Exploring the Future of Electric Vehicles and the Power Grid Challenges, Ep. 255

🔊 Welcome to The Capitalist Investor Episode!

In this episode, Cool Hand Luke and Tony the Tiger are joined by special guest Mike Hudzinski, a patent attorney with a wealth of knowledge on various trending topics in technology and finance. We deep-dive into the future of electric vehicles, the challenges with our power grid, and fascinating insights into blockchain technology and its applications beyond cryptocurrency.

00:00 - Introduction: Meet Our Hosts and Guest
00:14 - Discussion Begins: Electric Vehicles
00:44 - Mike's Perspective on Electrification in Heavy Equipment
01:59 - Electric Motors: Full Torque at Zero Speed
02:38 - Impact of Electric Vehicles on Power Grid
03:20 - Concerns with Tesla Vehicles in Suburban Areas
04:17 - Infrastructure Challenges and the Current State of EV Charging Stations
06:05 - The Role of Hybrid Vehicles and Fuel Efficiency
07:24 - EV Push vs. Gas Production: A Contradiction?
08:03 - Where is All the Gas Going?
10:05 - Energy Demand from Different Sectors: The Power Grid Strain
11:40 - EV Future: Phase or Permanence?
12:56 - Alternative Energy Sources: The Return of Nuclear?
13:30 - Importance of Defense and National Security
13:55 - Thank You Mike Hudzinski: Recap and Future Discussions


#CapitalistInvestor #ElectricVehicles #EVFuture #PowerGrid #BlockchainTechnology #HybridCars #NaturalGas #RenewableEnergy #NuclearPower #PatentAttorney #FinancePodcast #TechInnovation #EnergyDemand

**Disclaimer:** The opinions expressed in this podcast are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any investment, legal, financial, or tax strategy. Please consult a qualified professional about your individual needs.
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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Capitalist Investor. We have, as always, diamond Hands D, Tony the Tiger. We got me cool hand Luke. And over the past couple of episodes, we've had Mike Kozynski, a client and. Attorney by trade, a patent attorney by trade. So thank you again for coming on, Mike. Thank you for having me talking it, as always. We had a lot of fun podcasts past couple episodes. This one, we're talking about electric vehicles, specifically what's going on there. The future of EV's compared to gas, if that's here to stay, if that's not. But also love to always pick your brain about what you're maybe even seeing within your specialty field of legal attorney patents. If you've seen anything come across your desk, maybe within the EV space or any kind of technology. Kind of cool to talk about. So let's start off by asking. I guess we're starting with that. Have you been seeing anything kind of across your desk in regards to that space? Yes. Electrification is sort of the way forward for heavy equipment manufacturers like Caterpillar and John Deere. John Deere is one of our clients, and what I would say today is public information, but they have electrification plans in the future, according to their annual report. So, like their tractor that a farmer would use, like, electric. Yes. And the cool thing on the technology side about electric vehicles is that I. Electric motors have full torque at zero speed, and that's why you see some of these, all the locomotives now on the trains, it's a motor generator pair. So you have a big diesel engine driving a generator that in turn drives electric motor, a traction motor. And so you have full torque at zero speed, which is what really is exciting when you drive an electric car. Zero to 2.5 seconds, like, whatever. Torque is all about the torque. Yeah, but it's fun. But it's also, like, practical to have that torque when you need it at zero speed. Yeah. Like for towing and. Yeah, all that stuff. So with the electrification of everything, it's being talked about. We always talk about EV's. Like, we don't talk about. No, it's about every. Everything else. So how. How is somebody like John Deere addressing our power grid? Because I don't think our power grid is ready for a mass assault into EV of everything. Yeah, well, I'm more worried about the Tesla's in my neighbor's garage, the neighborhoods. They have infrastructure that's been there for 30 years or 40 years. Correct. And furthermore, we can also talk about the potential of a fire in an electric vehicle, which is another issue. I got a stock for that anyway. Yeah, we'll get to that in a second. But I think the big issue is the Tesla's in the suburbs, to be honest with you. And they're plugging in all at the same time at night, and our air conditioners are running and the infrastructure is not there. That's what I'm saying. I was alive for the blackout. I don't know how. You guys look young, but I remember it. Yeah, okay. Scroll jumped on a. What are you talking about? Scroll jumped on a transfuser transformer, and poof. Right. Yeah. Well, there's, like, certain infrastructure that needs to be put into place that just isn't there to support the artificial rise of the electric vehicle bandwagon right now, in my humble opinion. I mean, charging stations wherever you go, we don't have that. No, what we have is we have standard household circuitry installed right now. And, you know, Tesla's been around for how many years? Five, six, maybe 1010 ish. Okay. Like, 2009. Yeah, I think a little. But has anybody seen rewiring recircuitry in your neighborhood? New transformers, anything going up in ten years? This is coming. But. But nobody's doing anything about it. I know that one of my friends, he works for, like, a publicly traded contractor who. Their job is building these power stations, and he is constantly building. They are building these new power stations, you know? And so it's happening, but, like. Yeah, like a substation. Correct. But it's. You can tell it's not happening as fast as it can or should. Because as far as I know. How many power generation plants are we building in this country? I mean, it has to start somewhere. And the power generation occurs at a power plant. Yeah. And then it goes to substations and is divided out and distributed on all those high tension wires, you see. But how many new power stations are we building in this country to support the extra demand? Like, I don't see it. One thing has to. They either have to work side by side moving forward, or the infrastructure has to be in place yet to support it. And I just don't see any movement along those lines. I don't understand why we couldn't just go halfway. Let's get a bunch of hybrid cars where, you know, part of it's like the. What was that ugly car? I'm sorry. If anyone drives that Prius. That one. The Prius? Yeah, Prius. When that thing first came out, I'm like, yeah, I get it. But, man, they could have done better on that design. I'm sorry if I offended anybody out there, but. But that was like a perfect transition because it would. It can go switch back and forth. That's right. It was sort of experimental. Right. And it worked. It worked pretty well. Yeah. But, you know, by the same token, I'm driving a car right now that gets about 33 miles to the gallon. Like, why would I take on all that extra technology under the hood for a savings of what? I don't know. What could it get 45 miles to the gallon? Well, it depends how you drive, I guess. But, I mean. So here, think about this, Mike. Is that. So there's this push for Ev's, right? Anti gas. The question is, where is that push coming from? The top. The top left shelf. Yes, but think about this, though. The United States is pumping more gas out of the ground than it ever has in its history. Yet they're saying, go Ev. Tell me, understand, what is. What is that doing? Again, artificial propping up before the election, in my opinion, of, like, let's keep things, you know, gas low, other things low, things that they can manipulate. But, like, that completely defeats the Ev story. Like, why are you pumping all this gas when we're trying to transition over here? Yeah, I actually have a question where all that gas is going, because I heard a statistic recently on the show, I don't remember which show, but they said that consumer demand for gasoline, which is cars. Right. It's down this year. So I'm not sure where that gas is going. It ain't going in a strategic oil reserve either. I'm not sure we're exporting it. Well, I also think it's interesting. Maybe they're using it to mine all this stuff that they need for EV's, right? Well, we talk about the infrastructure. We don't really talk about too much where the power comes from. And one stats I like I just threw out there a couple of days ago on the big money show, was at 40%. I know. We just added natural gas to our portfolio, 4% of data centers. Like, we talked about AI, like, talk about EV's, AI's, whatever it be. Like the power consumption is going up, and 4% of data centers are contributing to power consumption here in the US. That's going down in bitcoin, all of it. And 40% of the grid is supplied by natural gas. So talk about the election coming up, especially a Trump victory could be good for fossil fuels and natural gas and things like that. So one of the reasons why we added that is because all the power consumption, you need natural gas more. So demands going up, prices go up. The having of bitcoin, did that just basically mean it takes twice as long, too? Yeah, mine it. Mine it. Great to crack the codes. Sounds efficient. You're just generating heat, basically. It's. Yes, that's right. Are you seeing anything? Let's go there. Are you seeing anything? Comes through the space in the crypto world through your desk there? I don't personally. Maybe some of my colleagues do. Yep. Yeah. The blockchain is used in other areas besides bitcoin, too. So sometimes we see that technology sort of spin off in other areas. Like maybe financials. The financial sector. I know that could be huge for banks. Banks are, like, old school. Everyone thinks, like, banks have kind of been innovative, too. Not really. A lot of banks are living like a 1980s term. Like their blockchain could really innovate. A lot of. I had a colleague a couple years ago, went to Wells Fargo. So they do patent things. Banks, yeah, but banks do they use, you know, the blockchain to ensure that their, what would you call it, redundant database systems are all reflecting the same accounts, basically. So you do that sort of by blockchain to ensure that, you know, if a bank has all of its information in one data center, that's pretty bad. So you have redundant systems and they're spread around the country. Interesting. And so you can. Cyber security privacy thing. Yeah, right. Interesting. And that's not really bitcoin, but it's the same technology that, you know, the blockchain. Blockchain, yeah, it's interesting. There's like, so many different things. Like, like, Mike, when you, like, just picking your brain here, like, hello. Like, we come in, kind of think we're talking about certain things, and like, you're like, yeah, like, you know, blockchain technology and financials and cybersecurity. Like, it's just like, it's interesting, like, how the world you're living in is different sometimes. And what we're seeing day to day and thinking about. Right. And how much more specific what we're. Talking about here is competition for energy from different, like, silos in this country. Right. You have consumer demand, and you have commercial demand, banking sector, and they all have their own sort of demand for energy, and it has to come from somewhere, and it's usually a power plant. So is everyone going to have an ev? Is everyone going to have all this stuff being pushed on us in ten years? Or is this just like a phase we're going through? Kind of like we've gone through phases before in history where, like, first they thought, you know, the global warming was gonna kill us, I think by, like, the 1990s. And they thought it was global cooling at one point and things like that. Like, is this another phase, or is. This just the current heat wave? This is actually coming this time. The current heat wave is new. Like, I. You know, it's never been hot before, ever. I've never experienced 100 degree day ever. Get out of here, man. I think the market will support a certain amount of EV's, and if you choose to buy one, that's fine, but I think it's artificially supported right now. I mean, that's pretty obvious. Electric vehicles have been around since 1910, and it. The technology just never really worked that well to be a viable, you know, 24/7 type commodity. Yeah. For consumers, it has its place. It was like our other alternative energy play, you know, solar and wind, just not efficient enough, not ready for prime time. And we went into nuclear. What happened to nuclear? I never hear that in public debate from politicians. That word never comes out of their mouth. And it seems to me that that's sort of necessary. I mean, we're converting coal plants to gas, and you said 40% now is natural gas, which is good. It's cleaner and everything like that. But nuclear seems to be the way to go. The Biden administration has pumped billions of dollars into getting some of these old nuclear plants up to date reopened. Whatever you want to call that. They are putting money into it, but it's kind of quiet. You don't care much about it. That's really good. That's what we need. I agree. It just. I think it just has a bad, like, stigma because it. When things go bad, it's really bad. Right. Well, that's true. And sometimes they're vulnerable to, you know, hostile attack. It's not just if they fail. Right. You're basically. You basically have sort of a big target. Mm hmm. A dangerous target. Right. Yeah. Well, that goes into why we need to continue to grow our defense and innovate over there and continue to hopefully make this world a little bit better place, because it's getting crazy out there. That's for sure. But we'll see. That's a whole different topic for another time. Mike, thank you for coming. The past three episodes, I had a lot of fun picking your brain. Come on back. I know. We were at the barbecue, our client barbecue, a couple weeks ago. Mike goes, hey, I'd love to come on your podcast. I'm like, actually, let's make it happen. So it's cool how that happened. A couple weeks ago, conversation brought you on. I was laughing. I thought that the Monday after when, you know, Mark Tepper had you guys around do sort of a debriefing, you told him, man, you won't believe this idiot. He wants to come in and do a podcast with me. Maybe Mark said no more beer wagon. At the no more beer wagon. That's funny. We had a good time. That was a good event. We'll have another one coming up, the forecast like in February. We're looking forward to that. So thanks Mike for coming. Maybe we'll see you again soon. And I know I will see you soon. Thanks for everyone for listening to the capitalist investor. We'll see you next time. Thank you. The opinions expressed in the podcast are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any investment, legal, financial, or tax strategy. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. Please consult a qualified professional about your individual needs.