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A comment on UK to ban sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030: FT. Parent comment

Re:UK to ban sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030: FT by lm28469 on Sunday November 15, 2020 @01:37PM (#25103503)
It depends at which scale you look at it. EVs are nice because you get less emissions locally, but in the grand scheme of things you just displaced the pollution and created new problems (lithium, cobalt and rare earth mines, battery recycling, power source, updating the grid &c).

> We have made progress, and we can make more progress if we all pull together.

The question is, is it enough ? It feels a bit like we're curing the symptoms but not their causes.

There are 1.5 billion vehicles in the world, we should strive to reduce their number, not continue to expand it, EVs aren't a miracle, 1.5 billion EVs are still a huge problem

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Re:UK to ban sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030: FT by _ph_ on Sunday November 15, 2020 @03:09PM (#25104339)
The impact of electric vehicles is minimal compared to ICE vehicles. An ICE vehicle burns like 20 tons of fuel during its life time. An electric vehicle needs less than 10 kg of lithium, which can be completely recycled at the end of life. The next generation of Tesla batteries will be cobalt free and no lithium battery contains any rare earths. That is an urban legend.

Switching to electric doesn't mean to increase the number of vehicles, they are built instead of ICE vehicles. Ideally, we reduce the count a lot, but every single vehicle built needs to be electric.

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Re:UK to ban sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030: FT by fomine3 on Monday November 16, 2020 @08:19PM (#25119283)
* If generation is 100% carbon free
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Re:UK to ban sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030: FT by _ph_ on Tuesday November 17, 2020 @03:15AM (#25121277)
Electric cars are a win in almost all countries already, but of course, if we want to prevent climate change, we have to convert energy production to be 100% carbon free, and that quickly. Basically every electric car bought today will eventually run on 100% carbon free electricity. Any ICE vehicle will run on 100% carbon.
[ Parent | on HN ]