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Question about the cost of building batteries for electric cars. I know we have gone around about electric cars in the past here, but it has been a while. Does anybody know just how much it will pollute the environment to produce the millions and millions of batteries that will be needed to run them? Also how much pollution will be produced by going through more tires for the electric cars since the tires will last only about 65 percent as long as tires for gas powered cars. Also China dominates global battery manufacturing and supplies nearly two-thirds of all production. The relevance for the new energy economy vision: 70% of China’s grid is fueled by coal today and will still be at 50% in 2040. This means that, over the life span of the batteries, there would be more carbon-dioxide emissions associated with manufacturing them than would be offset by using those batteries to, say, replace internal combustion engines.

You're not supposed to ask those questions. You are supposed to buy an electric vehicle, and be proud of yourself for "saving the planet."

This is what you libs want and have...

Oh so now im a lib. Lol

Haha, this seems like a loaded question, bro. I have an EV and also a gas car. The EV is rather nice. We drove to Florida with it and the trip really wasn’t bad. Sure it took longer than the van, but it actually wasn’t all that bad. As far as the pollution and everything else goes, I thought that I read somewhere from the EPA showing the statistics along with a myths listing that shows an EV is actually still more environmentally friendly over its life cycle than the average gas car. I’ll need to find that link because I researched that before I pulled the trigger on buying the car.

As far as the metals, yeah lithium is a problem. I looked to see what the potential solution is. I googled something like “lithium replacement for batteries” and there is some stuff underway. I don’t know how long into the process they are, but there are other alternatives. I think magnesium is being looked into as one of them.

When it all comes down to it, I remember one poster - I won’t say who but the phrase is probably a dead giveaway - who said “Gas forever!” But that’s just the thing. Gas can’t be forever. Plus, even though lithium is a problem, it’s not exactly like the petroleum producing countries are all rock stars. I agree that a lot of the pressure on shutting things down and punishing current industries is dumb, but I also think we have to move forward.

Wow. I followed up on that, and the lithium mining in SA is really a danger to the environment and to the indigenous people.

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/lithiu...enous-communities-high-and-dry-literally

We had 2 power outages today, here in N.W. Ohio.

Why? Too much usage of power. Do the math.

Another very good article here...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...al-fueling-evs?leadSource=uverify%20wall

Moderate forecasts are that we will need 5 times more lithium by the end of this decade. This is not a problem that will go away on it's own. Nor is the extra stress it will put on electric infrastructure. Nor is electric (in most places) clean energy.

The bigger question (in my mind) is when will we realize that electric cars are merely a transitory solution?

Okay?

EPA myths list

This is what I referenced earlier.

About a hundred years ago people were wondering that the pollution from cars was greater than the cost of removing manure and building roads….those people sold horses.

Not sure if you are looking for a serious answer or not.

Here are the total life-cycle (from mining to manufacture to running, to recycling, etc.) costs for an electric vehicle (listed as BEV) compared to an internal combustion engine vehicle (here listed as ICEV):

https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/Global-LCA-passenger-cars-fig1-jul2021_0.png

From this report:

https://theicct.org/publication/a-g...tion-engine-and-electric-passenger-cars/

The ICCT is an energy think-tank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Council_on_Clean_Transportation

Main Results: Battery production is a relatively small carbon footprint. The major footprint for both electric and gas vehicles is driving them. The Carbon footprint of this depends pretty strongly on where you are getting your electricity from. In places like the US and Europe, the total carbon footprint is about a factor of 4 smaller than for gas powered cars -- but in India (where almost all electricity comes from coal in less efficient power plants), the carbon savings is only 30-40%.

Thanks for bringing facts.

Yes I am being serious. I want to get the fasts straight since I have seen articles that contradict each other.

Those are good reports. In fairness, I think that one thing that those findings don't really discuss is the impact on the actual lithium mining aspect and what it does to land and whatnot, but, on the flip side, you'd have to account for similar things like shale oil production, drilling and whatnot. I'm not sure how they differ from each other, but those types of reports on the carbon are really helpful and did put me more at ease when I made my purchase.

In the grand scheme of things, we have to move forward. If electricity resourcing is the problem, that's another area of opportunity. I think we need to both improve the master grids and keep pushing toward innovation to make it more cheaper and common place for consumer-produced energy. If only politicians on both sides, prior to 2021, could have actually gotten over themselves and tried to pass a legitimate infrastructure bill, maybe this aspect wouldn't have been a problem.

The fact of the matter is that we have to move on from gas. It appears that electric is the chosen alternative. Is it perfect? Not at all, but there are a ton of areas where improvement can be made. Gas cannot last forever and there has to be an alternative.

People seem not to realize all of the money built into the infrastructure bill to help increase and modernize our electric grid. I guess you're not supposed to address those things on here. Just find every excuse not to buy an electric vehicle and be proud of it.

I was reading about some companies that are getting into recycling electric car batteries
Makes batteries for the next car significantly cheaper and is better for the environment.
I don't have details or links becausse this was a couple months ago. I was considering investing in them but made the decision to not put more money in the market at this time.

I believe that the majority of Car batteries are recycled (though of course, this also generates waste, and fossil fuels).

Certainly the lithium itself can be repurposed, it is just an element.

News stories I see are a little mixed. Tesla claims a 92% recycling rate on its batteries: https://cleantechnica.com/2022/05/08/teslas-recycled-batteries-almost-92-reuse-of-raw-materials/

Others claim less: https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgx...100-of-its-batteries-what-does-that-mean (though this Vice article mostly just argues that "100% recycled" is propaganda - more than claiming there isn't significant recycling going on.

Will look for something better.

There like 3 main recycling companies right now, and more being started every year.

The biggest misconception is that the batteries only have a life of like 100k miles, but that is not accurate. Tesla owners are noticing <5% drop in battery over the first 50k, then about another 5% over the next 100k. There is a mandate that the battery must have a 8 year warranty, not mileage, just time. An EV battery should last at least 10 years, but most experts figure it's closer to 20 years at > 60% efficiency. For most people that is still enough for their daily driving.

The End of Life for an EV battery pack is usually a second life, where the individual cells are removed, and repurposed in less critical devices with lower power needs, the rest are often recycled for their raw materials.

In the end, the choice to go EV or ICE is up to the individual and their needs and usage. No different than those that choose small compact cars versus large SUVs/Trucks, or Gasoline vs Diesel.

Different people have different needs, and have their own reasons for choice.

For me an EV would make sense, I typically drive <50 miles a day, have solar on my house. And I have been considering a Ford Lightning, my hold back is that I don't need a full size truck. If they release the Ranger or something in an EV I'd probably jump on it.

As has been discussed on this board here and there, we have two types of cars. One is an EV, which I mentioned, and one is a gas car. The EV is great for our daily commutes and getting around town. The gas car is good to have for the bigger road trips and long distances. I've often wondered if improvements can be made both to the capacity of the battery itself, as well as perhaps implementing some type of charge-as-you-drive technology. I'm sure the latter would be decades away, but it would be kind of cool to have a stretch of highway be able to recharge the car wirelessly as it is driving. Also, perhaps implementing some type of solar technology onto the car itself at some point that could assist in wirelessly charging the car while it's parked. Those are just dreamer thoughts, admittedly.

One thing they also tell you to do with the car is only charge it to 90% unless you're about to drive it on a long trip. This helps preserve the life of the battery. You can set the app to limit the % that you want the car to charge to. It's also really nice to be able to charge from home. Every night we just plug it in and it's charged and ready to go the next day.

As far as lithium goes, this article discusses potential alternatives. It appears everything is very much still in the conceptual stage, but who knows where it'll eventually go...

https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1538

You mentioned one thing most of the "anti EV" people either do not know, haven't thought of or refuse to mention. It's quite easy to set your EV to charge overnight before you go to bed. That means you would be using electricity during low demand, off peak hours which does not stress the electrical grid. Sometimes people wish to make points that actually do not exist.

I do understand how people that travel long distances on a regular basis, that only have one vehicle may find that an EV really doesn't meet all of their needs. But for anyone having two vehicles that uses one of them mainly for local travel it would be smart to have one EV. Which seems to be your situation. Even at that, we have family that has a hybrid Jeep which he uses for travel from Illinois to Nashville quite often. He loves it and his costs per mile are very affordable.

I've already touched on these topics...

The stupidity of these ideas by politicians and pushing technology on America hasn't even been completely flushed out yet.... We may as well go back to filling cans full of CFC's and start spraying into the air. We don't even know how to recycle these things at scale yet. Right now, they are basically being stored in hopes that we can figure it out.


www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=304070

What to do with all these retired electric vehicle batteries is going to be a huge issue," said Fengqi You, one of the authors of the study. The research team considered environmental and economic tradeoffs in how batteries are built, used and recycled.


"Lithium-ion batteries are designed today for performance and not for recycling or second life," said You. Lithium-ion batteries usually last 12 years or less before losing the capacity to power a vehicle. "There's very little discussion right now about the environmental dimensions of improving battery design for recycling or reuse."


https://www.science.org/content/art...e-coming-what-happens-all-dead-batteries

But when the battery comes to the end of its life, its green benefits fade. If it ends up in a landfill, its cells can release problematic toxins, including heavy metals. And recycling the battery can be a hazardous business, warns materials scientist Dana Thompson of the University of Leicester. Cut too deep into a Tesla cell, or in the wrong place, and it can short-circuit, combust, and release toxic fumes.

Current EV batteries "are really not designed to be recycled," says Thompson, a research fellow at the Faraday Institution, a research center focused on battery issues in the United Kingdom.

To extract those needles, recyclers rely on two techniques, known as pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. The more common is pyrometallurgy, in which recyclers first mechanically shred the cell and then burn it, leaving a charred mass of plastic, metals, and glues. At that point, they can use several methods to extract the metals, including further burning. "Pyromet is essentially treating the battery as if it were an ore" straight from a mine, Gaines says. Hydrometallurgy, in contrast, involves dunking battery materials in pools of acid, producing a metal-laden soup. Sometimes the two methods are combined.

Both processes produce extensive waste and emit greenhouse gases, studies have found. And the business model can be shaky: Most operations depend on selling recovered cobalt to stay in business, but batterymakers are trying to shift away from that relatively expensive metal. If that happens, recyclers could be left trying to sell piles of "dirt," says materials scientist Rebecca Ciez of Purdue University.

Engineers might be able to build robots that could speed battery disassembly, but sticky issues remain even after you get inside the cell, researchers note. That's because more glues are used to hold the anodes, cathodes, and other components in place. One solvent that recyclers use to dissolve cathode binders is so toxic that the European Union has introduced restrictions on its use, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined last year that it poses an "unreasonable risk" to workers.


https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi7633
Advanced LIB technologies with high specific energy density do not necessarily demonstrate better potentials for mitigating climate change and energy demand, especially when the material and energy inputs for the LIB production and recycling are highly carbon and energy intensive. The development of green recycling processes with higher material recovery rates, lower energy requirement, and utilization of less environmentally expensive materials is critical to improving the potential of mitigating environmental impacts. Moreover, their potentials for mitigating climate change and energy demand are confined by the penetration of renewable electricity. Therefore, it is essential to increase the share of renewable energy in the local power grid.

Politicians are trying to leverage solar to close the gap on the massive electricity consumption issue that electric cars are starting to cause.

the massive downside of solar...

Solar farms raise the ambient temperature by 1-3 degrees (causing more global warming)
They are causing higher levels of water evaporation (which helps keep the planet cooler)
There is some concern that the topsoil will strip away because nothing is growing below the solar panels and this will collapse the surrounding ecosystem.
We have not really figured out what to do with the used batteries (same as with electric cars)

Here is the scientific study about heat island (PVHI):

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep35070


Additional Perspective:

it will take 11.22 square miles of nothing but solar fields starting at I-90 (from w 117th to just past Crocker Park by Manco tape) all the way to the lake with an increase of 5-7 degrees in temperature (according to the study above) lastly, that entire area and ecosystem will be completely useless and destroyed to power just the households inside the city of Cleveland (no businesses) let alone their electric cars.

The ice Age was a measly 11 degrees cooler than our current temps

Math, Science, and supporting articles below:
179 solar farms are needed that are about 40 acres in size to power just the houses in Cleveland let alone their electric cars
179 x 40 acres = 7181 acres = 11.22 square miles


https://oyasolar.com/blog/solar-farm-requirements-everything-you-need-to-know/ 40 acres for 5kw solar field
https://news.umich.edu/how-cold-was-the-ice-age-researchers-now-know/ the average global temperature of the ice age was 6 degrees Celsius (11 F) cooler than today
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/clevelandcityohio 170,549 households in Cleveland without powering 1 single business.
640 acres = 1 square mile (math)



Electric cars and solar are not clean technoligies at scale. We should abandon them to be used at scale before they destroy everything.

here is what happens when one of htem catches on fire..



https://batteriesnews.com/fully-inv...r-minute-help-suppress-challenging-fire/

Fully Involved Tesla Car Fire Takes 42 Minutes to Extinguish, 600 Gallons of Water Per Minute Help Suppress Challenging Fire
September 20, 2022Add comment3 min read
tesla car fire
batteries news
Fully involved Tesla car fire takes 42 minutes to extinguish, 600 gallons of water per minute help suppress challenging fire.

600 Gallons of Water Per Minute Help Suppress Challenging Fire.

the Stamford Combined 911 Dispatch Center began receiving calls of a car fire behind the Blue Ginger Restaurant at 1132 E Main Street. Additional calls reported the car to be a Tesla. Two engines, a truck company, and an incident commander were initially dispatched to the incident bringing 14 firefighters to the scene as part of the initial assignment in just a few minutes.

battery jobs
Engine Company 4 arrived on the scene at 11:24 and reported a car fire in a parking lot, heavily involved in flames. It was quickly confirmed that the vehicle on fire was a battery-powered Tesla. The vehicle was several car lengths away from other vehicles and posed no immediate danger to them.

Electric vehicle fires have been in the news frequently due to the difficulty many departments are having extinguishing them.

An initial 1-3/4″ hose line was stretched by the crew of Engine 4, who began pouring 200 gallons of water per minute onto and into the vehicle. As soon as Engine 4 was hooked up to a hydrant, two additional 1-3/4 lines were put into action by other fire companies on the scene, delivering a total of 600 gallons per minute to the fire.

Firefighters continued pouring water onto the fire for 40 minutes before they were able to declare the fire extinguished.

Eric Lorenz, Deputy Chief said:

A normal car fire usually requires no more than a single hose line.

“But we know from other Fire Departments’ experiences that large amounts of water are the only solution when compared to a traditional vehicle fire.” he continued.

According to Fire Officers on the scene, this fire may have been relatively easy to put out compared to some others across the nation because the entire bank of batteries dropped on the ground underneath the vehicle, where firefighters were focusing their fire attack.

The Stamford Fire Haz Mat Team, Fairfield County Haz Mat Team, Stamford EMS, Stamford Police, and several additional divisions of the Fire Department all responded and assisted with various aspects of the incident.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Stamford Fire Haz Mat Team, and a hazardous waste cleanup company are all still on the scene at of 4:30 PM, preparing to remove the vehicle to a safe and secure location. “This is no routine car fire,” Chief Lorenz said. “It requires special handling.”

No civilian or firefighter injuries were reported. The cause of the fire is currently under investigation by the Stamford Fire Marshals Office.

Fully Involved Tesla Car Fire Takes 42 Minutes to Extinguish, September 15, 2022

... and to my point this just happened


https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fi...wn-part-highway-1-california-2022-09-20/

PG&E's Tesla battery facility catches fire in California
Reuters



Sept 20 (Reuters) - A fire outbreak at PG&E Corp's (PCG.N) energy storage facility on Tuesday that uses battery packs made by Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) has shut down part of Highway 1 in California.

This came about a year after another fire broke out in a Tesla's "Megapack" battery unit in Australia during testing of one of the world's biggest energy storage projects. read more

Power producer PG&E said it was working with firefighters to stop the fire from spreading at the California facility, which is one of the biggest utility-owned, lithium-ion battery energy storage systems in the world. The incident has caused no electrical outage for customers, it added.


The electric utilities company said upon detecting the issue the safety systems automatically disconnected the battery storage facility from the electrical grid and that no onsite personnel was injured due to the fire.

Tesla was not immediately available for comment.

Tesla generates most of its revenue from its electric car business, but CEO Elon Musk pledged to grow its solar energy and battery storage business to roughly same size as its car business for the long-term. Tesla last year broke ground on its factory in Lathrop, California, to produce its large-scale, utility storage battery unit Megapack.



California's Department of Transportation said a part of the highway was closed due to the battery fire and advised motorists to take an alternate route.

PG&E in April announced the commissioning of its 182.5-megawatt (MW) Tesla Megapack battery energy storage system (BESS) – known as the Elkhorn Battery – located at its Moss Landing electric substation in Monterey County.

PG&E said batteries are charged when energy demand is low or when solar production is high and then provide additional capacity by sending that reserved power to the grid as demand grows.


It was not immediately known who is the battery cell supplier for Tesla's battery products.



This same thing happened a few months ago.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/...amed-undetected-coolant-leak-2021-09-28/

I read through your articles -- since those are all pretty legit sources, but I think the quotes you are using are out of context (though I couldn't open the second at all).

The first just says that manufacturers build EV batteries to optimize performance today instead of recyclability -- that is sort of ... well duh...

I read quite a bit of the science article - and the paragraph you quote "Advanced LIB technologies with high specific energy density..." - is contrasting Advanced LIB approaches to standard LIB approaches. It is basically saying that (from a Carbon Emission standpoint) higher capacity batteries are not necessarily better, because the benefits (longer lasting even if capacity drains) is offset by the additional material needed for their construction.

The science article itself is just a comparison of the environmental benefits of second life applications (e.g., repurposing a tesla battery to store solar power for the grid -- where a battery can run at lower capacity) vs. immediately recycling the lithium and making a new battery. Their conclusion (in the actual conclusions instead of randomly in the middle of the article) is:

"Moreover, the second life application of LIBs hinders the environmental benefits of recycling, as it contributes to a larger portion of life cycle environmental impacts and requires additional resources for repurposing. Sensitivity analysis results on use parameters suggest a great potential to further reduce carbon footprint and CED of reused LIBs. Even with a rather conservative transition toward more than 50% penetration of renewable energy sources into the power grid, the carbon footprint of second life LIBs can be reduced by 20% in the United States and by 28.5% in China. As the power grid transitions to all-renewable energy sources, substantial environmental impacts can be further reduced for LIBs. For the sake of climate change and energy demand, direct cathode recycling should be the fate of waste LIBs, although it has less ideal recovery rates of materials, as shown in figs. S21 to S23."

Basically:

1.) At present, it is almost as good to recycle battery components into new batteries, compared to second-life applications of batteries.
2.) This will change in the future as renewable energy becomes a larger percentage of the grid, and the need for energy storage increases.

Can't wait to buy one... I just don't know which I want.. Tesla, Lyric... We'll see.

here is the second article

https://www.science.org/content/art...e-coming-what-happens-all-dead-batteries


side note... you made a false assumption about 1 and 2. (which will be explained in the link above)

You could have cars that ran on air, and people who never want anything to change would find a reason to dislike them. FACT.

I don't have a dog in this fight, except for not wanting to destroy the planet for future generations (probably too late for that now). But I would like to add that if you removed profits from the equation and based what we drive on what is best for the planet, the answer would be bicycles.

I am all for EV's. I'll buy one when I can get a range of about 450 miles and can stop on pretty much any interstate exit or street corner and recharge in the same amount of time as it takes to fill up the car.

bro you know how awesome it'd be if we invested in companies to really build the infrastructure to build those batteries, and not rely on china? it would be a no brainer, especially because the materials needed would come from doing trade deals with some African countries who are sitting on resources needed to make the materials.

but we don't have real businessmen in America anymore. we got lawyers who consolidate assets and nothing else. EVs would take off in this country if we actually showed any amount of effort. but long term strategy and trade deals are too hard for the US now. we rather just whine about what china is or isn't doing while continuing to do nothing about it.

OH yeah, great idea, use the air we breathe to power cars, so then there isn't any left for us and the human race suffocates itself.

Agreed 100 percent Swish.

Which false assumption is that?

The articles you are quoting just say "recycling batteries is difficult and we are working to develop better methods".... that's a far cry from "the environmental cost of making batteries is worse than fossil fuels" -- literally nothing in any of your articles says anything like that.

Lol…Dude, these GOPers don’t care about the environment. that’s been obvious for years. Now all of a sudden it’s bad for the environment! Lol…We can’t have that! Let’s go mine some coal boys.

We have plenty of coal. We don't have much lithium. Available supply has something to do with what you use.

No matter what we do it won't matter all that much. I am of the belief that the planet can only sustain maybe a billion people. We are now around 8 billion. Until the planet culls about 6-7 billion of us, which it will, I don't worry about the environment because it will take care of itself.

It is estimated the planet reached 1 billion people around 1800. It was a short 150 years before we really started to impact the planet from an environmental standpoint.

Face it, people are the environmental hazard, not coal, oil, lithium, or anything else.

Yeah, doing nothing to try and prevent it and allowing nature to cull the heard seems like the proper response.