Once again, Afghanistan has it. China is getting it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.htm...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-24/chinese-f...
Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
271–280 of 413 posts
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need an academic paper to see how much carbon is used to actually manufacture a lithium ion battery that is mined versus recycled domestically in the country the car is produced. Just follow the supply chain in how the mining process works for typical batteries today. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-co2-emitted-manufac... !
An average sedan from production to driving within its life time produces 38 metric tons of CO2 emissions compared to 16 metric tons as quoted by your article for the battery. I still fail to see how an EV is by any means dirtier than a gas car.
Copper mining is very dirty (not necesseraly C02-wise), and an EV needs 4 times more of it (IIRC) than an equivalent ICV.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you have a family. It has to be there when you need it. Here in Québec we had an elected official who used to preach against cars and then once she got elected bought a SUV because, like everyone else with kids, she needed it for her family. The "you shouldn't need to own a car" attitude is arrogant and authoritarian in nature.
No, the authoritarian and arrogant attitude is from those thinking it's their right to drive everywhere at whatever cost to others. And you're missing the point. Why do you need a car because of family? Think further than your own nose tip. Wouldn't it be nice with a society where you didn't have to drive to do any little chore? And the few times you needed to drive, a care from some car sharing service was available…
> Why do you need a car because of family?
Logistics. With a car the schedule is much more flexible and that is a major advantage when you have small children.
Also with four or more people on board it's not really that terrible in terms of space efficiency.
If you want to lower traffic/car ownership single-occupant vehicles are your low-hanging fruit, not families.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our cities are designed for cars. Hell, most of our society is designed around owning a car. It is horrendously impractical in a lot of places to go without a car. Our public transit systems are largely garbage, if they exist at all. Bike lanes are extremely rare, and are really just used as free car parking. Take my commute to work for instance. It's about 3 miles, but it would be impossible to bike, as there are hu…
Our suburbs are designed for cars. Our cities are retrofitted for cars. That might seem pedantic but I’m not trying to be. The point is that we do actually have significant areas of population which are ready to be reworked to prioritize cycling without completely changing the way we live. Suburbs can also prioritize safe cycling. Take a look at bentonville Arkansas. It has a tiny downtown but most of it looks and fu…
That is nice, but I wonder what the ratio of driving to riding bicycles is in Bentonville. I assume the residents still own cars.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#275We cannot afford to ransack places like Chile to extract lithium for 'electric vehicles', which plumb new depths of pollution and third world degredation.
The extraction of rare earth minerals for our electronically surveilled and controlled future comes at a terrible cost, as Siddharth Kara's new book "Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives" outlines in excruciating detail.
https://read.macmillan.com/lp/cobalt-red/
No one wins in this race to the bottom. If you are contemplating a BEV I would urge you to read up on just how ecologically appalling the batteries are for our planet and people.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UK. Lines interconnect all over. But that doesn't mean connections are possible when you want them and don't involve time padding and risk of not making them and sometimes completely illogical routes, and even with one of the world's highest densities of stations many places people want to go to don't have a station particularly nearby or a last mile solution that isn't a taxi. And no matter how good the end-to-e…
Please don't conflate British Rail mismanagement with "trains are bad". Your trains are bad. America's trains are bad. They don't have to be. There is a disconnect here with you replying to someone who was talking about the ideal, with your reality. No one is saying train systems in a lot of places, right now, are perfect. We can make them more perfect in addition to moving more freight onto rail, doing more last-mil…
> There is a disconnect here with you replying to someone who was talking about the ideal, with your reality.
Their ideal is my reality, because I've never owned a vehicle with more than two wheels and live in a country whose rail density and usage is arguably exceeded only by Japan. So I think I'm pretty well placed to comment on the impracticality of most people forgoing the use of cars altogether in favour of ebikes and rail.
If you don't have any answers to points like trains being unsuited to carrying luggage, rail schedules being suboptimal for individual journeys outside peak use zones and times and most places not being close to a station even with a rail network as dense as the UK's, please don't resort to strawmanning it as "trains are bad" and insisting that everything I said about rail logistics boils down to British Rail[1] management...
I'm all in favour of people walking and cycling more and getting trains when that makes sense, but that isn't going to result in many of them not needing cars (and associated batteries) for other journeys.
[1]an organization with this name was wound up in 1997 and replaced with a succession of franchises - many with exprience running rail networks overseas - awarded by competitive tender. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, changing the management wasn't a panacea...
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
The UK. Lines interconnect all over. But that doesn't mean connections are possible when you want them and don't involve time padding and risk of not making them and sometimes completely illogical routes, and even with one of the world's highest densities of stations many places people want to go to don't have a station particularly nearby or a last mile solution that isn't a taxi. And no matter how good the end-to-e…
Please don't conflate British Rail mismanagement with "trains are bad". Your trains are bad. America's trains are bad. They don't have to be. There is a disconnect here with you replying to someone who was talking about the ideal, with your reality. No one is saying train systems in a lot of places, right now, are perfect. We can make them more perfect in addition to moving more freight onto rail, doing more last-mil…
I read the original post as questioning an assumption (the article assumes ev cars) and proposing a different assumption (ev bikes). The parent you replied to questioned the new assumption (most people won't feel that they can get by with ev bikes).
His experience in the UK seems like it would be relevant to most people in the US, and I assume Canada and Australia also. You can't sell this to people on just your terms, you have speak to them on their terms, too.
I agree with what you said that the problem needs to be attacked on multiple fronts (public transport, mining, zoning, doubling grid capacity, current subsidies and special interest groups, etc).
I assume we'll get there, but it's going to take a while, likely more than a couple decades to start making a good dent in countries with a lot of car-dependency.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#278This 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…
No, cars plus planes are much more convenient for travel than bikes and trains.
That is definitely not to say that there is no place for bikes and trains. US certainly needs more of both.
But please stop pretending that a family of 4 can go anywhere on bikes in the weather. Or even going to the beach with all gear in perfect weather. Just not going to happen.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#279We cannot afford to ransack places like Chile to extract lithium for 'electric vehicles', which plumb new depths of pollution and third world degredation. The extraction of rare earth minerals for our electronically surveilled and controlled future comes at a terrible cost, as Siddharth Kara's new book "Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives" outlines in excruciating detail. https://read.macmillan.co…
Oil ain't a picnic either, so what's the answer?
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#280Earlier 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.
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