The electric car has been promoted as the environmental guardian that will save the planet from man's destructive behavior. The truth is a bit different, though. Electric cars are not eco-friendly.
"Like other electric cars, it has 'zero emissions' of air pollution and CO2," said Lomborg. Except that "this is only true of the car itself; the electricity powering it is often produced with coal, which means that the clean car is responsible for heavy air pollution."
"As green venture capitalist Vinod Khosla" -- and IBD -- "likes to point out, 'electric cars are coal-powered cars.' "
And they are deadly.
"If the USA had 10% more petrol cars by 2020, air pollution would claim 870 more lives. A similar increase in electric ones would cause 1,617 more deaths a year, mostly because of the coal burned," Lomborg said.
Wired has reported that "Tesla's electric cars aren't as green as you might think"
Few electric car owners will pay attention to the uncomfortable truth, though. It's not the true concern for most. Buying electric cars is their way of "virtue signalling" -- showing friends, neighbors and the guy stuck in traffic next to them that they are morally superior. If they were truly about saving the planet, they'd educate themselves and make a different choice.
Article is from 2016. Still relevant today.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/tesla-the-coal-powered-car-wont-be-saving-the-world/
I've started referring to Teslas as the coal car. People say wuuuuuut?
I explain. Some smile. Others scowl. Those are the ones the red pill is meant for.
Then, there are also the batteries.
Much of the world’s lithium is extracted from brines beneath the deserts of South America and evaporated using the sun’s energy. However as demand has grown, due in large part to Tesla, more and more lithium is mined in Australia by crushing rock and is then sent to China for processing in a more energy intensive cycle [7]. Mining is a notoriously energy intensive industry and many mines are powered using dirty electricity such as coal.
Once a battery reaches the end of its life, there is recycling and disposal to be considered. Currently, over 90% of lead-acid batteries used in typical gasoline-powered vehicles are recycled. Compare that to less than 5% of lithium-ion batteries. Experts project 11m tonnes of lithium-ion batteries will be discarded between 2017 and 2030 [8]. These batteries will need to be transported to recycling facilities around the world to be processed, further contributing to their negative environmental impact. Transporting batteries from Australia to Europe resulted in an increase of global warming potential of ~45%
Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy undertook a study to look at the environmental impact of lithium-ion batteries for EVs. The study showed that batteries that use cathodes with nickel and cobalt, as well as solvent-based electrode processing, have the highest potential for environmental impacts, including resource depletion, global warming, ecological toxicity, and human health. The largest contributing processes include those associated with the production, processing, and use of cobalt and nickel metal compounds, which may cause adverse respiratory, pulmonary, and neurological effects in those exposed.
In other words, li-ion batteries that contain nickel and cobalt have a significant effect on health and the environment. More specifically, this includes Panasonic's automotive grade li-ion batteries, which contain lithium, nickel, cobalt , and aluminum, and a proprietary cathode geometry developed jointly by Panasonic and Tesla -- and are currently used in the Model S.
Would you like some pollution and dead animals with your Tesla?
Mining and processing of lithium, however, turns out to be far more environmentally harmful than what turned out to be the unfounded issues with fracking.
In May 2016, dead fish were found in the waters of the Liqi River, where a toxic chemical leaked from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine. Cow and yak carcasses were also found floating downstream, dead from drinking contaminated water ... operations run by China’s BYD, one of the world’ biggest supplier of lithium-ion batteries.
Lithium ... mining activities consumed 65 percent of the region’s water, which is having a large impact on local farmers to the point that some communities have to get water elsewhere.
As in Tibet, there is the potential for toxic chemicals to leak from the evaporation pools into the water supply including hydrochloric acid, which is used in the processing of lithium, and waste products that are filtered out of the brine. In Australia and North America, lithium is mined from rock using chemicals to extract it into a useful form. In Nevada, researchers found impacts on fish as far as 150 miles downstream from a lithium processing operation.
Lithium extraction harms the soil and causes air contamination. In Argentina’s Salar de Hombre Muerto, residents believe that lithium operations contaminated streams used by humans and livestock and for crop irrigation. In Chile, the landscape is marred by mountains of discarded salt and canals filled with contaminated water with an unnatural blue hue. According to Guillermo Gonzalez, a lithium battery expert from the University of Chile, “This isn’t a green solution – it’s not a solution at all.”
In Australia, only two percent of the country’s 3,300 metric tons of lithium-ion waste is recycled. Unwanted MP3 players and laptops often end up in landfills, where metals from the electrodes and ionic fluids from the electrolyte can leak into the environment.
Because lithium cathodes degrade over time, they cannot be placed into new batteries.
Because manufacturers are secretive about what goes into their batteries, it makes it harder to recycle them properly.
Cobalt is found in huge quantities in the Democratic Republic of Congo and central Africa where it is extracted from the ground by hand, using child labor, without protective equipment.
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/
The Save-the-Planet people are insane ... and stupid.
Takes a lot of energy to devolve water into hydrogen and oxygen. Just as it takes a lot of energy to desalinate sea water into fresh and brine. Hydrogen is fine as a fuel. We have to still burn coal, gas, or nuclear to get the energy to support it. Wind mills and solar panels aren't going to cut it. Sorry.