Saul Griffith On How To Lead the Race To Electrify Everything!

Summary

The Fully Charged Podcast: Saul Griffith On How To Lead the Race To Electrify Everything!

Host: Robert Llewellyn
Guest: Saul Griffith
Release Date: February 24, 2025
Duration Covered: 00:00 - 47:38

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of The Fully Charged Podcast, host Robert Llewellyn sits down with Saul Griffith, an American-Australian scientist, inventor, and prominent advocate for electrifying the world to combat climate change. Recorded in Sydney, the conversation delves deep into the feasibility, challenges, and cultural shifts required to electrify various sectors globally.

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Can We Electrify Everything?

[04:16] Robert Llewellyn: "Can we electrify everything?"

[04:16] Saul Griffith: "Of course we can electrify everything."

Saul Griffith confidently addresses the skepticism surrounding the possibility of electrifying all sectors. He outlines current advancements, such as using electrolyzers for ammonia production and electrochemical pathways for steelmaking. While acknowledging the difficulty in electrifying sectors like long-haul aviation and livestock farming, Griffith emphasizes that technological barriers are being overcome through innovative approaches like synthetic biology.

Key Points:

• Electrification of transportation, including heavy trucks.
• Challenges in sectors requiring high energy density, such as aviation.
• Potential solutions through synthetic biology for food production.
• Importance of creativity in overcoming electrification hurdles.

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Rewiring the World: Policy and Implementation

[08:01] Saul Griffith: "We're trying to kick up rewiring the world we now have."

Griffith discusses his transition from technology development to policy advocacy in 2019, responding to the failure of existing climate strategies. He founded organizations like Rewiring America, Rewiring Australia, and Rewiring New Zealand to push for electrification through policy reform and technological deployment. Griffith criticizes the International Energy Agency for outdated sectoral models and stresses the need for localized, actionable policies to transition away from fossil fuels.

Key Points:

• Shift from technology to policy advocacy.
• Establishment of Rewiring initiatives in multiple countries.
• Critique of traditional energy sector definitions and models.
• The necessity of engaging in policy and regulatory reforms to combat fossil fuel dominance.

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Electrification in the United States: Challenges and Opportunities

[11:24] Saul Griffith: "It is too early to know what they are up to."

Griffith provides insights into the U.S. energy landscape, highlighting the impact of regulatory barriers and economic factors on electrification efforts. He praises Elon Musk and Tesla for their role in advancing electric vehicles but points out systemic issues like expensive rooftop solar and tariffs on affordable electric cars. Griffith advocates for deregulation to lower energy costs, making electrification accessible to a broader population.

Notable Quote: [11:54] Saul Griffith: "The most efficient energy system is the electrify everything one."

Key Points:

• Regulatory and policy barriers in the U.S.
• The role of Elon Musk and Tesla in electrification.
• Economic disparity in accessing electrification technologies.
• Proposal for deregulation to reduce energy costs and promote widespread electrification.

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Global Manufacturing and Technological Dominance

[15:16] Saul Griffith: "China bet on the right thing 15 years before everyone else."

Griffith examines the shift in manufacturing dominance to China, attributing it to strategic investments in technologies like power electronics and battery manufacturing. He contrasts this with the U.S., which neglected these sectors in favor of fossil fuels and service industries. Griffith underscores the importance of engineering education and workforce development to regain competitive edges in critical technologies.

Key Points:

• China's strategic investment in electric and automation technologies.
• Decline of American manufacturing prowess in critical sectors.
• The impact of globalization and policy decisions on technological leadership.
• Urgent need for workforce development in power electronics to support electrification.

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Electrification and Economic Renewal

[42:22] Saul Griffith: "We could be keeping $20 million in our community a year."

Griffith presents a compelling economic argument for localized electrification. By transitioning to rooftop solar and community batteries, communities can retain significant amounts of money that currently flow out to fossil fuel industries. This retained capital can stimulate local economies, funding community projects, businesses, and public services, thereby fostering economic renewal alongside environmental benefits.

Notable Quote: [45:40] Saul Griffith: "This could and should be the economic success story."

Key Points:

• Economic benefits of keeping energy spending within local communities.
• Savings from transitioning to rooftop solar and community batteries.
• Potential for localized economic growth through retained capital.
• Integration of electrification with community development initiatives.

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Challenges in Electric Vehicle Adoption

[23:02] Saul Griffith: "Some of these cars are 30% too big and 50% too complicated."

Discussing the electric vehicle (EV) market, Griffith criticizes the complexity and high costs associated with modern EVs. He highlights issues like excessive electronics, fragile designs, and intrusive user interfaces that detract from the user experience. Griffith advocates for simpler, more reliable EV designs that prioritize functionality and affordability over unnecessary technological additions.

Key Points:

• Overcomplication and high costs of current EV designs.
• Issues with user interfaces and vehicle reliability.
• The need for streamlined, cost-effective EV models.
• Critique of start-ups struggling to navigate regulatory hurdles in EV production.

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The Role of Fossil Fuel Industry and Infrastructure Challenges

[34:00] Saul Griffith: "Not with the user interfaces we're currently deploying."

Griffith addresses the entrenched influence of the fossil fuel industry in hindering the electrification transition. He points out the complications arising from proprietary standards and lack of infrastructure standardization, which slow down the deployment of technologies like vehicle-to-grid systems. Griffith emphasizes the need for public investment in infrastructure to facilitate seamless electrification.

Key Points:

• Fossil fuel industry's resistance to electrification.
• Infrastructure challenges due to proprietary standards and lack of standardization.
• The necessity of public investment in electrification infrastructure.
• The impact of regulatory battles on technological deployment and innovation.

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Community Batteries and Local Energy Solutions

[43:56] Saul Griffith: "We're trying to make it all electrify much faster, deploy community batteries."

Highlighting practical solutions, Griffith explains the benefits of community batteries and localized energy systems. He critiques the current grid rules that favor selling electricity back to large retailers at inflated prices, advocating instead for local energy trades that benefit communities directly. This approach not only enhances energy efficiency but also keeps financial resources within the community, fostering economic and environmental resilience.

Notable Quote: [44:43] Saul Griffith: "We could keep $20 million in our community a year of that 25 to 30."

Key Points:

• Implementation of community batteries to enhance local energy storage.
• Critique of existing grid rules that disadvantage local energy trades.
• Economic and environmental benefits of localized energy solutions.
• Example projects with the Australian Renewable Energy Agency demonstrating community electrification.

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Conclusion

The conversation between Robert Llewellyn and Saul Griffith provides a comprehensive exploration of the potential and challenges in electrifying everything. Griffith's insights into policy reform, economic benefits, manufacturing shifts, and practical solutions like community batteries present a hopeful yet realistic roadmap for a sustainable future. The episode underscores the urgency of collective action, policy advocacy, and technological innovation in achieving global electrification and combating climate change.

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Notable Quotes:

• [11:54] Saul Griffith: "The most efficient energy system is the electrify everything one."
• [15:16] Saul Griffith: "China bet on the right thing 15 years before everyone else."
• [42:22] Saul Griffith: "We could be keeping $20 million in our community a year."
• [43:56] Saul Griffith: "We're trying to make it all electrify much faster, deploy community batteries."

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Upcoming Events Mentioned:

• Everything Electric Live in Sydney: March 7-9, 2025.
• Upcoming Shows: London in April; Vancouver, Farnborough, and Melbourne in the latter part of 2025.

Books by Saul Griffith:

• Upcoming: Plug In
• Previous Works: Electrify – Focused on policymaking and large-scale electrification strategies.

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This episode serves as a vital resource for anyone interested in the intersection of technology, policy, and community action in the race to electrify our world sustainably.

Transcript

[Robert Llewellyn]

Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the Fully Charged Show Podcast. I'm currently in Australia, I'm not that far. I'm in Sydney and I'm not that far from a town called Wollongong. And in this town, a coastal town in New South Wales, lives an extraordinary man, Saul Griffith, who I'm speaking to on this episode of the show. And it really is, it was a great, great as well as, as well as a pleasure. He is a, an extraordinary voice for sanity in the, in the energy transition and his knowledge and understanding. It will be very apparent that I just about managed to keep up with him and my goodness, I was struggling. He is an incredible force of nature and a really fascinating man with an incredibly deep knowledge of this. So his. It's very hard to define him. I mean he's a writer, bestselling writer. He's a new book coming out very soon called Plug in, which I'm going to plug. It's not out yet but it's coming soon. He's written numerous books before. He's a speaker. If you Google him you'll find an enormous amount of stuff about, about Saul. He was at the first fully charged live, as it was in, in Sydney a couple of years ago and I didn't meet him then. He wasn't, he was on a panel that I wasn't sharing and I was really disappointed not to meet him but he, he made up for it more than made up for it today. Really a wonderful chance to talk to him. There's basically no, I can't do an introduction big enough. He's an, an American Australian scientist, inventor, writer and an enormous advocate for electrifying the, the world and the, the enormous, obvious benefits of doing that. So that's, that's it. I just want to mention that we are about wonderful everything electric live in Sydney on the 7 8th and 9th of March at what I call the Olympic park, but I believe it's got a proper, proper name, the Exhibition Centre. It's something like that. Anyone who lives in Sydney is going to know what that is. Anyone who lives in New South Wales is going to know. But I mean it is going to be an exceptionally big show this year. There's an amazing amount of test drives available of electric vehicles and electric transport in general. Lots of bikes and scooters and all kinds of other business, electric trucks, massive electric trucks swapping batteries. It's going to be demonstrations of that and amazing speakers. That's enough from me. Please do welcome onto the Fully Charged Show Podcast the truly, truly remarkable Saul Griffith, love the Everything Electric show. Then join us live in Sydney in March or London in April or in Vancouver, Farnborough and Melbourne in September, October and November 2025. So thank you so much for finding the time. I know, I mean, oh, look, got a shark. But also, I think I want them, I want the listeners to know you. You've actually carved out a bit of time on your birthday. This just feels really wrong. It's really kind of you. I know it's with schedules.

[Saul Griffith]

My 51st birthday. I should be doing 51st birthday things, which for me, I had. There's a spectacular nor'easter is blowing in and I had plans to head off from Coledale beach and sail down to Wollongong. Kite surfing.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Oh, what? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You're welcome to do. I'm terrified. I can watch. I can watch from the beach.

[Saul Griffith]

There's a 2 metre swell and it's blowing 25 knots. So you're in between. You're in a very dangerous position for a podcast. You're between me and Pure Joy.

[Robert Llewellyn]

That's a challenge. Let's keep it. I tell you what, let's stay on topic, keep it brief and you can get out there. I don't want to hold you back from it. I feel really bad. I've got a good starter question for you. Can we electrify everything?

[Saul Griffith]

Of course we can electrify everything. And I'm not quite sure what the origin of that question is.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Well, I think there's a lot of people who say you can't electrify everything. I think you can, but you know, there's plenty of naysayers in the world.

[Saul Griffith]

Right. Well, we already use electrolyzers to make ammonia. We can electrify steel making. I've known multiple groups doing electrochemical pathways to steel. Even if you have to use hydrogen, the hydrogen starts with electricity. We can electrify all the vehicles. Even the big trucks are going electric.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Electrifying long haul aviation may never happen.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

That needs. This needs a battery. That's five to ten times higher energy density than what we have. You. It's hard to electrify pigs and cows. And we like eating pigs and cows. Oh. Quite seriously. There are synthetic biology pathways now where you can turn electricity into proteins.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

And so, you know, it's not inconceivable that we electrified a hell of a lot of food. Electrifying a combine harvester might be hard, but we just might have many small combine harvesters instead of one.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Huge one.

[Saul Griffith]

Yeah, huge one. Like you know, swarms of drones that are often do a job better than one big machine. So I think if you're, if you take a tiny bit of creativity, you can electrify everything. Really? I think the more interesting interpretation your question is can we. Culturally.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Electric everything.

[Robert Llewellyn]

I guess that's what I meant. Yes, that's more accurate.

[Saul Griffith]

In which case, you know, Instagram thinks I'm a car guy, which I find hilarious.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

And I am a car guy. I really like, you know, mid century European small cars and I own a collection of really absurd vehicles. But because of that, it thinks I'm interested in 2000 horsepower hill climbing drag cars that destroy ecosystems in a flurry of diesel exhaust. And when I think about the culture as represented by the people who are desperately clinging to their manhood with these things, I think we got a long way to go before we can electrify that.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

However, I do like to say, you know, you can we. We'd be doing a better job if we were selling the climate movement as we're going to solve climate change with electric jet skis. Right. And doing electric donuts. So, yeah, you know, I'm hoping my son is to gets his driver's license in a month. We bought a 1966 EJ Holden, so we're electrifying that for him. And that's glorious.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Oh, wow.

[Saul Griffith]

I just been building electric go karts that can do zero to 60 in a couple of seconds and they're hilarious. So like. Yeah, I don't know. I don't see any reason why we can't electrify everything. Yeah. I think they're cultural and psychological barriers, not technical barriers at this point.

[Robert Llewellyn]

I mean, can you. And also, I mean, I'm very interested in this because I was talking to Mike Casey, the farmer, the cherry farmer in New Zealand. I don't think you may have heard of him.

[Saul Griffith]

You've ever eaten, mate? Are.

[Robert Llewellyn]

They're amazing cherries. We were there a couple of weeks ago. Just beautiful. We had such a great time. But he was explaining about the rewiring idea because for some reason I've not been aware of that in the UK and I'm very aware of it now in New Zealand. And so you're very involved in rewiring Australia, but can you kind of explain what, what that is for an outsider.

[Saul Griffith]

Really? We're trying to kick up rewiring the world we now have. I started all of this work where I stopped being a developer of the technology. Although you can see behind me, I still tinker and do it a little. But got into policy in 2019 when there just was obviously most strategies for climate action had failed. So I wrote the book Electrify. That's really an argument that yes, you can electrify everything. If you do, the economy's more than twice as efficient, the cost of energy will go down, not up, and we can solve it. And here's a very concrete plan to electrify all the things that led to starting rewiring America. That ended up being a very policy oriented organization initially working on the Inflation Reduction Act. Now we're a deployment focused organization taking some of the funds from the Inflation Reduction act and connecting it to people and then rewiring Australia. Rewiring New Zealand realized similarly, like we need an advocacy group for this electrification of everything movement that needs to be engaged in policy, needs to be engaged in the regulatory fight because the fossil fuels, not necessarily in an evil way, but they've captured the existing set of regulatory and policy things for an energy system.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And so if you want to build a new energy system that doesn't create carbon dioxide on things, you'd need to be in the policy and the regulatory game. And that's a dirty, dirty knife fight with really nasty people. Yeah. And so that's what rewiring Australia, rewiring America, rewiring outer air or New Zealand are all about. We actually also now have a chapter in rewiring Taiwan. And also it's, you know, really, it's about showing with data that this is possible. There's still. Most countries don't believe it's possible because quite frankly, the International Energy Agency still doesn't do the modeling. Right. We still talk about energy systems in the language and then in the sectors that were defined in the 1970s, like, yeah, the whole world. Like there's abstract notions of we can do it and we can hit one and a half and two degrees, but you've got to translate that into realizable policy and regulatory reform and technological rollout. And that's not happening. And we're losing handsomely to the fossil fuel industry in that fight.

[Robert Llewellyn]

I mean, I can't help that bringing up the, the, the current administration in the United States. I mean, I'm just wondering what your opinion is on the scale of the.

[Saul Griffith]

Pushback for at least 15 minutes.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Mate, I know I gave you a break. It was your birthday. I didn't want to bring it up. We don't have to talk about it. I'm very happy to avoid it, but I mean, it's kind of a fair. Well, you know, you just mentioned the Inflation Reduction act, which I presume is, you know, not such a big thing anymore. But I mean, do you. My take on it has been it's a global phenomenon, not an American one. It's bigger than any one individual leader or country. You know, what is happening around the world is on such a huge scale now that it's, you know, I am very concerned about it, but I'm not terminally depressed.

[Saul Griffith]

As with most things, thinking about America has scrambled your brain. So you put three or four questions into that mumble there. So let me use that as a way to say what I would like to say about it.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes.

[Saul Griffith]

It is too early to know what they are up to. Elon Musk is one of the original electrifiers. Tesla is one of the most important companies globally in the electrification of everything. He runs a thing called the Department of Government Efficiency. Efficiency has always been the concern and the bipartisan approach to solving energy problems is to make things more efficient. And the most efficient, efficient energy system is the electrify everything one.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

So you can hope maybe that after he's got some revenge over whatever perceived slights that we can go back to electrifying everything. And Elon might even be on site.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

You would say that the problem in the US for electrification is that it's too expensive for regulatory reasons. So the climate movement has, you know, it's good. We did a great job. We made everyone aware that the climate action is electrification. That's super. But then we didn't in the US In Australia, it's easy because solar electricity is cheap and you run your byd, which you can buy because no tariffs on the BYD here. And the electric car's cheap and it's driving for 2 cents a kilometer instead of 25 cents in a petrol car. So, like, oh, no conflict between my pocketbook and doing the right thing. So sign up. In the us, rooftop solar is about five to eight times more expensive than US Australia, the grid more expensive. The. They put tariffs on the cheap Chinese cars so you can't get the cheap electric cars. Like, the electrification message has been good, but it comes with. You have to be rich to do it because there hasn't been enough people in the climate movement focused on lowering the cost of electricity. So the cost of nuclear power in the US is six times higher than it is in South Korea.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

So what's the answer? Let's take the dereg. You know, it could be. And I'm actually going to D.C. and I'm going to have some conversations with people who lean on the Trumpy musk side of the thing about like, actually, you could deliver the President's mandate, which is lowering the cost of energy by 40%, by electrifying everything, making nuclear cheap, which is a dereg. You know, fix the regs and fix the policy, make rooftop solar cheap, fix the regs, fix the policy. And then once you have that cheap electricity and you make the things in America, there's a really good economic revival, efficient economy story that I don't know. That doesn't. That does not seem any more Democrat to me than it does Republican, because Republicans have traditionally driven the efficiency agenda in the U.S. so honestly, what's going on just looks like chaos. But you. It doesn't have to be. And you have to say, like, this is a good thing. It's going to happen. So the question to me is, will that be what happens after the shock and awe of the first hundred days, or is the rest of the world going to have to figure out a containment strategy for America?

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah. Yes. That is a much better answer than my question. Well, my question wasn't even a question. It was just. I just sort of tripped over some words, as you rightly pointed out. But okay, so one of them.

[Saul Griffith]

It was a question salad.

[Robert Llewellyn]

It was a question. Thank you. I am really good at making a high quality question salad. It's my skill. What about. I mean, the one. I'll try and make it this a thin question sandwich. The technological dominance and industrial dominance of China. You know, the manufacturing dominance. How. I mean, because I find that really fascinating. That shift has happened for me, for my consciousness, really, in the last 10 to 15 years. You know, that the focus going over there.

[Saul Griffith]

Well, this is the very long and very dark shadow of Jack Welch and Bill Clinton.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right. Ah, okay.

[Saul Griffith]

Right. Like you really. There's so much blame that can go on here. And the time to solve this problem was 30 years ago. Yes, yes, 40 years ago. And you think about it. So the globalization agenda, so everyone thought that's a Republican agenda, was really Clinton, who was neoliberal light and let's go all globalist.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And that worked with the narrative of Jack Welch, that we're going to send the American economy into the service economy. We don't need to do any of these dull manufacturing things anymore, and GE will be more efficient. All right. We now know how that works out. George is a fraction of its former self and America literally doesn't know how to make anything anymore. I'M trying to make this product. I'm making it in Taiwan because I literally can't get a supply chain for a relatively simple electric vehicle product in.

[Robert Llewellyn]

The U.S. that's functional. Yeah. Wow.

[Saul Griffith]

So in 2007 and 8, I was working a little bit adjacent to the Obama administration with the Department of Energy, and it was all about hydrogen and gas transition. And America bought the story of the Pickens plan was what it was called at the time, which was a gas developer in Texas, Pickens. And he's like, oh, gas, Gas is a transition fuel, which was one of, you know, one of the very many great distractions that has sent everyone off on the wrong path. Yeah, it set the whole American economy off on the wrong path. And then in2013, Germany did Industry 4.0. The idea that you'll digitize industries, CNC, machines, robots making everything. And that's a good idea. And then China says, oh, that is a good idea. Such a good idea. Let's do that. And so in 2014, they say, let's do made in China 2025 policy and a commitment to make not just the new energy technologies, but the automation, industrial automation, and the robots to do it without labor. So it's cheap. Yeah, they've done a very good job of that. And that brings you to by day. I don't really believe the American stories of the enormous subsidies of the Chinese government. I think the Chinese government is not subsidizing those industries to any greater degree than the American government is subsidizing the oil and gas industry. So let's just call that a square and, and say the problem was China. Well, China does not have enough domestic oil or gas to run its economy. It doesn't really want to buy it from Russia or Saudi Arabia or America. They're all bad options if you're China. So it said, we'll go all electric. America thought they could still make gas and oil cheap. They can't do either. They are uncompetitive in oil compared to the Middle East. And honestly, gas is only economic if the interest rate is low. Helen Thompson wrote a great book about this. I can't remember. It was like Oil and the American Energy Contradiction or something. But the boom bust cycle of the gas industry is driven by interest rates and investment. It's not as competitive as the other, other producers. So the problem is America bet on exactly the wrong thing at the wrong moment. China bet on the right thing 15 years before everyone else. And so now China has this huge advantage and America has undermined its Education system. I think China is doing 10 or 12 times as many engineers per year.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

As you, as you need. I can't hire a decent power electronics engineer in America. There's six and we need 6,000 and they're all old. Right. So anyone listening who wants to know how to save the world, become a power electronics nerd.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes, yes. If you're, if you want a good job. Yeah, absolutely.

[Saul Griffith]

Yeah. Oh, there's just, it's everywhere you look. There's power electronics problems. And, and so, you know, I think the challenge for America is it's very psychologically hard to either admit that it was wrong or to admit that China isn't equal.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Unfortunately, I think both of those things are true. Now that's not to say I like anything about the management of China's political system, but right now, and actually for the last few decades, I haven't particularly liked anything about the management of America's political system either. Let's also call that square and say, you know, I'm a single issue voter and all I care about is zero emissions.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And it looks like they've made difficult decisions and you know, it's playing into very painful, very difficult politics in the U.S. yeah. But, yeah, the U.S. i'm always, I still believe that is true. And it's not even, you know, until you get more information, it's not even clear that some good won't happen under this administration.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Even if by accident. So I'm a little bit tired of the defensive crouch and let's just say no and stop everything.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Of my Democratic friends. I'm sick of the bragging of my Republican friends. I'm like, can we all just get along and do the work?

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I think you, you make a point there, which I think is very true. So the reason I became aware of the notion of electric vehicles was in California in 2001, 2003. I was working there at that time and I kept meeting engineers that were developing battery management systems and electric drivetrains and it didn't mean anything to me. I did like, it wasn't, I was going, why would they do it? Right.

[Saul Griffith]

He took you for a drive in his, what was his fabulous little car? It was a roll cage with a thousand.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Pete Wright, was it? Peter Wright? What's his name? Ye. Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. That went incredibly fast. But that was, I thought that was interesting. And because you, I know you were there for a long time, that, that in a sense, the technology we're now very used to was developed in Silicon Valley, was not developed in Detroit. It was not. It did not come out of General Motors or Ford as ex President Biden said. They did not.

[Saul Griffith]

Well, I think you've just done a terrible disservice with revisionist history.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Oh, okay.

[Saul Griffith]

So GM was working hard on this.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes.

[Saul Griffith]

Asia working very hard making batteries for all of America's laptops.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

It was a smart engineer from Stanford who actually realized you could make a workable battery out of the lithium batteries in laptops.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

That was J.B. straubel. That was really what made Tesla work out. Despite whom. What, who everyone wants to give credit to is the wrong story. And, but all of those batteries were really developed in Asia and all of that technology is an Asian success story. And we have thanks, Samsung and Panasonic and everyone else to thank. Yeah, there was some integration and then some sexy marketing that happened in Silicon Valley. That's what Silicon Valley actually does. Silicon Valley is not very good at developing new or hard technology. It just takes the credit when everyone else does.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right. Thank you for correcting that.

[Saul Griffith]

Also true of AI. Also true. Autonomous cars.

[Robert Llewellyn]

That's a much better grasp of that story of that history. Yes. But I mean, I can't do, I mean, I still can't help thinking that, I mean do you think like the EV1 and General Motors early dabbling with electric vehicles was a, an actual positive step towards what we are seeing now?

[Saul Griffith]

Yes.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right. Okay, that's good.

[Saul Griffith]

It's a small picnic blanket that you can put all the engineers on and you know, they went from there and some of them went to work at Tesla and some of them worked at AC Propulsion, some of them worked for write speed. And like it's in the soup of the real complicated story of any complicated technologies development.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Is it's lots and lots of players and then someone gets to declare victory because they happen to raise money at the right time.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Right. So some cultural things needed to happen. Some scale and technology things needed to happen. Tesla should get credit for doing all of those things. Well, but I think to write out GM as part of the story, to write out Asian battery scale manufacturing as a big part of the story is to miss the reality of how these things develop globally in the modern age.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right. That's very good. I'm very happy to hear that. And that helps me a lot that the, but that's, that aside the, the, the challenge, I mean the one area that we're very familiar with is the European car market, the European manufacturers, the Struggles they're going through. In particular Germany, France. I have the feeling when Asia was.

[Saul Griffith]

Thinking let's do batteries, Germany was like, how do we lie about diesel? So they made a similar mistake. Us. Right?

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean how much trouble do you think the likes of BMW, vw, Audi, Mercedes are in in terms of the competition from China?

[Saul Griffith]

So I just wrote a new book. It's going to be called Plug In.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Oh, good.

[Saul Griffith]

If Electrify was for policymakers and the big switch was for what you might call thought leaders or early adopters, plugins for the everyday person and the tradie.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

And I looked in detail at the economics, the day to day economics of doing all the electrified things, whether it's your car or your stove or your water heater or the solar or the battery and how it works in the context of the real everyday economic decisions of a real person. And you look at a car and it's unbelievable. Like what I said it's like 2 cents or 1 or 2 cents a kilometer to drive a electric vehicle on your rooftop. Solar. And it's 25 cents to drive it on petrol. But really the depreciation of the car dominates the cost of ownership of that car. And yes, you could save three or four thousand dollars a year on each car and driveway on petrol, but if you've decided to buy a BMW for $90,000 instead of BYD for $40,000, you've made a completely uneconomic, irrational decision based on like some photograph of someone you saw in automotive history 20 years ago that's made you want to have the three BMW stripes and wear the hat. Right. So the problem with, you know, what might save Germany is just the legacy history of good storytelling. But there's not a car that's Europe is EV that Europe is making yet that really competes just fundamentally in the pocketbook. Yeah, but you know, the car is the least rational of all of the decisions that you make in your life to do so. You know, I don't try to buy new cars, although my wife just insisted. So we're going to get the new Volkswagen bus because we wanted a seven seater.

[Robert Llewellyn]

It's very popular.

[Saul Griffith]

Our other car is a BYD Dolphin. We just like, let's get the cheapest one. And for every day getting around town, it's, you know, I mean, it feels like Xi Jinping is riding on your shoulder because it's like, slow down, you're doing 62 kilometers per hour. Super annoying. And the, you know, so the, it's a great guard with maybe the worst user interface in automotive history. Yes, yeah, yeah. But you know, for just driving the kids to school and going to the grocery store.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Fantastic.

[Saul Griffith]

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's fantastic. So, yeah, and we paid nearly. Yeah.

[Robert Llewellyn]

What?

[Saul Griffith]

We're paying more. More, Far more than double. Nearly triple for the VW bus instead of the dolphin.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes. Oh, God. Yeah. But yes. No, I'm with you on that. We've just been driving a thing called an Xpeng G6 and, and it, if you yawn when you're driving, it goes, it gives you a pinging warning. Everything go says driver, driver drowsiness alert. But also if you laugh. So if you're, if you have a European face and you laugh, it thinks you're falling asleep. Because I laugh with my mouth open, I go, ha, ha ha, you're a.

[Saul Griffith]

Mouth laugher, as they would say.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Mouth breather. But it's, it's pinging constantly. All the time we're talking in the car. It's ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. Yeah. I mean you can probably turn a lot of it off if you bother to do it.

[Saul Griffith]

Once I find those wires, I'm going to publish it on the Internet. I just like, don't clip the black one. It's definitely the red one with the green stripe. And then the voice goes away.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes, yes, yes. Get rid of the voice.

[Saul Griffith]

Yeah. I mean I think the company that, I'm worried that will emerge and it could happen anywhere really. But like, can we just make a very simple car with wind up, with wind up windows and an electric motor and three buttons and one of which is for the volume on the stereo.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yes. And, and I want to, I want a digital drivetrain with an analog interface. Absolutely nothing at all. I mean, Volkswagen did do it with the E up. I had an E up for a couple of months and that had nothing. It had a speedo, it had a little range indicator, it had a battery level. That was it. There was nothing else. You could tune into it with your phone and have your phone on a clip and it would show stuff. But it was so good to drive that car. There was no clever stuff. Wind up windows with a handle.

[Saul Griffith]

My real concern is that the car, like I think we've got state capture and I, you know, sorry, this is going to sound a little rabbit hole. Paranoid. I developed technology in Silicon Valley for 20 years and the longest straw of every technology company we built was the regulatory hurdle.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right. Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Including now for cars. Like it's really all props to Tesla, heroic to raise enough Money to get through the regulatory requirements to put a car on American roads.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And we're, you know, we just made it compulsory in Australia to have these advanced driving systems. So any car without Xi Jinping looking to see whether you're yawning or farting is going to be illegal. But that really amounts to huge advantages to these incumbents.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And it's increasingly unlikely that we will ever get the E.J. holden of electric vehicles.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right. Yeah, yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Like, I think that time has gone and every car is going to carry around $2,000 worth of electronics that I don't want.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah. And I think when we're seeing the direct results of that, of the amazing startup companies we've been to see in Europe and in the United States that have already disappeared, you know, it's just such a massive hurdle to get up to. I mean, I think Rivian might survive and I think it's fantastic that they've got as far as they have, you know, because everyone else, you see the fabulous prototype and it's an amazing idea. Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

I had the R1, I had, I just sold mine. I had the launch edition.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Oh, did you?

[Saul Griffith]

Oh, yeah.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Was it good? Did you like it or it was a problem? Well, it was left hand drive, I guess, wasn't it?

[Saul Griffith]

Yeah. I was going to bring it to straight. It was left hand drive. So we had it in the U.S. but like, I have a 59 Land Rover.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

Series two, that thing will go for another century. It's just, it's unbelievable. The Rivian collected water in the seal where the wipers go and then the whole power system failed. Like it was on and off for nine months. It's like, I think the wiring harness probably weighs 100 kilograms. It's just, it's all. We're making all of these cars fragile by virtue of their complexity and we're making them unnecessarily expensive and then we're putting user interfaces on them that are unusable. Like.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

You're driving down the highway and you've got to touch the touchscreen and your fingers doing this thing. Yeah, Right. So I don't know. The Rivian, I think, was well engineered and quite beautiful, but for my taste, 30% too big and 50% too complicated.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And what I really just want is, you know, a Series 2 Land Rover with an electric.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

In it. But like you said, I don't think startups can navigate to get there.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have mentioned this, but. Because I, I want to wind this up pretty soon. So because I want you to go and have a birthday, you can have the full hour.

[Saul Griffith]

I mean, I have no idea where we're going in this interview, but maybe that's the point.

[Robert Llewellyn]

That is the point. It's very. It's very. It's very wobbly. The one thing I would love to.

[Saul Griffith]

It's an interview salad made of.

[Robert Llewellyn]

It's an interview salad.

[Saul Griffith]

Native question salads with a side of. Of. Of sort of answer. Antipasto.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, I. I wish I could disagree with you on that, but you're absolutely bloody spot on. That's exactly what it is and it always is. But give me. Give me one more chance. So, I mean, the, the.

[Saul Griffith]

I believe this is the modern podcast or brocast format, though.

[Robert Llewellyn]

I think it is, isn't it? If we could just make it two.

[Saul Griffith]

And a half hours long, this would even be good on Joe Rogan.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes.

[Saul Griffith]

In fact, I'm sure I've got a joint here somewhere. Give me.

[Robert Llewellyn]

But one thing that I'd love you to do your take on, because I just think your takes are always very refreshing, is the, The. The role of the fossil fuel industry.

[Saul Griffith]

We've got some problem and.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Oh. And it's. Well, I mean, if you don't want to. I'm happy also to avoid it because it's also depressing. But, I mean, I'll just give you one really good example. When we were in New Zealand, we stopped at a BP G to try and use a BP rapid charger. It's all working. We couldn't. We couldn't download the app because we had a British phone with an Australian sim and you can't get the app so we can't use it. You know, it's like most frustrating thing and yet there's a petrol pump and inside the shop there's a guy and you pay the guy for the petrol. Why can't I pay. Why did they set that up like that Is what is going on in those worlds? I mean, it's just, you know, I was chewing grit on the ground. I was so angry.

[Saul Griffith]

We can.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes.

[Saul Griffith]

Maybe the best question was the one I criticized at the top of the show. Can you electrify everything?

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Not with the user interfaces we're currently deploying.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Thank you. Yes, thank you.

[Saul Griffith]

Yeah. Like, although in New Zealand you can actually. They have staffless petrol stations where you can just swipe the card, Right?

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

So that's pretty cool. But, yeah, the charging infrastructure, like, we never figured out, we didn't standardize soon enough. So there was an arms race of who gets to build the proprietary standard and that let us down some problems. And yeah, that's partly why it's taking so long to do vehicle to grid. It's because everyone's suing everyone at corporate level for who owns the ip.

[Robert Llewellyn]

But.

[Saul Griffith]

None of it really matters because it's street level. Unless you own a garage and have your own solar. It's a fairly difficult experience. Yeah, yeah, it could be easy but we are not committing the funds. We're going to do this with an austerity and right wing view of the world which is individualized infrastructure as opposed to public infrastructure. So just when we need to be putting more money in this direction, I think the political winds are against it. Yeah, like, and you know, let's be very clear, there are fairly heavy handed fingerprints of coal industry magnates and gas industry companies on propagating this disinformation and making it difficult to do this because they know it will give them another 30 years of trillion a year profits.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, I mean it's interesting. I've had this conversation with two dozen people since I've been in Australia about the push for nuclear in Australia and no one has said it's a good idea. They've all said well it just means that the fossil fuel industry can make money for the next 30 years. And it's like, oh, you know, and this is across the board of generations political outlook. Everyone, everyone gets that. That's what that's about. I mean I'm sure you're aware of Hinkley Point C, which is not where I live, I don't live that far from it in the UK and it's just such a staggering cost that it's, that it's mounting up, it's gone over budget by, I don't, it's over 10 billion pounds.

[Saul Griffith]

Britain's only the second worst in the world in terms of price of nuclear energy. You're only seven times the price of South Korea. America is eight times the price. Right, okay, so you could have had the conversation. Australia, should we do nuclear power? Maybe. Let's think about it for a second. Oh, it's more expensive than rooftop solar, so can we make it cheaper? And then he'd say oh look, here is how you make it cheaper. That's a regulatory problem and a policy problem.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

But they didn't do that. They started having fever dreams about technologies that don't exist, like small modular reactors. Small modular reactors are going to exist soon because we're going to redefine what it is to Be an existing reactor design. Right. It's a marketing headline.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

We could have, we could have been honest and then tried to make it cheap and then you would be like, oh, but even so, because of the cost of transmission and distribution, it's going to be more expensive than a lot of the alternatives here.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

But we didn't have the conversation that way. We just allowed it to be an instant crazy culture war.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

Which is sort of weird because the reason we aren't even allowed to think about developing nuclear was sort of the Greens party. Right.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Absolutely.

[Saul Griffith]

The legislation. It's like this isn't even. You know, I'm not quite sure why labor clung so heavily to. No, we won't even countenance it. They could have probably made the problem go away just by saying, sure, we won't. We'll let you make it legal. But you're going to have a lot of headwinds making it economically work out. Yeah, it would. Yeah. Nuclear in Australia would kill itself without this help. What is. I find hilarious and I don't know why this isn't been the party line. Why is it that our fiscally conservative party is arguing for socialist nuclear power.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes.

[Saul Griffith]

But capitalist everything else.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. Yes, loads.

[Saul Griffith]

Right.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. Well, I mean that, Yeah. I mean the, and also the like Hinckley point C is it's being built with Chinese money and. And through a French company. So, you know, our great British nuclear future.

[Saul Griffith]

I mean China's also, by China been selling nuclear in Kenya, in uae, all over the world. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing, you know, America missed, just when it needed to be getting its nuclear industry ready to help the world decarbonize, it was preventing its nuclear industry from even retaining its muscle.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and what happened in Germany as well was pretty insane. Shutting them, you know, shutting down pre built functioning nuclear power plants for. Yeah. Anyway, that's a whole lot.

[Saul Griffith]

Yeah. We don't need a. Look, we don't need a lot of nuclear. Less than everyone thinks. Yeah. You don't have to be religiously anti nuclear. You don't have to be religiously for it. But you know, some people do that.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Australia place where you definitely don't need any of it.

[Robert Llewellyn]

No, you don't. You so don't here. No. Good God. Yeah. One of the arguments that I think you probably make through rewiring Australia and everything else is about the air quality, because that is the argument that I'm. I get the most success with in terms of advocating for electrification of ground transport. You know, that it's what we breathe in is particularly in cities and we've had a, we had a, you know, we've actually seen a noticeable improvement in London in the last five years because. Mainly because of electrification of buses, trucks and taxis rather than cars.

[Saul Griffith]

Yeah. I mean Chinese cities 20 years ago, Chinese cities today, like you used to not be able to see your feet.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Now you can see the horizon. Yeah. I don't know. I got it. My car collection includes a 59 Land Rover and a 66 Holden. And I just bought a 1967 Vespa two stroke scooter. And so, you know, for the first few months that I own all of these things, they run on whatever they ran on.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Because I live an otherwise electric life. It's just so pungently noticeable that these things are.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes. Awful. Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And then I'm, you know, I'm a few weeks away from the, the Vespa with the motor with a sidecar being electrified and that'll be a hoot. And no longer, no longer rattle and no longer smell like brain cancer every time you've started up.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

So I don't love that we have to go to air quality as the reason to do this. I think there's economic reasons, there's community economic development reasons. I think that's an interesting point. Maybe we can talk about that. And there are obviously the climate reasons and I think these are way more compelling. But you know, let's use all the good arguments. Also no brain won't have asthma. Also you won't have a sore throat so often. Also your eyes won't sting when you're standing next to a petrol cars he rode.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean not the other one that's just come out which I think, I mean you're, you're a good bit younger than me so you missed the worst of it. But I grew up in a leaded petrol environment and the latest research on the, the impact of leaded petrol, it might even explain the, the support for. No, I'm not going to say anything but it certainly affects psychology. This. It. There's huge amounts of data now showing that it affects the psych. Psychological makeup and your brain function and I mean that was all the petrol was leaded when I was a kid. You know, I grew up.

[Saul Griffith]

Oh yeah. Yeah. I still have the paste in my mouth I used to have to siphon during the oil crisis. I'd help my dad siphon petrol from a Jerry can into his vintage Jaguar that never worked properly. So like I, I was weaned Straight from the breast to the petrol siphon.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah, me too. Let it fully leaded. Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Cleanse your teeth, though.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Oh, it's wonderful. Yeah, yeah. We've all got perfect teeth as a result of that. There was something you said just then. I've now had a brain fart and not remember what it was that sparked another slice of mixed salad. Mixed community.

[Saul Griffith]

Economic renewal.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Community. Thank you very much. So. Good grief. Yes. Because, I mean, there's. I think that to me is. I've just been to a place north of Sydney where there's a community battery and lots of solar. And you know, when you see that in action. I've heard the theory, but you see it there. That's the people in those houses that have loads of solar during the day but not at night. They do have it at night because they've got one battery, not 300 individual batteries, one batching tool.

[Saul Griffith]

We're doing a project with the rena, which is the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. It's really what should be happening globally. We're very rapidly electrifying a large portion of our community. The community is interesting because really, when we talk about sectors and all of these other abstract things in the energy system, it's really not the right way to think about what's happening. Electricity couples, all the sectors. Those sectors were decided by what was easy to measure economically when the Energy Information Administration was founded in 1976. It's now irrelevant. What you really care about is the local distribution grid. So that's the machine behind the railway station that's got all the wires coming out of it, that feeds electricity to around about, on average four or five thousand households. And that's where all the action is, because we can do huge amount of solar under the, under that substation to generate. And that'll be if we can, if we change the rules of the system, the regulations, then I would be allowed to sell my solar very cheaply to my neighbor for five or six cents a kilowatt hour.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Right.

[Saul Griffith]

Right. Now we have this bullshit pretense that when I sell it back to the retailer or the energy company that they send it back to Melbourne and then they can charge it for. To me later for 32 cents a kilowatt hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's artificial. And, and, but it's really just because we wrote these rules for the grid around what fossil could do, not around what the future can do. Anyway, so we're trying to make it all electrify much faster, deploy community batteries. But I think this is the Story I really wanted to say, like our community are pretty typical average Australian suburbs. So six suburbs, one postcode, one substation, 4,000 households. We spend somewhere between 25 and $30 million a year buying fossil fuels.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Wow.

[Saul Griffith]

Wow. That money leaves the community on a one way ticket.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

Because we don't make oil here, we don't make gas here. Yes, we do make coal here, but it's metallurgical coal that we export, we don't burn it. Power. And if you think about it, if we're there, we could produce all of the energy for our, all of the residences in our suburbs off rooftop solar and batteries nearly year round. We'd have to be a little bit short in July and August, but we could get that from a local wind farm.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

So we could probably keep $20 million in our community a year of that 25 to 30.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And we know that in Australia and it's typical in most western countries, about 50 to 60% of household spending is spent in your local area. So we'd be spending an extra 12 or 15 million dollars a year in our local area.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And if you think about what that happens, that's a whole bunch of cafes, it's a whole bunch of restaurants, you gold plate the church, you, you get a new boat for the surf club. Like you put a new teacher in every classroom.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

This could and should be the economic success story. If the Democrats in America wanted to fight back, they'd say, actually we know how to deliver cost of living relief and deflation to American households. We know how to renew the communities of Appalachia. It's through electrification, local generation, this thing. And then you stop spend sending all your money to Texas to completely pollute U.S. politics.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yes.

[Saul Griffith]

So like this is the story now. The progressive left globally has missed the boat. I'm kind of hoping that some centrist parties reinvigorate the politics everywhere and are just on the sensible story of like, we know how to improve your health, save the children, save the whales, make your community gold plated and put more money in your pocket.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. Because I mean, I've always been touting the figures. So nationally, the UK it's about 1.4 billion pounds a week. That leaves our economy to pay for fossil fuels, which has a benefit to our total economy. There's no arguing that. But to do it on a much smaller level, like you've just done there, when you tell people who live around you, this is how much money is leaving our local economy, it's a hell of a lot of. That's a big chunk of cash. That's.

[Saul Griffith]

Yeah, I'm going, I'm putting a 20 kilowatt solar system on a roof. I will start saving $6,000 a year.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

$6,000 a year.

[Robert Llewellyn]

And you know, which you'll spend elsewhere as well. You'll spend it in a different way. I mean, that's the thing.

[Saul Griffith]

I'll spend electrifying vintage cars and drinking, you know, frothy lattes.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Yeah.

[Saul Griffith]

And beer, of course, which is, you know, probably local.

[Robert Llewellyn]

Really do hope you enjoyed that. Please do tell your mates about the people we get on this show. I mean, that is a real coup to to have Saul on this show. So thrilled to talk to him. Please do subscribe if you haven't. And as always, if you have been, thank you for watching and listening.