This article and the IEA sources that they rely on assumes that an EV is a car. That’s not a good assumption: electric bicycles and trikes like the Aptera are much better direction for the vast majority of individual transport. At that size, you can rely on smaller batteries and solar panels for many journeys (it isn’t fully sufficient for an Aptera but an e-bicycle with a small roof can ride as long as the Sun shine…
Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
151–160 of 413 posts
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#152This article and the IEA sources that they rely on assumes that an EV is a car. That’s not a good assumption: electric bicycles and trikes like the Aptera are much better direction for the vast majority of individual transport. At that size, you can rely on smaller batteries and solar panels for many journeys (it isn’t fully sufficient for an Aptera but an e-bicycle with a small roof can ride as long as the Sun shine…
Frankly I would love it if that was a reality and everything was within easy walking or biking distance, but it simply doesn’t match reality as things are currently built.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Let's build bike lanes that are so scary only the bavest will dare to use them - and also subsidise cars in any way we can." - "The market has spoken, people want cars!"
Well, the market has also spoken as to what kind of councils get elected and what kind of plans those councils approve. Of course, that's in large part because car owners pay infrastructure taxes cyclists don't. But that's also precisely what the market is - the segment who's paying. If wishes built livable cities there'd probably be more of them.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Let's build bike lanes that are so scary only the bavest will dare to use them - and also subsidise cars in any way we can." - "The market has spoken, people want cars!"
Well, the market has also spoken as to what kind of councils get elected and what kind of plans those councils approve. Of course, that's in large part because car owners pay infrastructure taxes cyclists don't. But that's also precisely what the market is - the segment who's paying. If wishes built livable cities there'd probably be more of them.
But also bikes cause negligible damage to infrastructure and barely require any resources compared to cars, so the costs are usually much lower for bike infrastructure.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#155Can batteries be created to make the process of reclaiming the lithium orders of magnitude easier? A completely different topic: Politics tends to focus on forcing consumer vehicles to go electric, is this really the right move? Most cars are not driven a lot in a day. But cars that are used for work (fleet, uber/deliveries) are used much more, so the benefit to them being electric is far greater. Trucks too most lik…
Most people shouldn't need to own a car. I don't mean that in a "self driving will save us" way. But that a personal car is parked 95% of the day. In a city huge areas are used for storing these blocks of metal not in use. More accessible car sharing could make less people feel the need to own a car.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the market has also spoken as to what kind of councils get elected and what kind of plans those councils approve. Of course, that's in large part because car owners pay infrastructure taxes cyclists don't. But that's also precisely what the market is - the segment who's paying. If wishes built livable cities there'd probably be more of them.
The market is rigged by an industry(ies) (auto, oil) to develop society in its favor. Without a major 'refactor', the US doesn't have a chance at efficient urban design that would support individual use transport.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reality is that electric vehicles are a fools errand. The real winning strategy is one that overall reduces dependency on vehicles, and moves more to walking, biking, and mass transit. This would mean actually making hard decisions and having policy changes though. You lower the CO2 produced by orders of magnitude compared to even electric vehicles.
That would be a great place to live, and several decades from now, it may exist. Several decades from now is too long to wait for an energy transition.
There is a lot that can be done with the stroke of a pen and will be fixed naturally over time.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, if one likes to enjoy cold, snow and arrive wet at work during Winter, or sharing body odors during Summertime, also assuming healthy enough to stay on a bicycles or trikes. And yes I know plenty of people do endure weather conditions for their two wheel drive, most never will unless forced to do so.
There are enclosed pedal assist vehicles out there that can keep you dry. A bit harder to park than regular bikes but that's not a hard problem to solve, just convert some car parking spots into something smaller.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I like to point out in most of these threads, not everyone live in a Californian-like climate.
Bicycles are the most common form of transport where I live in Umeå, and in the two nearest cities, Oulu and Vaasa. I’ll let you check what the weather is like today. I’m not advocating bicycles to transport wood (the most common industry here) to the train.
Also, it's +2 in Umeå right now, which is warmer than I thought.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Let's build bike lanes that are so scary only the bavest will dare to use them - and also subsidise cars in any way we can." - "The market has spoken, people want cars!"
Well, the market has also spoken as to what kind of councils get elected and what kind of plans those councils approve. Of course, that's in large part because car owners pay infrastructure taxes cyclists don't. But that's also precisely what the market is - the segment who's paying. If wishes built livable cities there'd probably be more of them.