Don’t get me wrong. I know the vehicle itself will have way lower emissions and than a regular gas or diesel vehicle, but what I’m confused on is that they will have to mine to get the raw materials to make these batteries and then once the battery is done it’s lifespan they will need to find a way to dispose or recycle these batteries. Imagine doing that capacity when the whole world has transitioned to EV.
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Individual personal transport is always going to be damaging to the environment compare to public transport like buses and trains, but if you have to have individual transport EVs are better than petroleum fuelled vehicles.
I can’t speak for the environmental/carbon cost of raw materials but I can speak for the direct emissions of the vehicle. The largest environmental cost of a vehicle over its average lifespan by far is the fuel that it burns causing climate change. EV’s carbon footprint when running of fossil fuel produced electricity is still approximately 80MPG compared to normal cars which usually get about 50mpg. So off the bat it’s 60% more efficient. Then if you charge it using green energy almost all of the harmful emissions cut out of the equation.
What you’re referring to with recycling batteries etc also isn’t really a climate change problem but rather an environmental hazard problem. So they both cause environmental harm but in different ways. You’re right in that it’s unlikely that the whole world could transitions to EV’s right now as lithium is in short supply. But technology is evolving quickly. And without huge investment we won’t find the answers we are looking for. So a large EV market is a good thing for both technological development and cutting emissions in the short term. Electronic cars have had little innovation for the last hundred years of their existence but now that the market has tipped in the last couple of decades the progress has been rapid. The same goes for green energy solutions. So this boom in EV’s is definitely a good thing for the environment.
Most of those points you can google with good results. Unfortunately common knowledge of EVs is 10 plus years out of date. Batteries are using less and less difficult materials now and will keep developing.
There is so much room to keep developing all the tech and materials in these vehicles, just like with any other cars abs tech.
Also rule out the ‘how we will manage when everyone uses one’ cars or gas stations didn’t exist forever. We made and adapted all of these things. Hell at one point you had to buy petrol from chemists!
Another thing people often bring up that needs to be ruled out of electricity is made with fossil fuels. Yes but if doesn’t have to be. Get more things using electricity and you increase demand which can be met with non fossil fuel methods and old power stations replaced. You stay on gas you don’t get that choice of how you produce (normally import) it.
Too complex for eli5.
[Full ICCT report](https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/Global-LCA-passenger-cars-jul2021_0.pdf)
In short thermal engines are in average only 20-30% efficient, which means that most of the energy gets converted to heat, noise and vibration, instead of actualy moving the car. Even part of the usefull work is lost during braking.
EVs are 90% efficient, and recover energy during braking.
Also power plants are much more efficient than ICE engines, even if they burn fossil fuel, by a factor of 2x, even 3x if heat is used for district home heating. All this without even considering that energy can be partially green.
Battery manufacturing consumes significant energy, but not as much as people think, and that gets recovered pretty fast during the vehicle life cycle. Also a big part of energy is actually electricity, and that’s why it matters a lot where the battery is actually manufactured.
Also, EVs move polution out of the city, which is very good for health, and provide energy independence for countries which don’t have oil.
Currently, an EV has less emissions than a petrol/diesel car after very roughly 50k miles, thanks to just how much more they cost to make.
There is three ways they are better, as energy grids decarbonise the EVs effectively run cleaner. Also, an EVs emissions are mostly away from populated areas which makes city air nicer and for future cars battery technology is getting denser and some new batteries are less expensive to produce.
Currently, the lowest lifetime emissions come from PHEVs, since they don’t have the upfront cost of a massive battery but if charged properly run most of the time as an EV.
You seem to forget that oil production also generates massive environmental problems and refineries gobble up massive amounts of power.
>Don’t get me wrong. I know the vehicle itself will have way lower emissions and than a regular gas or diesel vehicle, but what I’m confused on is that they will have to mine to get the raw materials to make these batteries and then once the battery is done it’s lifespan they will need to find a way to dispose or recycle these batteries. Imagine doing that capacity when the whole world has transitioned to EV.
You don’t think they have to mine too get raw materials to make regular cars?
There are other considerations. Cars mostly only so short journeys. The median journey length is about six miles and twenty minutes. Vehicles with internal combustion engines produce emissions as they go, and the emissions control system only works efficiently when warm. This means that fuel is used to speed up this warming and for a significant proportion of most journeys, the emissions control system is only partly effective. There are also transients as the car accelerates which have to be managed. The emissions are also generated when the car its being used. If you look at NOx pollution concentration data , you see that it is concentrated along major urban roads, where people live and work. For an electric vehicle, the energy is generated by a power station which is always operated in an efficient, steady-state condition and the emissions control system can be the size of a warehouse as it doesn’t have to go anywhere. Also electric vehicles are no longer emitting noxious gases, so the localised gaseous pollution is no longer a problem.
There is the consideration of particulates. Particulate emissions control is now so good that vehicles produce more particulates from their brakes and tyres than they do from their exhausts. Electric cars are generally heavier than cars with internal combustion engines, so this will cause more tyre wear. There is more scope to use regenerative breaking with electric vehicles, so rather than using the brakes alone to slow the vehicles, the vehicles’ kinetic energy can be used to generate electricity which is returned to the battery. This significantly reduces brake wear.
Former Li-ion battery researcher here:
The materials inside batteries do not escape or get consumed while giving off energy, so all the cobalt, lithium and other materials remain inside the entire time. Also Li Ion batteries are much easier to recycle.
The reason batteries lose their capacity is because too many cycles of lithium ion insertion and removal during discharging and charging respectively, stresses the crystal lattice of the lithium cobalt oxide cathode and then it starts to “flake off” from its electrical contact. At the worst case, the flaked off cathode is just sitting in the electrolyte.
For non solid state Li-ion batteries, the liquid electrolyte is some kind kind of polar solution (similar to alcohol) which can be easily burned off. Because of that you could dump the entire contents of a worn out battery battery into a furnace or kiln and heat it up to recover the materials. Doing that would vaporize the electrolyte, and probably the carbon anode, but it will leave behind the valuable Lithium oxide and cobalt oxide.
There’s always the false assumption that gasoline is just “there” and freely available. Gasoline is more or less “mined” too (except, drilled and pumped). There are so many steps in gasoline getting to the gas station that people conveniently forget about when discussing mining of metals for batteries. Refining, transport, storage, all consume an insane amount of resources that everyone always forgets about. A similar amount goes into mining of metals, however, the metals in batteries can essentially be infinitely recycled, making their long-term impact lower, while with gasoline, once it’s burned, it’s gone- there’s no recovery of that energy
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