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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It’s better to think of them as less bad rather than more good. Personal motor vehicles are awful regardless of how they are powered.
There is a large environmental cost to building them. There is a large environmental cost to building car infrastructure (roads, parking, etc). There are also large social costs to cars and car infrastructure which result in positive feedback loops that force more people to drive cars.
Several tonnes of steel and other refined materials results in a lot of environmental harm, in order to in most cases move one person twice 5 times a week. Roads and parking lots cause environmental harm both by simply existing, and in the production of their materials like asphalt and hydraulic cement.
Cars are also dangerous, which discourages people from walking and biking, and therefore more people drive. Car infrastructure is also expensive to build and maintain and takes up a lot of space, which leaves less money and space for other forms of transportation and forces everything to be more spread out, all of which forces more people to drive.
Electric cars do not fix any of that as it’s all inherent in what cars are. Walking, biking, or public transportation are all far more of an improvement.
As you point out, the power train on an electric car is more environmentally harmful to produce than that of a combustion car. Over a typical vehicle lifetime, the electric wins overall, but it’s still bad.
Widespread change to electric cars also means an increased demand for electricity which requires increasing generator and transmission capacity. This will make it more difficult to get rid of older, more polluting power plants and encourage building more combustion power plants. Powering an electric car with a combustion power plant is better for emissions than a combustion car but it’s still a case of ‘less bad’ rather than ‘good’.
Having what cars there are be electric is better than them being combustion, but reducing the number of cars of any sort would be far better.
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