Mining for Battery Minerals Will Destroy the Environment?! EV Myth #5 of 5

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Have you seen claims that EVs need so much mining they’re worse than petrol cars? Let’s dig beneath the surface to see the true story.

It is true that an EV needs six times the minerals in a petrol car, but that's just part of the equation. The main reason we're switching from internal combustion to electric vehicles isn't because of what they’re made of, but because of what they avoid: fossil fuels.

Take a typical petrol car. Over its lifetime, it burns around 17,000 liters of petrol. In contrast, an EV's battery metals weigh about 160 kg, a hundred times less. And the vast majority of battery materials are recyclable.
Even without recycling, EVs drastically reduce the need for mined materials. We're talking a 99% reduction compared to petrol cars! And of course we know from myth 3 that EV batteries will be recycled so it’s more like a 99.9% reduction when you factor that in.

There are extra greenhouse gas emissions for an EV relative to a petrol car that arise from mining and battery manufacture. So if you plan to buy a brand new car and never drive it, a petrol car *would* be the more climate friendly option. But if you are planning to drive that car, the difference is made up in about 20 thousand km based on our current electricity grid’s emissions, so after 1 or 2 years of average driving that’s less mining and less greenhouse gases for an EV compared to a petrol car.

The shift to EVs isn't about choosing lesser evils. It's about making a transformative leap towards sustainability.

Sources:

[die_ware_jacob]

Tell that to the 9 year old who mined the cobalt with his bare hands, im sure he will be so happy to hear it

[neilbradley]

i think ev being better than petrol is pretty hard to dispute but if we're talking about tranformative leaps towards sustainability we should probably be more sceptical of our dependence on cars for our transportation and logistical needs.
especially when other factors are considered such as the microplastics generated from car tires. we may not be able to get rid of cars but investing in rail and building the robust infrastrucure needed for a green transformation needs to be more seriously considered. especially in countries like australia and the US.

[jwstolk]

I have seen this research, it conveniently left out one of the most high-energy metals to mine and produce: aluminum, used in most fossil car engines. It also left out the rare earth metals used in catalyst converters, and the cobalt used in refineries to make fuel for fossil cars. If you add it all up, the difference with EV's becomes much smaller.

[ThatsChannel]

Yeah. Nobody is recycling batteries for the lithium. It's not happening anywhere. There are companies using grants and subsidies trying to extract (at exorbitant cost) lithium from the trash, but that is a project for safety and environmental pollution reasons, not the economy of recovering lithium Nickel recovered is at least in a usable form just from melting it down, but that's still not an efficient way to mine nickel.

[AmuzingInteresting]

Close the loop. Metal plastic rubber. Anything you can see with your eyes. Fossil fuel is involved. Cheap energy. Base load geothermal. Go back and find the problem. That's engineering. Any structure is under failure. Learn

[TheCarlosfeliciano]

I guess the giant mining pits or the atacama being destroyed by mining companies is just an hallucination then.

[aryanrastogi]

EV need a battery change after some time did u consider that

[michaelhuang]

Agree.. too many things to wish for. If you ever visit Los Angeles, you can see my frustration. Every car has a single occupant - the driver - during rush hour, with multiple lanes of traffic. It's frustrating

[michaelhuang]

Rosie... what about the acidic waste pools from mining? What about the human exploitation in cobalt mining???

[mattnaegele]

So electricity grows on lightning trees? Or do we burn fossil fuels to create electricity?

[shanerooney]

Other considerations:
~ Electric car fires are a nightmare.
~ The infrastructure needed for the electrical grid.
~ effective range on a "full tank"
~ charge times.

[tomcherry]

To replace a battery in an EV cost $40, 000 to $60, 000 US which means the car is totalled , on top of this EV wear out tires 3x faster than ICE cars .

[Robert-qsbu]

How is electricity made? Fossil fuels.. so we are still polluting but not using gas . EV is a scam. Charging is so inconvenient and really not worth it.

[jkbrown]

The shift to EV over petrol cars isn't going to do a thing about the use of 'fossil' (dug up) fuels as industry is going to pick up the reduction in transportation.

[claudiusstrdamus]

EV will not save the climate. EV will save the car industry. We have to change our way of life.

[MrTemplarViking]

no mention that most EV batteries become useless in 5-6 years and need replacing. no mention that your range drops by 50-75% in properly cold conditions (in Canada, temps commonly drop to -40C/F in January and February), or by simply having a small load/trailer. And the infrastructure for charging simply doesn't exist in most of the world, even 1st world countries struggle to install charging stations.

[robda]

We have the infrastructure to recycle petrol/diesel vehicles. The cost of recycling an ev far out weighs the value of the recovered minerals. Ev's are charged off the grid that's powered by fossil fuels as are all the vehicles that are used in the mining industry. A single hub of ev chargers suitable for charging 200 hgv's would require more power than a city. The national grid system would require a major overhaul as the demand wouldn't cause blackouts it would destroy the grid as it stands. Ev batteries are scrapped for minimal damage at massive expense

[AcmePhoto]

Forget to mention that most of the electricity used to charge the EV still comes from hydrocarbon, so charging them isn't green. 😮

[jackmeoff]

How are all these batteries going to be charged, the grid struggles to cover base load now?
Lithium Ion batteries are thermodynamically unstable, which can lead to thermal runaway fires and degassing of highly toxic gases which can then lead to gas vapour explosions.
The weight of the cars causes the tyres to degrade causing particulate pollution. As well the weight impacts the road surface causing potholes and they have been demonstrated to crash straight through road barriers that stop normal cars.
The batteries operate poorly in cold conditions. And they take a long time to charge.
The cobalt that is mined in the Congo that goes into these batteries is an insult to our collective humanity.
I was not aware that a commercially viable process had been developed to recycle car batteries.
EV cars are a pipe dream for the ideologically possessed, who are unwilling to confront the downside of an under developed technology which is highly reliant upon an under developed technology.

[mikesmovingimages]

EVs with current technology have peaked. Renewables have peaked. Without subsidies, both are niche.