The Race to Crack Lithium Ion Recycling

Even this is preferable to internal combustion engines. ICEs really aren’t very efficient, and electric car is easily 3x more energy efficient than an ICE. Which means that’s even if you include transmission losses and heat losses at a coal power station, you’re still ahead. Because of coal power stations are significantly more efficient than ICE.

All that is ignoring the other benefits like being able to perform carbon capture at source, filtering waste gasses for pollutants etc. Additionally as the grid gets greener, so does your electric car. Something that will never be true of an ICE car.

> Lithium batteries will pollute the world. We will exploit impoverished counties and extract their lithium reserves while destroying their environments.

This is clearly a concern, and thankfully we’re taking big steps to reduce the amount of rare Earth metals needed to manufacture batteries. Additionally that largest produces of lithium aren’t small countries, they’re places like China and the US.

But heavy metal pollution, and toxins produced through the refining process are still a serious concern. But I would argue less a concern than CO2 release. At least the heavy metals a d toxins can be easily contained, they don’t have a tendency of floating into the atmosphere and spreading around the earth.

Simple fact is that modern western society is currently unsustainable, just because we don’t have all the answers, and don’t have perfect solutions, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. I suspect even you wouldn’t be prepared to make the sacrifices needed for a sustainable future using only the technology we have readily available to us today.

With modern coal plants, that isn't _too_ bad actually. Modern coal plants reach 46% efficiency[0], compared to the 30-35% for modern passenger cars (older cars = less efficient). This is a 30-50% [1] efficiency gain, while also emitting 30-45% more CO2 for the same amount of energy released (gasoline vs bituminous coal and anthracite, for diesel it's 25-40%).

So, depending on the coal burned, the efficiency of the car that is replaced, and the coal plant making the electricity, you could quite reasonably have a lower carbon footprint by driving a car 100% on coal-powered electricity instead of gasoline or diesel.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_power_station#Thermal_... [1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=73&t=11

I do agree electric vehicles are a pretty big lie. You can't buy yourself out of an environmental disaster. We can't just consume more. The "Green New Deal" is about replacing tons of buildings and infrastructure that are perfectly fine, and will cause TONS of new waste in an effort to .. reduce waste.

The best thing you can do for the environment: don't buy a new car. Just keep driving your current gas vehicle and maintain it (so long as it was made within the past 20 years with good fuel efficiency) and when you do decide to toss it for an electric: buy a used one if possible.

True and I agree, however batteries have a limited lifetime, and at the end of said lifetime, lithium batteries become dangerous. Does anyone risk putting a secondhand battery in their phones for example? Might be okay for old Nokia style batteries, but the integrated ones, not a chance.

Another problem is that with EV battery packs, they're not really viable to be disassembled and repaired (e.g. by replacing individual cells), they're built pretty solid and integrated. Not saying it's impossible, just that it's likely not viable, not to mention very dangerous work. I could be wrong though.