This fast paced transition doesn't sit right with me, still. I feel like people are turning a blind eye to the negative environmental impacts this is going to have.
The question is does this environmental havoc replace or lesson the current environmental havoc + military and political conflict over oil supplies (yes potential for rare earth or other material conflicts persist).
As always though, this move is optimizing the wrong thing - we don’t need more efficient cars we need fewer cars. But nobody likes subtractive solutions.
It's not a matter of subtractive solutions or not: It's that in a low-car environment, way too many people's real estate investments are worth near zero. How much of, say, Suburban Florida remains usable if we price cars high enough to make their use unadvisable? Entire subdivisions are worth basically zero. Same thing with commercial areas that are not really reachable on foot.
Old US cities only became car centric through massive amounts of pain and hardship, which happened to hit people that were mostly politically disenfranchised. Reshaping in the other direction would involve a similar amount of hardship, but on people that vote. We can make it easier to increase density, but the kind of efforts that would make us not end up relying on EVs have such economic and political costs that we lack the state capacity to go there.
In the 50k miles I’ve had my EV, I’ve saved at least 48 barrels (~2400 gallons) of gas from being burned vs the gas car it replaced. The (very slow) rate of battery degradation suggests at least 150k+ miles on this battery pack.
I have a hard time envisioning that the impact due to lithium mining for one battery pack is worse than the extraction and pollution from burning ~150 barrels of gas. Plus another 3 barrels of motor oil from oil changes.
Not to mention, they are forecasting out over 25 years, on a technology that has been rapidly changing, and is seeing immense investment. Batteries from 15+ years from now will have very different chemistries, and lithium will likely have safer sources. The Chevy EV1 launched with lead-acid batteries about 25 years ago - modern EVs aren’t remotely similar.
Kinda so-so article that gets some issues exactly right (oversized vehicles, too many individual cars vs transit options) and badly misses others, like lithium sources.
Lithium deposits are geologically widespread and abundant, but 95% of global production is currently concentrated in Australia, Chile, China and Argentina. Large new deposits have been found in diverse countries including Mexico, the US, Portugal, Germany, Kazakhstan, Congo and Mali.
There are massive Lithium deposits at the salton Sea in souther California which are just bubbling up out of the ground in heated brine, meaning the earth is doing most of the work bringing it to the surface as mud. Refining it will need significant water, either from contested supplies fed by the Colorado river or as-yet-unbuilt water pipelines from desalination plants at the coast. But these deposits are massive and the extraction part of the process would have minimal environmental impact compared to the open-pit mining required elsewhere. It's odd that this article doesn't mention this at all.
It's so funny to me that a few pounds of lithium brings out so much hand wringing, whereas all that copper and even ton(s) of steel does not. Or for that matter, the far more massive amounts of hydrocarbon extraction!
If somebody is even half serious about these concerns, they had better be advocating for extreme reduction in car use. Otherwise it's pure hypocrisy.
At some point, the illusion that we will be able to avoid changing our transportation infrastructure in the US, will be unmaintainable.
The problem is not in EVs, it's in private automobiles, our settlement patterns, and our utter lack of funding public transportation in all of its forms.
At some point we need to stop acting like transportation solutions for areas with orders of magnitude higher population density than the US are obvious solutions. Infrastructure for a country like the Netherlands (a popular “see we should bike” example) with a population density of 459 people per km^2 is going to be completely different than the US with its 35/km^2.
It is just as naive to think the US can remake its transportation infrastructure to be like Europe, as it would be to expect every road in Italy to be made wide enough for a Ford F-150 Raptor. Places in the US with high population densities (NYC, DC, Chicago, SF, etc) often do have far better public transportation than the rest of the US.
Mining for combustion cars also breaks havoc and nobody cares.
It would be best to reduce our car dependence, but I guess a new electric car is still better than a new combustion car.
The timeline is interesting but I think it's slow enough for regulation to catch up.
This shifts the focus of problems from many different places to one. In the article you linked, it mentions alternatives to reduce lithium needs including smaller batteries, and battery recycling.
This is much easier to regulate, and there is plenty of time to do so - although yes this is putting some trust on governments doing the right thing.
ericmay|3 years ago
As always though, this move is optimizing the wrong thing - we don’t need more efficient cars we need fewer cars. But nobody likes subtractive solutions.
hibikir|3 years ago
Old US cities only became car centric through massive amounts of pain and hardship, which happened to hit people that were mostly politically disenfranchised. Reshaping in the other direction would involve a similar amount of hardship, but on people that vote. We can make it easier to increase density, but the kind of efforts that would make us not end up relying on EVs have such economic and political costs that we lack the state capacity to go there.
MBCook|3 years ago
I don’t think politically viable, despite being the real solution to the core problem.
pseudosavant|3 years ago
I have a hard time envisioning that the impact due to lithium mining for one battery pack is worse than the extraction and pollution from burning ~150 barrels of gas. Plus another 3 barrels of motor oil from oil changes.
Not to mention, they are forecasting out over 25 years, on a technology that has been rapidly changing, and is seeing immense investment. Batteries from 15+ years from now will have very different chemistries, and lithium will likely have safer sources. The Chevy EV1 launched with lead-acid batteries about 25 years ago - modern EVs aren’t remotely similar.
anigbrowl|3 years ago
Lithium deposits are geologically widespread and abundant, but 95% of global production is currently concentrated in Australia, Chile, China and Argentina. Large new deposits have been found in diverse countries including Mexico, the US, Portugal, Germany, Kazakhstan, Congo and Mali.
There are massive Lithium deposits at the salton Sea in souther California which are just bubbling up out of the ground in heated brine, meaning the earth is doing most of the work bringing it to the surface as mud. Refining it will need significant water, either from contested supplies fed by the Colorado river or as-yet-unbuilt water pipelines from desalination plants at the coast. But these deposits are massive and the extraction part of the process would have minimal environmental impact compared to the open-pit mining required elsewhere. It's odd that this article doesn't mention this at all.
epistasis|3 years ago
If somebody is even half serious about these concerns, they had better be advocating for extreme reduction in car use. Otherwise it's pure hypocrisy.
cbrozefsky|3 years ago
The problem is not in EVs, it's in private automobiles, our settlement patterns, and our utter lack of funding public transportation in all of its forms.
pseudosavant|3 years ago
It is just as naive to think the US can remake its transportation infrastructure to be like Europe, as it would be to expect every road in Italy to be made wide enough for a Ford F-150 Raptor. Places in the US with high population densities (NYC, DC, Chicago, SF, etc) often do have far better public transportation than the rest of the US.
legulere|3 years ago
MisterPea|3 years ago
This shifts the focus of problems from many different places to one. In the article you linked, it mentions alternatives to reduce lithium needs including smaller batteries, and battery recycling.
This is much easier to regulate, and there is plenty of time to do so - although yes this is putting some trust on governments doing the right thing.