I don’t know if electric vehicles are better for the planet, Lithium Ion batteries cost/pollute a lot to produce and as far as I know, cannot be recycled or cost/pollute a lot to recycle
The ~90,000 shipping freighters that operate daily use twice the amount of fuel than all ~2.5 billion cars that are on the roads globally. We’re electrifying the wrong shit.
It’s way easier to electrify cars than cargo ships, because you can refuel/recharge cars every few kilometres. This is simply not possible with ships, other more expensive technologies like hydrogen or artificial fuels are needed. Electrifying cars also helps to reduce other emissions like nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which is good for your health.
Gasoline cars produce, on average, about ten times more lifetime pollution compared to manufacturing pollution. So even if electric car manufacturing pollutes a bit more, it more than makes up for it over its lifetime of driving.
Your other claim that batteries can’t be recycled is false. And that recycling pollutes more. More than 90% of battery materials by mass can and do get recycled - and the expectation is to reach 98+%. Recycling process is expected to produce less pollution and be cheaper than mining the equivalent amounts of material.
While most EV components are much the same as those of conventional cars, the big difference is the battery. While traditional lead-acid batteries are widely recycled, the same can’t be said for the lithium-ion versions used in electric cars.
EV batteries are larger and heavier than those in regular cars and are made up of several hundred individual lithium-ion cells, all of which need dismantling. They contain hazardous materials, and have an inconvenient tendency to explode if disassembled incorrectly.
“Currently, globally, it’s very hard to get detailed figures for what percentage of lithium-ion batteries are recycled, but the value everyone quotes is about 5%,” says Dr Anderson. “In some parts of the world it’s considerably less.”
I don’t know if electric vehicles are better for the planet, Lithium Ion batteries cost/pollute a lot to produce and as far as I know, cannot be recycled or cost/pollute a lot to recycle
The ~90,000 shipping freighters that operate daily use twice the amount of fuel than all ~2.5 billion cars that are on the roads globally. We’re electrifying the wrong shit.
It’s way easier to electrify cars than cargo ships, because you can refuel/recharge cars every few kilometres. This is simply not possible with ships, other more expensive technologies like hydrogen or artificial fuels are needed. Electrifying cars also helps to reduce other emissions like nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which is good for your health.
Gasoline cars produce, on average, about ten times more lifetime pollution compared to manufacturing pollution. So even if electric car manufacturing pollutes a bit more, it more than makes up for it over its lifetime of driving.
Your other claim that batteries can’t be recycled is false. And that recycling pollutes more. More than 90% of battery materials by mass can and do get recycled - and the expectation is to reach 98+%. Recycling process is expected to produce less pollution and be cheaper than mining the equivalent amounts of material.
While most EV components are much the same as those of conventional cars, the big difference is the battery. While traditional lead-acid batteries are widely recycled, the same can’t be said for the lithium-ion versions used in electric cars.
EV batteries are larger and heavier than those in regular cars and are made up of several hundred individual lithium-ion cells, all of which need dismantling. They contain hazardous materials, and have an inconvenient tendency to explode if disassembled incorrectly.
“Currently, globally, it’s very hard to get detailed figures for what percentage of lithium-ion batteries are recycled, but the value everyone quotes is about 5%,” says Dr Anderson. “In some parts of the world it’s considerably less.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56574779