker 2 So oxytocin began to take on this emotional component of, you know, like the the dangerous mother bear with her cubs or the lion with

Speaker 2 her kittens, you know, kind of thing. And that that got built up stronger and stronger until this molecule of oxytocin was also involved in bonding, affection, trust.

Speaker 2 And what we found is that if we measure oxytocin levels,

Speaker 2 couples that have very high oxytocin levels have very successful marriages. And parents who have very high oxytocin levels make very good mothers and make very good fathers.

Speaker 2 And if we take couples and we ask them, hey, give me a list of subjects that are really tough for you guys to talk about because you argue about them, okay, and then we bring them into a room and one group gets placebo.

Speaker 2 They get saline, but the other group gets an oxytocin sniffer. You have to deliver it through the nose.

Speaker 2 It turns out when they get oxytocin, they don't argue. They're much more willing to compromise.
They're much less,

Speaker 2 their positions are not as hardened. They're much more willing to listen.

Speaker 2 So, you know, you ought to probably crop dust with this stuff around the world right now, but oxytocin is a beautiful molecule. So let me give you another crazy experiment.

Speaker 2 There was a wedding. Don't ask me how they set this wedding up experimentally, but...

Speaker 2 They asked everybody permission. While we're in this wedding, can we sample your blood to measure oxytocin?

Speaker 2 So, you know, the waiters must have been going around with hors d'oeuvres and drawing blood at the same time kind of thing.

Speaker 2 So they got everybody at the wedding and they got their oxytocin levels. And guess who had the highest level of oxytocins at the wedding? A couple that was getting married.

Speaker 1 Oh, well, that makes sense, doesn't it?

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 2 Okay. Who had the second highest levels of oxytocin?

Speaker 1 The parents of the bride.

Speaker 2 Correct.

Speaker 2 And who had the second and next level of oxytocin?

Speaker 1 The parents of the groom.

Speaker 2 Exactly. And then the bridesmaid party and the groom's party.
And

Speaker 2 what you saw when you looked was this gigantic network of molecular connectivity through oxytocin. And it told you how closely people were bonded together.
And that's the joy of oxytocin. Oxytocin

Speaker 2 makes

Speaker 2 relationships work. It makes conversations.

Speaker 2 If you and I get a conversation going and I'm digging what you're saying, you're digging what I'm saying. I'm listening to you, you're listening to me.

Speaker 2 Each of us is releasing oxytocin at higher levels in each other so that the conversation tends to spiral upward. At least that's our hope.

Speaker 1 So wait, there's a nasal spray with oxytocin in it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, let me explain. You can't swallow oxytocin.

Speaker 2 You can inject it intravenously, but the way they do it for experimental purposes is they just use a nasal spray and it's very well absorbed through through the nose.

Speaker 2 And it does crazy things. For example, if I give you money and then I spray you with oxytocin in your nose, you will donate more money to charities.

Speaker 2 Okay, you will be more likely to trust people with money than if I don't spray you with oxytocin. It's often called liquid trust.

Speaker 2 But it's just an amazing molecule. And what we found is that couples that fall fall in love and have very high oxytocin levels are very likely to stay together.
And guess what?

Speaker 2 Their levels will be just as high 25 years later as when they fell in love.

Speaker 1 What goes on in your subconscious mind? That's what we're talking about today with Dr. Alan Hamilton.
He is a professor at the University of Arizona and author of the book Cerebral Entanglements.

Speaker 1 How the brain shapes our public and private lives.

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Speaker 1 So Alan, you mentioned that psychopaths fit into this conversation. about the subconscious.
So explain that.

Speaker 2 So psychopaths are really an interesting group of people. And of course, there are many much higher proportions of them in prison, and that's where a lot of them have been studied.

Speaker 2 And there are a couple of very interesting characteristics. One is there's a big bundle that goes from the frontal lobe to the emotional parts of the brain.
It's called the unsonate fasciculus.

Speaker 2 And what it does is it's what holds us back from acting on our impulses. Okay, so if I look at your watch and I like your watch, I don't steal it.
I just go, oh, you know, Mike's got a nice watch.

Speaker 2 But when we look at psychopaths, they don't have those bundles. They're not very well developed at all.
The other thing we see, there's another part of the brain that's called the amygdala.

Speaker 2 It's kind of an almond-shaped

Speaker 2 little part of the brain. Amygdala means almond.
And the amygdala is very, very important

Speaker 2 in situations of anger, but also situations of fear. And one of the things that we see in psychopaths is their amygdalas don't work.
They're not scared of being caught.

Speaker 2 They're not scared of the police. And if you look at folks like Ted Bundy and Manson and people of that nature, they're almost taunting the police to try and find them.

Speaker 1 So let's talk about laughter. I mean, I love laughter.
Oh, I love laughter.

Speaker 2 I love laughter too. Henry James, who's the father of American psychologists,

Speaker 2 said

Speaker 2 he said something very insightful, which is, we don't laugh because we're happy. We're happy because we laugh.
And that turns out to be quite true.

Speaker 2 There are only five species of primates that have laughter.

Speaker 2 And we're the only one who has social laughter, you know, the kind of polite laughter when somebody tells a stupid joke at the coffee machine and you politely laugh. And then we have that

Speaker 2 real awesome belly laughter where our sides hurt, where we're afraid we're going to pee on ourselves, where we're just, our sides are splitting.

Speaker 2 And that is handled by a completely different part of the brain, actually a very ancient part of the brain.

Speaker 2 But that laughter is associated with an amazing outpouring of hormones, including endogenous opioids. and oxytocin.
So laughter is a very social activity. If you think about it,

Speaker 2 when we're alone at home watching something, it's very unusual for us to laugh out loud alone.

Speaker 2 But when we go to the movie theater or we go to see a stand-up comic, or when we're with a group of friends, that's when laughter really happens. Laughter

Speaker 2 is a social activity. And they think, evolutionarily, that that's one of its primary functions is to bond together.

Speaker 2 But it's also associated with an outpouring of some wonderful hormones and peptides that make us feel very good.

Speaker 2 The other thing is that there are tremendous health benefits from laughter.

Speaker 2 There was a journalist named Norman Cousins. And I worked, I was editor for the Saturday Review, and he had a terrible disease called ankylosing spondylitis.
And I won't go into it, but it's

Speaker 2 usually a disease that's incurable, and it's associated with a tremendous amount of spine pain.

Speaker 2 And he went to see doctor after doctor and they said, there's nothing you can do and you're probably not going to live for another year or two.

Speaker 2 Now he noticed that when he watched funny movies or funny TV shows that he always seemed to feel better and less pain. So he began this program.

Speaker 2 where he basically forced himself to watch funny movies and funny TV programs two hours a day like a prescription. Okay.

Speaker 2 And bit by bit, his pain became alleviated and he actually lived for 22 more years.

Speaker 2 Strangely enough, he founded a school that's called psychoneuroimmunology, which is where we found out that there's a tremendous connection between how we feel and how our immune systems work.

Speaker 2 And part of that is triggered by laughter. And laughter has very positive effects on our immune system.
I can tell you about an interesting experiment.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 2 they took two groups and they took one group and they put them in a room where they were going to show him a horror movie.

Speaker 2 And they put the other group in a room where they were showing him a funny movie. And they collected blood samples from both groups.

Speaker 2 And then they took the blood samples and they separated out the white cells and they put them in these petri dishes where we grow bacteria.

Speaker 2 And what they found was the blood from the people who watched funny movies was three times times more effective at killing staph aureus bacteria than the group that had been watching the scary movie

Speaker 2 and that effect has now been shown over and over and over again that laughter tends to boost our immune system and it boosts positive inflammatory markers as well and so um you know There's a couple things you can do.

Speaker 2 You can make sure that you watch funny movies and go out of your way to make sure that you catalog what you enjoy watching and you find friends that you watched. You can go to a

Speaker 2 comedy club. You have to go in, by the way.
You can't just stand outside the comedy club. You have to go in and listen to the comic and laugh.
But

Speaker 2 laughter is very, very therapeutic.

Speaker 1 I wanted to ask you back when we were talking about oxytocin and you were singing the praises of it and saying, well, you don't really want to use a nasal spray to get more of it.

Speaker 1 But if it's so great, how do you get more of it?

Speaker 2 Great question. It's very easy.
Human contact is very important. When you give, somebody gives you a very big, warm hug, that boosts your oxytocin level.

Speaker 2 And to get your oxytocin levels high, you really need about seven of those a day. So I don't know, it depends on how active you've been so far, but you got the rest of the day to get the seven done.

Speaker 2 But it also, affectionate gestures, touching someone on the shoulder. And if none of that works, go out and get yourself a dog because petting dogs releases oxytocin.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it's just the affectionate bonding that makes oxytocin go up.

Speaker 2 And women have a tremendous advantage in that they make about five to seven times more oxytocin than men do, which may be one of the reasons why women have a lot more ease being intimate with each other than men do in their conversation.

Speaker 1 So all of this stuff we're talking about, this is all fairly new, right? This is all relatively new research.

Speaker 2 You have to understand, Mike, we are the first generation in history of humanity that has been able to see a human thought and a human emotion.

Speaker 2 And it is profoundly changing the way we look at normal states and disease states.

Speaker 2 And it will become the foundation of how we actually look at administering medication for certain psychiatric and emotional conditions because we can begin to see what parts of the brain are being affected by the medication.

Speaker 1 And has that started to happen yet?

Speaker 2 Yes. It's happened in depression.
It's happened in PTSD.

Speaker 2 We see that as people, remember that amygdala I told you that's sort of always on guard and looking out and checking the world's okay and blah, blah. Like that's hyperactive in people with PTSD.

Speaker 2 They're always checking the perimeter. They're checking if there's a threat.

Speaker 2 Well, as their PTSD is treated, that amygdala activation goes down.

Speaker 1 So knowing what you know. Like, do you,

Speaker 1 has all of this research, has it changed anything in your life? I mean, have you put this into practice or is this just something we're keeping our eye on?

Speaker 2 No, absolutely. I looked at this from the point of view of how does it tell me about how I'm living my private life and how does it tell me about how I'm interacting out in public?

Speaker 2 Okay, so I spend a lot of time trying to go over the research that is reported and saying, how does this affect me? A perfect example is

Speaker 2 if I'm interviewing somebody, I make a point to really actively listen to what they're saying, to not having an agenda. Because as I actively listen,

Speaker 2 I'm engendering in that person the desire to talk to me some more and share more with me. And I'm also making them potentially say, this would be a good person to work with.

Speaker 2 So I'm trying very hard to say, okay, am I showing them opportunities where they can trust me? Am I showing them opportunities where I I trust them? And am I in an upward spiral in this relationship?

Speaker 1 Well, as you say, the subconscious mind is something, I guess, by definition, we're not that aware of.

Speaker 1 So I've really enjoyed hearing your insight into what it is and how it works and how it works with the conscious mind. And it's all pretty fascinating.
I've been speaking with Alan J. Hamilton.

Speaker 1 He is a brain surgeon who holds four professorships at the University of Arizona. And he's author of a book called Cerebral Entanglements, How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives.

Speaker 1 There's a link to that book in the show notes. Alan, thank you.
Thanks for coming on.

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Speaker 1 What percentage of the vehicles on the road today in the United States would you guess are electric vehicles?

Speaker 1 With all the talk about electric cars, you might be surprised that in 2024, it was less than 1%.

Speaker 1 Now, it is true that of new car registrations, electric vehicles represent somewhere between 7 and 9%.

Speaker 1 But still, electric vehicles are a small minority of the vehicles on the road today.

Speaker 1 However, you are probably well aware that there's a lot of talk about electric cars and a push for people to buy them.

Speaker 1 It might seem that it is inevitable that one day we will all be driving an electric car, like it or not.

Speaker 1 Will we all be driving an electric car? That's what we're going to discuss with Mike Coleus.

Speaker 1 He is a Wall Street Journal reporter who lives in Detroit and has been covering the auto industry for some time.

Speaker 1 And he's author of a book called Inevitable, Inside the Messy, Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles. Hi, Mike.
Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3 Thanks for having me on, Mike. Super excited to talk about this.

Speaker 1 Since it's the title of your book, why do you think it's inevitable that we will all transition to electric vehicles when to date, anyway, they represent a minority of cars on the road?

Speaker 1 They are expensive. And a lot of people have been pretty vocal about not really wanting an electric car for a variety of reasons.
So why are they inevitable, do you think?

Speaker 3 Well, I think if I had to boil it down to one word right now, it probably would be China. There's a lot of factors, but

Speaker 3 we talk about the EV transition and it kind of,

Speaker 3 it's really like there's multiple transitions playing out across the world at different speeds.

Speaker 3 And so here in the U.S., we have one view of things and we've got about 10% of our new car sales are either electric or plug-in hybrid. In China, it's almost half.

Speaker 3 And so what's happened is, you know, China made sort of this deliberate bet on the EV a decade or two ago. And it's paying off now.

Speaker 3 And the big concern of the automakers is now you're starting to see China push a lot of these electric cars out to other markets.

Speaker 3 And so even if things slow down in the US, which it has, you know, if you're the GM of the CEO of General Motors and you're seeing some, you know, some flattening of EV demand, and you're kind of wondering, you know, are Americans really going to buy this?

Speaker 3 I think the thing that's motivating you is

Speaker 3 Sure, you could sell some more big pickup trucks and SUVs, but do you really want to fall farther behind the Chinese and Tesla and other EV startups if this is really the way of the future?

Speaker 1 But when you talk about demand, in this country, there just doesn't seem to be a demand that you said a moment ago, that the sales are flat, that it's just not setting the world on fire.

Speaker 1 If people don't want them, people don't want them.

Speaker 3 So it's certainly not what the companies banked on when they set all of their investment plans three and four and five years ago when there was a ton of enthusiasm around EVs.

Speaker 3 And I think what's happened is, you know, a lot of those people were early adopters, you know, people who want to be the first on the block to get something or, you know, were motivated by environmental reasons or just really like the tech.

Speaker 3 You know, all those people have their EVs now. You know, they're driving Teslas and Rivians.

Speaker 3 And so to get to this next group of people, I think, you know, someone in marketing would call it, I think, a fast follower. Those people are going to be a little more more discerning.

Speaker 3 And so they're going to, you know, they're not going to pay above sticker price just to get an electric car. They're going to think things through.
They're going to look at their options.

Speaker 3 They're going to, they're going to figure out if this makes sense from, you know, am I going to be able to charge it when and where I want.

Speaker 3 And so the industry is really trying to figure out how to convince the consumer that, you know, this is this is a leap worth taking.

Speaker 3 But I think there's a lot of reasons why you are going to start to see this continue to move in this direction. I'll just give you one example.
Sure.

Speaker 3 You know, a Prius 20 years ago was

Speaker 3 a bit of a nerd mobile, right? I mean, it was for environmentalists or, you know, again, the people who really were interested in the tech.

Speaker 3 And, you know, you sort of had to explain yourself if you were driving a Prius. And now, you know, hybrids are ubiquitous.
I mean, you go into a showroom, you might not even realize.

Speaker 3 uh it's it's a combination gas electric car that just happens to get you know whatever whatever, 30, 35%

Speaker 3 better gas mileage. And so I think, and

Speaker 3 we're continuing to see, we're seeing sort of a resurgence in interest in hybrids. All of the car companies are putting out more of them.
I think it's just a small example of the more people

Speaker 3 see these things, talk to their neighbors, experience them, you know, that sort of the stigma is going to go away a little bit.

Speaker 1 But that stigma,

Speaker 1 when EVs, when electric vehicles first came out, there was a lot of, I guess guess there was a lot of demand. There certainly was a lot of interest.

Speaker 1 People were fascinated by the concept and the technology, but everything cooled off. Demand died down.

Speaker 1 And it reminds me a little bit of, you know, a new movie comes out, has a good first weekend, but then the buzz gets around and people, yeah, it's not so good. And the demand for that movie goes away.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like this.

Speaker 1 That it seemed cool, but the reality of it was,

Speaker 1 were you going to charge it?

Speaker 1 What if you're stuck in the desert and you can't charge it? I'd really rather just stick with my gas car.

Speaker 3 Yeah, there's two big reasons. You hit on one of them.
I'll do the other one first, and that's price. They're still more expensive than a comparably sized gas car.

Speaker 3 And so, if you're already kind of on the fence, new technology, you're not quite sure what to make of it, and then you're looking at paying more than you would for the thing you already know and are and are comfortable with, you know, that's a tough leap for people.

Speaker 3 Pricing has come down and

Speaker 3 because demand isn't quite what the industry thought, we are starting to see kind of a mini price war in the U.S.

Speaker 3 And that's made it, you know, there's a lot of good deals out there for someone who's interested in an electric car.

Speaker 3 But, you know, until it comes down, and this was supposed to be the year, like... you know, 2025, we're going to have parity between EVs and gas-powered cars.
That's what a lot of the experts thought.

Speaker 3 And that that hasn't happened. You know, battery chemistries, you know, the price of what goes into the EV hasn't come down fast enough.
So they're still more expensive. That's one.

Speaker 3 The other is charging. And it's just kind of all of the headaches and questions and uncertainty that goes into that.
So

Speaker 3 am I going to be able to find a charger on my road trip?

Speaker 3 You know, how fast am I going to be able to

Speaker 3 fill up even if I do find one? There's a lot of problems still with the charging infrastructure.

Speaker 3 I mean, there was one survey that showed, you know, 20% of people who stopped at a charging station left without putting any juice into the battery because, you know, the app didn't work or the credit card reader didn't work.

Speaker 3 You know, it's, it's in its infancy.

Speaker 3 And, you know, there are a lot of factors that, like, if you're a buyer looking to, you know, decide whether I should go EV or plug-in hybrid or just stick with my gas car, you know, there's a, there's a lot to think about because it is far from perfect.

Speaker 1 I don't even know because I don't have an electric vehicle.

Speaker 1 How long does it typically take? I mean, when you pull into a gas station, you can fill up your tank, your gas tank in three minutes. How long does it typically take a EV to juice itself back up?

Speaker 3 So it depends on the charger that you're at.

Speaker 3 But when people talk about the experts talk about, you know, we really need to expand the charging infrastructure in the U.S., what they're really talking about are the fast chargers, the fastest type of EV chargers that are found typically along highways and interstates,

Speaker 3 because that's really what you need to make this all work.

Speaker 3 Because if you can't drive a few hours out of town and be sure that you're going to be able to recharge somewhere, it's, you know, it's just going to be a barrier to adoption.

Speaker 3 And so those are really expensive for the operators to put in.

Speaker 3 You can get

Speaker 3 maybe 100 miles of range in 20 or 30 minutes if all goes well. So,

Speaker 3 you know, if you're on a road trip and you want to, and you have a 300-mile range EV

Speaker 3 and it's down to 50 miles and you need to stop and

Speaker 3 top that off before you move on, it's probably going to be an hour wait. And that's, you know, that's a change in mindset that not everyone is comfortable with.

Speaker 1 Even though I don't know much about them, that's in the back of my mind is I really don't want to wait an hour to

Speaker 1 charge it back up again. And

Speaker 1 that's why, because normally you see people kind of

Speaker 1 you see people's cars, EV cars parked in the driveway with that charger stuck in the side overnight. You know, they come home from work and they plug it in and so it charges overnight.

Speaker 1 And you kind of have to plan your day around that as opposed to, well, when it says E, I better run up to the gas station and get some gas.

Speaker 3 Right. And so this is an important point.
80% roughly of charging that happens in the U.S. is done at home.
And so, most people get, you know, if you buy an EV, you're almost certain to buy

Speaker 3 an upgraded charger to put in your, most usually your garage if you have a home. It's a little trickier if you live in a multi-unit, you know, an apartment or a condo building.

Speaker 3 But, you know, for $1,000, maybe more, if they need to mess with your wiring, you have this charger that can get you from pretty close to zero from

Speaker 3 zero to full overnight.

Speaker 3 You know, if you just were to plug into your wall, it would take days to recharge. So most people get the charger.
That is enough for most people in most situations.

Speaker 3 I mean, you can go weeks at a time without having to charge anywhere outside the house. So you'll see them at grocery stores and banks and things like that.

Speaker 3 But generally, you don't need to stop at those because you've you've charged overnight. You're in your, you know, you're not far from your home.

Speaker 3 You've, you know, you, The typical commute, running errands, shuttling kids to practice. You can do all that, come back and have plenty to spare.

Speaker 3 I mean, most ranges today, 250 miles is sort of kind of the minimum at this point. There's plenty with over 300 miles of range on a single charge.

Speaker 3 And so for most people on their day-to-day, that's fine. It is the road trips.

Speaker 3 And that's where if you're going to decide, you know, if you're trying to decide on an EV, I think you need to ask yourself a few questions. Where can I charge?

Speaker 3 If you have a house and a garage and you're willing to spend the money, you can have a charger there. That's big.
And then the other one is: how often do I go out of town?

Speaker 3 And if I do, do I have an option to take a different car? Because it's not impossible, but you have to plan it out and you have to plan extra time.

Speaker 1 You know, a question I've always had, and I don't know, I've never known the answer to this.

Speaker 1 When you have an electric vehicle and you charge it,

Speaker 1 like with a lot of other electronics, the more you charge it over and over and over again, the less efficient the battery.

Speaker 1 Is that the case that electric cars don't hold the charge as well after five years as they did when you first got it?

Speaker 3 It does not work like your iPhone because if it did, I don't know that many people would be interested in these. Because

Speaker 3 I don't know about you, but I feel like my battery, you know, I always have issues with the smartphone battery.

Speaker 3 There is a small degree of degradation over time with EVs, but there you can see plenty of testimonials of people who've had electric cars for 10 years and

Speaker 3 there's barely a noticeable difference. It's, I think with that large of a battery,

Speaker 3 that doesn't become an issue

Speaker 3 with EVs like it does with smartphones and other devices, smaller devices.

Speaker 1 So you've been writing about and reporting on the auto industry and you're in Detroit, right?

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 1 What is Detroit,

Speaker 1 do they care? Do automakers care? Are they just going to make whatever people want to buy? Or are they all behind this or what?

Speaker 3 Well, for the longest time,

Speaker 3 the auto executives in Detroit and, you know, Germany and Tokyo that sort of dabbled with electric cars. And, you know, they certainly had work going on, but It was never a full embrace.

Speaker 3 And when a company like Tesla comes around,

Speaker 3 you know, founded in 2003, that's how long they've been around, but really only started putting out cars 2012, 13,

Speaker 3 there was a lot of this sort of eye rolling. So it was just sort of a curiosity, right? And then eventually,

Speaker 3 you know, I think the thought was, well, they're never going to break through and mass market cars and be able to build them with quality.

Speaker 3 And oh, God, they're never going to be able to turn a profit, right? I mean, that was kind of the view. of Tesla in the broader EV space.

Speaker 3 And then once Tesla did break through, maybe 2018 is when the Model 3 really became kind of a mass market car.

Speaker 3 That's when you saw the start of a pivot toward EVs. And so, you know, Tesla passed in 2018, they passed Ford

Speaker 3 in stock market valuation, the market cap of the company. It was worth more than Ford.
And then literally a week later, it was worth more than GM.

Speaker 3 And within a few years, it was worth more than the top 10 automakers in the world combined on a a stock market basis, even though they sell a fraction of the cars as

Speaker 3 a company like Ford. And so it just became something that these companies could not ignore anymore.

Speaker 3 But really, I think this big transition was driven by Tesla and the Chinese and other startups that showed that

Speaker 3 we can mass produce EVs. And guess what? Investors want this stuff because that's where they see.
the growth. And so all the Detroit companies have huge investments now in electric vehicle operations.

Speaker 1 But are they selling them? Are people wanting them?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, we saw this big rush, right? You know, 2020, 2021, there were,

Speaker 3 you know, huge waiting lists for some of the new, because that's when we first, we finally started to see competitors to Tesla.

Speaker 3 There had been you know, small cars that, you know, GM might have come out with a decade ago that really didn't have much range. They weren't really trying.

Speaker 3 And by early this decade, there was a bunch of really cool models coming out. And we saw huge demand.
People were paying above sticker. Everyone just, there was like a big rush to get into an EV.

Speaker 3 And that has faded. So U.S.
EV sales are still rising, but they're not going up nearly as much as the companies expected. And so now they're trying, they need to lower the prices.

Speaker 3 And that has exacerbated their losses. All of the traditional car makers are still losing a lot of money on electrics.
And so you're kind of at this crossroads where, okay,

Speaker 3 do I lean into this thing that's killing me

Speaker 3 on the financial statement because I know that long-term investors want it. I have to stay.
I can't fall further behind China and Tesla.

Speaker 3 But right now, it's painful for the car makers to keep on this path.

Speaker 1 So you said at the beginning that China is a big pusher of EVs. Why? Why does China care? What's the big reason?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's really fascinating in looking at how that evolved. So China barely even had an auto industry up until like the 1990s.

Speaker 3 It was just like a closed market and really was just, you know, dignitaries and government officials drove cars, but cars weren't really a big thing there.

Speaker 3 And they didn't, the cars that they did buy and sell, they were from Russia or other places. And then they opened the market to

Speaker 3 companies like GM and Volkswagen came in.

Speaker 3 They partnered with Chinese, like China-owned

Speaker 3 automakers that really played kind of a little sibling role. And these big car companies came in.
And

Speaker 3 within 15 years, it was the biggest car market in the world. And it was a huge growth driver for companies like GM and

Speaker 3 VW.

Speaker 3 And during all that time, the Chinese companies, you know, they tried and they would put out out their own models and they were kind of knockoffs and they didn't, they weren't very reliable.

Speaker 3 And they really couldn't figure out the engine technology. I mean, it's super complex, hundreds of moving parts.
You've got a transmission that's very complex.

Speaker 3 These other companies have been doing it for 100 years. So the Chinese companies just couldn't compete.
And so the government decided, this is, you know, 2004 or 2005.

Speaker 3 Like, we think we can leap ahead if we move to electric. It's a simpler technology.

Speaker 3 And it was kind of this big bet that these other companies would, you know, they were never going to relinquish their gas engine dominant.

Speaker 3 They were never going to go after EVs in a wholehearted way because that would require them to leave the technology that had filled their bottom line for decades.

Speaker 3 And so China leveraged huge supply chains and they have a lot of raw materials that go into batteries.

Speaker 3 huge government spending to incentivize manufacturers to make EVs for consumers to buy them. They invested heavily in charging.

Speaker 3 So those fast chargers we talked about, 20 times more fast chargers in China than there are in the U.S.

Speaker 3 And almost overnight, you know, in 2017, 18, it was less than 5% of their new car sales were EVs, and now it's almost half.

Speaker 3 It's almost,

Speaker 3 you can't comprehend how fast. the transition has gone there.

Speaker 1 You had mentioned that American car makers misjudge the demand.

Speaker 1 Do they usually misjudge the demand? I mean,

Speaker 1 for other cars? I mean, was this a big oops or it's just too hard to judge demand in advance? So, you know, they did the best they could.

Speaker 3 I think a big oops

Speaker 3 is probably fair.

Speaker 3 You know, I think that they

Speaker 3 overestimated the number of people who would be ready to make the leap now. And so I think,

Speaker 3 you know, a lot of the analysts that you talk to will say,

Speaker 3 okay, there's a lull in the market now and we're going to see it pick up again because costs are going to come down, which means price is going to come down and the charging infrastructure is going to get built out.

Speaker 3 And so I think they were just, I think the car companies were probably early, too early to the party. And now it's a, and now they've got a big headache on their hands because,

Speaker 3 you know, you don't want to make you don't want to have a bunch of cars sitting on dealership lots that people aren't going to buy or that you're going to have to heavily discount and they're going through that pain now of trying to calibrate you know how how fast is this going to take off in the us

Speaker 3 and again

Speaker 3 it's not just it's something you can't just walk away from because if it is the future You're just falling further behind. And that's kind of the, I don't know.

Speaker 3 I think the CEO of a big traditional car company right now is one of the hottest seats to be in in all of the business world because it's just such a tricky thing to calibrate right now, given how the different speeds at which the transition is playing out around the world.

Speaker 1 Given all you've said and the fact that the demand for electric cars has not been what was anticipated, why do you still think it's so inevitable when there is this pushback and resistance to electric to electric cars?

Speaker 3 One of the things I always go back to is, you know, if you when you talk to people who who drive evs or you know a tesla owner for example i mean if you ask if surveys show that 80 or more of tesla owners would go buy another tesla um you know that they're they're not going back and i i think that's pretty universal among ev buyers sure you can find examples of people who just bought one and wasn't for them and they turned it in six months later.

Speaker 3 But, you know, the driving experience is really dynamic. They're quick.
They're fun. They're they're quiet.
And so, you know, the fact that people, when they get into them, they like them, I think,

Speaker 3 you know, can't be discounted, right? I mean, at the end of the day, it's what the consumer wants. And,

Speaker 3 you know, there's a lot of challenges and headwinds right now, especially in the U.S. around the EV story.
But

Speaker 3 I think that's

Speaker 3 one of the reasons why the people I talk to feel like this has legs is that,

Speaker 3 you know, the buyers, when they get into them, they really, they really like them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, I get that. I I remember the first time I got into someone's electric car, I thought, this is really cool.
And I think anyone who's been in one thinks it's really cool.

Speaker 1 But with any technology, you know, the promise and the reality are often different.

Speaker 1 And as you clearly pointed out, the cost of these cars and the problem with charging them away from home, those are real obstacles, but we'll see what happens. I've been speaking with Mike Coleus.

Speaker 1 He is a Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the book, Inevitable, Inside the Messy, Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles. There is a link to that book in the show notes.

Speaker 1 And Mike, thanks for coming on and talking about this.

Speaker 3 Thanks, Mike. I've really enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 1 If you're a man or you know a man who wants to be successful, you have to have the right look.

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Speaker 1 And that is something you should know. Something you should know is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Jeff Havison.
Our executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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