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Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

hannahritchie.substack.com

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Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you travel those 200 miles? Why can't you use a car share service for that one occasion? I'm not assuming people never travels beyond their city. Why do car enablers always use people needing a wheelchair to push their agenda? If you're so concerned with their well being, wouldn't it be better if they got the roads for themselves and didn't get stuck in traffic and could always find parking close? Or if…

the wheelchair argument is bs, I agree. every family does not need to have a car for the small fraction of wheelchair users to get to the store. however, you are not going to connect with your audience when you say things like this: > How often do you travel those 200 miles? Why can't you use a car share service for that one occasion? I'm not assuming people never travels beyond their city. cars are not fungible. the…

But that is kinda my point, with how society is right now of course people want to keep their cars. I'm not talking about banning them. I want society to move in a direction where it's easier to not own a car, so people voluntarily prefer not to have their own.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#262
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No cars for poor people. I think that’s the obvious direction we’re heading. Congestion pricing. The private jets will still fly off to Davos every spring.

As a former poor person, fine. I hated my car.

You aren’t poor. Poor people need cars.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have evidence of that claim? I took a look around me. The most expensive and highest demand areas are actually not transit accessible at all and walking is not really feasible as the houses have lots of land and are very spread out. I am in the Sacramento area for reference.

Yes, Granite Bay is a great place to keep your sports car collection, but places in Sacramento where you can walk and bike command a premium compared similar places without the same walkability.

But you are moving the goal posts here. The person I responded to didn't say compared to similar places without the same walkability. They said "the fact that America's most walkable and transit-accessible neighborhoods are also the most expensive and highest demand". Granite bay shows this to not be a fact.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing usable on scale There are many battery recyclers in China that grind up lithium ion batteries all day every day and recover the metals.

Even if you can do it on scale and with a very high recovery rate of 90%, after 7 cycles half of the lithium is gone. Given the massive environmental effects of the mining and the relatively scarce reserves we need to allocate the metal very carefully. It should not be used to maintain a broken business model IMO.

Where does that 90% figure come from? The state of the art appears to be 99%.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#265
post #243

1. Lithium isn't the only mineral to be concerned about. 2. "The technology will improve" is not always a reliable strategy. Fusion is perpetually almost here, for example. 3. Without a federal money printer propping up the EV market it would not exist. 4. Just because a lifestyle works great for you, e.g. walkable cities and ebikes, doesnt mean it will work for everyone. 5. How far into a dictatorial, command econom…

All of these concerns, even #1, have applied to communist car driving America and its 25% theft of everything..

I would tax the beejesus out of energy use and personal road use and invert most income tax to make something closer to a free market than the US is.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A cargo ebike is a game changer for all of this Not so long as a "never in a lifetime on average" crash remains an acceptable justification to spend tens of thousands of dollars it's not. And that's ignoring weather and convenience.

> Not so long as a "never in a lifetime on average" crash What does this mean?

People justify purchasing large vehicles with their fear of being hit by one.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#267
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you! My needs are: - have place for a family of four, two of which are small children; - be something I can use with said family in -15 Celsius; - Be able to be used for a 200km trip weekly with said family; I have an EV.

- two cargo bikes, each ridden by each adult - layers, and canopies for aforementioned e-bikes - train Of course, speaking in the ideal. Just because the car has been the only option for so long doesn't mean it's replacement has to replace every trip either.

Trains are only useful within and between densely populated areas. The 200 km weekly trip might well be to a cabin in the mountains, definitely no train.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's not just the people who decide who gets elected. Like it or not, the chances of winning an election highly correlate with advertising budgets, and the fossil fuel and car industry has sunk dozens of billions of dollars in campaign contributions, (S)PAC donations and other legal and illegal forms of bribery to make sure their interests were taken care of.

>Like it or not, the chances of winning an election highly correlate with advertising budgets, This is just BS/lies at the local level. Moneyed PACs aren't fighting it out over councilor, selectman and planner positions for random suburbs. Pretty much all the money these candidate dispense is either self raised or comes from an official political party who don't really doll out meaningful amounts to these elections

Slightly different angle than the parent post:

What about the state and federal subsidies for road infrastructure? A locality that wants to go a different (less car dependent) direction would be leaving that infrastructure money unspent, which isn't fair to the local voters who contributed tax money to the state/feds. They rigged it so that the locals paid for the roads via their tax money, their only choice is to take the money and build more roads, or kiss the money they sent to the state/feds goodbye.

Wouldn't the above kind of hamstring local politicians? Would it be safe to assume that the pro-car lobbyists at those higher level of government want to keep it this way?

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the real problem is that we move 2000+ kgs around to move a human of 80 kgs around. Why is that a problem? If I want to visit my friend who lives 200 miles away, I'm not going to hop on a bike, or walk, or find a horse and buggie to take me there. Vehicles are not inherently evil. In fact they're a great enabler. Even if we take your example at face value and assume nobody travels beyond their city. How is that…

How often do you travel those 200 miles? Why can't you use a car share service for that one occasion? I'm not assuming people never travels beyond their city. Why do car enablers always use people needing a wheelchair to push their agenda? If you're so concerned with their well being, wouldn't it be better if they got the roads for themselves and didn't get stuck in traffic and could always find parking close? Or if…

I agree will all of the above points but the last is not really true, there is a concerted and clear agenda across the board to transition everything to electric and then use mostly wind and solar to power the grid (with already available solutions for energy storage due to fluctuations in wind/sun).

I don't see a lot of people really pushing for others to fundamentally change their habits and lifestyle (even getting people to eat less red meat is incredibly hard) and I think that's just because it's fundamentally harder to convince a large number of people to change their habits vs. a small number of dedicated people working towards green energy.

We should strive for both of these things together and share the same goal.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have evidence of that claim? I took a look around me. The most expensive and highest demand areas are actually not transit accessible at all and walking is not really feasible as the houses have lots of land and are very spread out. I am in the Sacramento area for reference.

Well for starters Sacramento is just a really poor example. Most of CA isn't. It's a consequence of hyper aggressive SFH zoning (~80% of the SCAG area is SFH, used to be even higher) and the era in which CA grew being the mid century period. There basically aren't any properly transit served and walkable areas in Sacramento. Closest would be Midtown and Richmond Grove, but they aren't really very good at all compared…

Again just like the other poster you are trying to move the goal posts. The comment did not say some. The comment said "the fact that America's most walkable and transit-accessible neighborhoods are also the most expensive and highest demand". I provided a single example that proves this statement is not a fact.

edit: comment not commit

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