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Environmental effects of EV`s

hifinutt

hifinutt

hifinutt
Seen this post recently . Is it codswallop or do they have a point ?

This is a Tesla battery.
To manufacture it you need:
12 tons of rock for Lithium
5 tons of Cobalt minerals
3 tons of mineral for nickel
12 tons of copper ore
Move 250 tons of soil to obtain:
12 kg of Lithium
30 pounds of nickels
22 kg of manganese
15 pounds of Cobalt
100 Kg of rams
200 kg of aluminum, steel, and plastic.
The Caterpillar 994A used for earthmoving consumes 1000 liters of diesel in 12 hours.
Not to mention all of the other equipment.
Finally, you get a “zero emissions” car.
Biggest money-making scam in history.

tesla battery by https://www.flickr.com/photos/158267783@N02/, on Flickr
 
It's true of everything that is manufactured. There's a statistic that for vertain types of extraction (shales especially) it takes between 4 and 5 litres of oil to get 1L of oil out of the ground. Not refined, out of the ground. Then don't imagine that oil refineries run on fresh air. And so on.

Is it a scam? No. Because you don't make a new petrol car out of snot and string either.

What's next? Beat up cyclists because, guess what, it takes energy to manufacture a bike? Beat up people walking to work because they are wearing shoes and not going barefoot?

Have they got a point? Only a facile one.
 
And still no mention of the social cost. Slave/child labour, dislocation/eviction of local populations (and then the moaners whinge about immigration). Human rights abuses by corporations and their mercenary henchmen. Etcetcetc. Your average Tesla driver is no better than your bmw/audio driver petrolhead. The latter spews exhaust, the former self righteousness......



OK, yes. I ride a push bike.
 
gingermrkettle said:
They have a badly made point with a complete lack of understanding attempting to make a false equivalence with a worse alternative in order to get fake adulation from the incredulous.
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Blimey. With sentences like this, I'm not surprised they don't understand. Has your account been hacked by EV?
 
stevec67 said:
It's true of everything that is manufactured. There's a statistic that for vertain types of extraction (shales especially) it takes between 4 and 5 litres of oil to get 1L of oil out of the ground. Not refined, out of the ground. Then don't imagine that oil refineries run on fresh air. And so on.

Is it a scam? No. Because you don't make a new petrol car out of snot and string either.

What's next? Beat up cyclists because, guess what, it takes energy to manufacture a bike? Beat up people walking to work because they are wearing shoes and not going barefoot?

Have they got a point? Only a facile one.
Click to expand...
It's not facile when the entire Raison D'etre of EV is to "save the planet". It's raised not so much because anybody believes that ICE or anything else for that matter appears by magic without the use of the earths resources but more because so many EV evangelists are so agressive, arrogant and more than a bit "holier than thou" acting towards everybody else.

Personally I do have concerns about batteries, particularly about their use of relatively rare earth elements. I think it's short sighted thinking (as usual, as humanity seems inordinately good at being short sighted), to select the alternative that also requires even more exploitation of 3rd world countries environments and people. But then it's just 1st worlders who buy BEVs and it makes them feel good about themselves, so who cares about how many children are being exploited or workers being exposed to poisenous and dangerous working conditions in "those" countries.
 
www.theguardian.com

How problematic is mineral mining for electric cars?

In part two of our series exploring myths surrounding EVs, we weigh up the issues of resource extraction
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Comparing poorly paid child labour with highly paid oil and gas workers as "myth busting" the fact that mineral mining relies on the former? Typical 1st world response. That is the very definition of a false equivalence argument.

Another such falacious comparison in that article: battery minerals will be largely recyclable, oil/gas isn't. So what? The ONLY relevant statement in that entire article is the statement that BEV battery requirements will lead to a significant increase in the amount of minerals required to be mined from the earths crust. That's it, full stop. The rest is just strawman irrelevancies.

The problem the writer of the article has, is that they're presuming that the only reason people might highlight a concern about battery mineral use is because they are anti EV and want to try and cling on to using oil and gas. So of course their response is 100% ideologically driven. They just MUST prove that those right wingers arguments don't have a leg to stand on. But that's just pure bias, and bias so blind that makes them so intent on scoring political points, that they are totally refusing to see that increased mineral mining IS a problem, as a point of fact.
 
I don't have a problem with EVs, I do have a bit of a problem with the type of EVs we're getting.

It seems we had a good opportunity starting from scratch to make the cars people actually need and what we've ended up with is mostly a load of over priced tat. They've used the opportunity to bump up the entry into new car ownership across the board, herding people down the never-never route so they aren't concerned about the sticker price as it's "only £500 p/m" !

They could have prioritised efficiency over almost everything else and instead we've ended up with even bigger, even lardier horrible SUV monstrosities that barely do half the range advertised in the real world. Instead of bragging that your family shopper has 600bhp and can do 60 in 2 seconds why not save that for the inevitable sports cars that would come from Porsche etc. Nobody cared before whether their Astra, Focus, or even 318/320d shot off like a stabbed rat, so why would they care now?
 
gez said:
It's not facile when the entire Raison D'etre of EV is to "save the planet".
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no it's not. Nobody with a whit of common sense believes this. It's to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels, full stop. "Saving the planet" is the province of lazy tabloid hacks or those who know nothing of science or manufacturing.

gez said:
It's raised not so much because anybody believes that ICE or anything else for that matter appears by magic without the use of the earths resources but more because so many EV evangelists are so agressive, arrogant and more than a bit "holier than thou" acting towards everybody else.
Click to expand...
says you. Who here does this?
gez said:
Personally I do have concerns about batteries, particularly about their use of relatively rare earth elements. I think it's short sighted thinking (as usual, as humanity seems inordinately good at being short sighted), to select the alternative that also requires even more exploitation of 3rd world countries environments and people. But then it's just 1st worlders who buy BEVs and it makes them feel good about themselves, so who cares about how many children are being exploited or workers being exposed to poisenous and dangerous working conditions in "those" countries.
Click to expand...
Nothing is without cost. Nothing is blameless. The human race is balancing one set of evils against another. Early bicycle manufacturers were strongly motivated by witnessing animal cruelty to draught horses. Bikes take more carbon to manufacture than a horse. You decide which is the lesser cost. I know what I think, but even that example isn't entirely one way.

The same applies to the other current bête noire, the plastic bag. Awful things, until you realise that a paper bag has a bigger carbon footprint (massive water use) and is less durable. I'm sure that similar considerations apply to synthetic vs cotton clothing.

One thing of which I am sure is that a fossil fuel is a one use item. Once it's burnt, you're done. No going back this side of waiting a few million years for a rainforest to be submerged. Minerals in a battery are captive. Why won't they be dumped? Because they are worth money. My local scrappy will give you a fiver for a normal lead acid battery from a conventional car. If you run a garage and you have a few dozen around the back, are you dumping them? Nope. To the recycling works they go. They don't evaporate or get burnt, it's just money in your yard. Dump it? I should coco.
 
The development of EV batteries is probably the main push to replacing lithium with sodium for batteries. There are commercial cells out there now and there should be much less environmental impact.

I’d agree the main problem with EVs is the types of car being made and the design of such poorly repairable long term products. But we fall for the marketing and look where Tesla is now!

EV batteries once beyond there useful life in vehicles can be repurposed for household energy storage as a ‘second life’ pack and be reused for many more years, no need to even recycle at that point. We just need to use these things a bit more intelligently.
 
matt j said:
I don't have a problem with EVs, I do have a bit of a problem with the type of EVs we're getting.

It seems we had a good opportunity starting from scratch to make the cars people actually need and what we've ended up with is mostly a load of over priced tat. They've used the opportunity to bump up the entry into new car ownership across the board, herding people down the never-never route so they aren't concerned about the sticker price as it's "only £500 p/m" !

They could have prioritised efficiency over almost everything else and instead we've ended up with even bigger, even lardier horrible SUV monstrosities that barely do half the range advertised in the real world. Instead of bragging that your family shopper has 600bhp and can do 60 in 2 seconds why not save that for the inevitable sports cars that would come from Porsche etc. Nobody cared before whether their Astra, Focus, or even 318/320d shot off like a stabbed rat, so why would they care now?
Click to expand...
Electricity works differently from petrol. You get maximum torque immediately so they appear to take off quickly.

As for size, VW do a nice range and I am sure that others do as well.

I only wish that I could buy an Audi TT with a decent range (350km+) and handling, but battery weight currently makes it difficult.
 
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