Consider me intrigued, Mr. Musk
(media.greatawakening.win)
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A 10 year old used car still runs on gasoline. Therefore it still depends on rare Earth materials to make it go. Rare Earth Elements are used in mass quantities in the production of gasoline. Of course child labor is awful, but if you're driving any vehicle, you are complicit in it's mining. There is no moral high ground in the automotive industry.
I am interested. My father worked for 7 years as a fractionation column fireman at a major refinery (nothing to do with putting out fires). There was no discussion of "massive quantities" of "rare Earth elements" used in gasoline production. I will speculate you are really referring to platinum used as a catalyst for the polymerization reactions from light fractions into heavy fractions.
What you are omitting is that there is a big difference between metals that are used as catalysts that NEVER GET CONSUMED, and cobalt (not a rare earth element) which is alloyed with lithium in batteries that NEVER GET RECYCLED. The former does not require the massive expansion of cruel and criminal mining practices.
The conventional automobile industry has the moral high ground, insofar as the consumption of cobalt is concerned. Or, you don't give a hoot about the lives of the children.
Cobalt and lithium are not rare Earth materials. Which is what the initial comment claimed.
Child labor is horrible, but nice strawman. More child labor is used in the bricks you build your house with, the clothes on your back and the carpets you walk on than are used in cobalt or lithium mining combined. 70% of all child laborers are working in the agriculture industry so unless you don't eat food, maybe step down off your high horse.
Maybe go ask your pops about lanthanum and cerium. Both are used as additives for fluid catalytic cracking (FCC), a key process in gasoline production.
A catalytic converter has more rare Earth in it than batteries do.
Child labor sucks, but your beef is with countries that facilitate it. Not EVs, but big oil sure appreciates your loyalty.
The big push in child labor in cobalt mines is coming from the projected production need of lithium batteries, not from any other market. I'm glad you have no problem with that. My wife's homeland, Zambia, has signed a letter of understanding with the U.S. and the DR Congo covering lithium and cobalt mining. I suspect that will seek to curtail the native economies under the guise of noble motives.
I know that the original comment was off the mark regarding rare earth metals (people don't know what they are), but the issue was the huge increase in the relevant mineral extraction under unsavory conditions, necessitated by a massive increase in battery production.
The dodge with lanthanum and cerium is amusing. They are found together and their prevalence is at least 3 times higher than lead, so while they are categorized as "rare earths" they are not actually rare. They have a huge variety of uses, not just in the petroleum industry (cerium is used in flints for cigarette lighters). And in that industry, they are used as catalysts, which are not consumed by the chemical processes they facilitate. So, it is a refining plant investment, not a continuing consumable like lithium. My dad is long dead, so he will take no offense.