1. Any environmental impact from lithium mining needs to be weighed against the impact of continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels
2. Lithium is recyclable (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1682-5) and there is room for a lot of process improvement in lithium extraction (https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/general-motors-looks-to...)
3. Studies of the lifecycle emissions (emissions including manufacturing) of electric cars consistently find that EVs beat ICE vehicles, and future lifecycle emissions must be considered as a curve, as the percentage of renewables on the electric grid increases and industrial process eventually move away from fossil fuels (https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-...)
https://theicct.org/publications/global-LCA-passenger-cars-j...
https://twitter.com/colinmckerrache/status/14193077299995115...
There's also the costs and externalities of shipping fuel to fueling stations all over the country in perpetuity, there's no additional cost to "ship" electricity to homes or charging stations.
Why? If we're comparing EVs and hydrogen powered cars then we shouldn't. We should compare lithium usage to what hydrogen powered cars need.
>2. Lithium is recyclable
But do we actually recycle lithium in enough quantities?
>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
Lithium-ion batteries can be the most recyclable thing in the world, but if we don't actually recycle them then it makes no difference.
Recycling can never be free or even close. There's a lot of processing that goes from dismantling a battery, to segregating the lithium, to putting it back in a new battery. Recycle is last of the 3 Rs for a reason.
Lol. All the downvotes. It's like I said something bad about Apple 10 years ago. All hail Elon, dear leader.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/37872/now-with-three-hydrogen-...
I mean don't EV's have issues? Lithium is expensive to mine, electricity is usually produced by burning coal, and can our current grid even handle 100% electric vehicles? I mean it's better than gas, but it's not the end of the road of vehicle power is it?
Because we are not talking about propane. We are talking about a tank storing highly pressurized hydrogen, which is way more difficult to handle than propane. In a moving vehicle, not a grill.
> Lithium is expensive to mine
Yes. It can be mined once and then reuse countless times, however. Hydrogen is expensive to manufacture too, and it's "burned" so you always need more.
Expect prices to go down as more infrastructure to mine and refine is put into place. This is even ignoring technological advancements in extraction - which tend to happen once there's demand.
> electricity is usually produced by burning coal
This is highly location-dependent. True for some places, not true at all for others. That's also becoming less true by the day.
_Even_ in the case where 100% of the grid power worldwide came from coal, EVs would still be a win. The generator on a huge power plant is far more efficient than any car engine. And the pollution is concentrated on a few places - places we can improve. Additionally, there are no emissions on population centers, meaning an enormous improvement on quality of life and a decrease on deaths due to respiratory illnesses.
Then, once you upgrade the power plants, the entire vehicle fleet gets an instant upgrade.
If it's in your means (essentially, if you own your property) you can generate power from renewables on site and power your vehicle that way. Try doing that with hydrogen.
> and can our current grid even handle 100% electric vehicles
Yes according to the US Department of Energy.
> I mean it's better than gas, but it's not the end of the road of vehicle power is it
Just until we find something better, then we'll _easily_ change our vehicles to store electric energy using the new storage device. That's the good thing about electric motors, they don't care where the power comes from.
> This is highly location-dependent.
It really isn’t. Electricity moves through a network: for example using more electricity in France might cause a coal power station to be started in Poland. The same occurs for any network.
Additionally, when you add an EXTRA kWh of load, what really matters is where that extra kWh is generated. Think of it that all the electricity on the network is already being used (all the green electricity is virtually guaranteed to be used).
When you add one marginal kWh of usage, that kWh is often genersted 100% from gas or coal.
Obviously there are a lot of different situations where the above points are not relevant, and where an efficient coal station might be better than an ICE. I am just saying that many people are ignorant of how the electricity networks work.
I know. We haven't interconnected the entire planet. So it still depends on what region we are talking about. Even inside a country some regions might be barely connected (see the Texas power grid).
> might cause a coal power station to be started in Poland
It also might cause a natural gas station to be started up. Again, that depends on the location. Usually it would cause a natural gas power plant to start up. It could also be pumped storage hydro, or even batteries.
Since you are talking about lack of knowledge, it's useful to point out that coal is very unlikely to be used as a peaker plant, just like we don't start nuclear power stations for the same purpose. Generally they are used for baseline power.
We aren't going to be starting coal plants because France is using more power. Some countries might decide to build more though, to account for the predicted energy usage growth.
Pressure for propane tanks, 100-200 psi.
Pressure for hydrogen tanks, 5000-10000 psi.
It's not the same.
Sure, EVs and hydrogen each have their pros and cons. But that is meaningless without numbers. So far, it seems like the numbers work out a lot better for EVs.
Maybe someone comes up with a great idea and hydrogen becomes the future of cars. But there is zero evidence of that today.
I'm not insistent, I'm just asking why it's not possible or practical to swap out a hydrogen tank in a vehicle. I guess that's heretical.
Here's a company that sells tanks. You can use it for welding among other things. There's one in just about every city.
https://www.airgas.com/resources/gases101/hydrogen
Fork lifts currently use them too.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/musk-calls-hydrogen-fuel-cel...
A hydrogen tank that is part of your car, however, may be subject to a high speed crash coming in at a random angle.
BBQ grill propane tanks can explode, but they are typically stored on porches, an environment where they are not often hit by SUVs.
So are lithium ion batteries. Here's an article on a recent Tesla burn:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/01/tesla-model-s-plaid-caught-f...
I wasn't arguing that hydrogen wasn't dangerous, I was arguing that a hydrogen tank was easier to swap than a 1200 lb. battery.
That's why people have issue with your statement on "easily" swapping hydrogen tanks, as it's anything but "easy".
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-storage-chall...
I think he/she means that Tesla, like Apple, has a cult following in which people can't see the company doing any wrong or facing any criticism when it comes to its products or repercussions for what it will do to the industry down the line.
Similarly pushing hydrogen as a better option is wrong today.
I was referring more to the rabid fanboy-ism. People committing suicide in their plants? Well people commit suicide everywhere. Nets? Great idea!
One of the reasons companies do horrid shit is that we let them.
I wouldn't want my container on high pressure explosive gas be swapped from some DIY dudes car.
Hydrogen has SO MANY other problems though it's not even funny.
It's incredibly hard to store. We literally have devised no containers that can hold it long term, as the molecules are so small they seep through. As they do so, they embrittle said containers, which need to be then replaced.
It's not energy dense. So we either have to compress it (wasting energy) or liquefy it(not viable for cars, without even accounting for boil off).
Then you need the whole 'manufacturing' (as there's no free hydrogen on Earth) - probably from fossil fuels. You need to transport it to where it's going to be used. And you need to create and entire new fuel infrastructure. The current fossil fuel industry likes this for obvious reasons.
For all the talk on the lack of EV charging infrastructure, up to level 2 all we need are glorified relays. Electricity is available even in places we have no gas infrastructure.
And then, what are we doing with hydrogen? Using it on fuel cells... to produce electricity.
Just skip the middle man and charge batteries directly.
99% of the hydrogen currently produced come from natural gas. Of course, it could be made from water but lithium can also be extracted cleanly from clay with with table salt.
Besides, making hydrogen from water uses over 3 times the energy required to make and charging a battery (the well-to-wheel efficiency of hydrogen vehicles is that low).
So for now and the foreseeable future, hydrogen is far worst for the environment than Li-Ion batteries.
High-temperature fuel cells do not need expensive catalysts, but it seems that nobody succeeded to reach acceptable lifetimes for them.
You can get a base model 3 today with 263 to 353 miles of range. That's upwards of 3-4 hours of driving with no breaks. Stop to take a break at a super charger for 30 minutes and you can do another 3-4 hours.
How is this still no practical especially combined with all the time and money they save not having to do most routine maintenance.
Edit: On the plus side, charging at home at night every evening is really nice compared to a weekly gas station visit.
Charge started a 143 kW (on a 150 kW unshared charger) and I ended it 10 minutes later while it was at 80 kW. This was enough to drive 130km to home (non highway) with about 20% battery left so 130 Wh/km.
When I travel on highway I stop at all superchargers, they're usually 1h to 2h of highway driving apart in my country (France), so similar experience.
I don't think a lot of commenters here have much experience living in rural environments.
This doesn't even begin to touch on the ability to repair the vehicles.
I'm sure they have complicated electronics, but most modern cars do as well and those aren't components people typically work on.
Just consider the electric vehicle has no transmission, no drive train, no oil. It doesn't have most of what cars have under the hood.
The electric motor is simpler than an ICE, yes.
OTOH, a modern (and by modern I mean anything in the last ~30 years) ICE engine is supremely reliable, so it's a wash.
Most repair time isn't from having to fix the engine or motor anyway, it's the whole rest of the car.
We have a a Fiat 500e (EV) now sitting it's fourth week (not continuous) at the dealer to get window regulator problems fixed. Those types of problems have nothing to do with whether the car was an EV model or the ICE model.
Pretty much all modern brushless power tools, while mechanically simpler than their brushed cousins, require a full motor and control module replacement when something as simple as the switch fails.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that electric propulsion is the future for efficient transport and that gas isn't a long-term solution going forward. It just seems to me the marketing and hype have gotten ahead of the current offerings, and I worry the 'scrap it and get a new one' approach employed often by tech companies will end up being applied to cars as well.
There is no extra capacity producing spare parts to sit on shelves.
Source? Supposedly the F-150 Lightning numbers are including 1000 lbs of cargo. So a full cabin of people still supposedly getting the stated 300 miles on a full charge (For the extended range.)
"Applying these results to the F-150 means that towing a modest trailer would put the highway range at roughly 100 to 125 miles, depending on the pack. Towing anywhere near the 10,000-pound maximum rating on XLT and Lariat models (with the maximum trailer tow package and extended-range battery) at highway speeds, we believe you'd be hard pressed to exceed double-digit miles."
Now compare that to the LandCruiser that we haul race cars with… the LC always gets 14 mpg, we have filled it with 6 adults going to Tahoe, same MPG. Haul a 2700lbs sports car. Doesn’t change at all.
Honestly an EV would be nice for hauling stuff to the track, hopefully with the race car, and equipment it can make it to Willows on a single charge, at least the track has RV hookup points, can charge while you race.
This is physically impossible unless the LandCruiser is just throwing energy away when empty.
What's more likely is that this estimate is not very precise.
Of course we are talking about towing a light sports car here. Tow a different type off trailer, or a very heavy load and the losses will start to catch up.
I don't want to stop for food, order, wait, eat, get in the car, drive to who knows where for a charger, and then start charging for 30 minutes.
(i am also advocating with policy makers to outlaw new petroleum filling station permits/infrastructure, but that is a topic for another thread. i am applying YC startup school lessons to public policy efforts. please excuse the dust while the electrification of transportation ramps)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
Your car is done charging before you get your Big Mac and eat it.
[0] https://kempower.com/information-center/news/kempowers-leadi...
If you commute like most Americans (26 minutes), then you just charge at home and never think about it. I don't think people realize that most Telsa owners don't use public chargers.
That's not what you do... You stop at the charger and then go get food or take a break at the store that's right next to it.
Don't you also have to stop, eat, and then drive somewhere to get gas?.
Right now I can choose what I want to eat, find one of those restaurants and fill up there. You can't pretend as if the opposite (planning around where my car wants to go, and eating what happens to be there) is the same thing.
Nor can you pretend that it is just as convenient to spend an hour and 5 minutes waiting for my car to charge when I normally spend 10 minutes max filling it up.
Do you normally go through Bloomington? Both Google Maps and the A Better Route Planner say it's faster to go through Indianapolis.
But from Cincinnati to WI (the route I’m talking about) I always go through Indianapolis. I used the default car. Didn’t think much about the range differences, but you’re right. That makes a big difference.
> There are, apparently no super-chargers between Cincinnati and Indianapolis
It's not "who knows where". Your car knows where and its right off the interstate in a parking lot next to a lot of places to eat. Better than most gas stations actually.
You want to eat while you charge? Get food next to your charger. They have already thought of all this when they were spending billions of dollars on building out charging infrastructure
All the ones we stopped at in Canada were near food as well
As to the current infrastructure, plugging in nightly works for most people most of the time. Spending an extra 15 minutes charging for long trips is hardly a big deal. People tend to go inside for drinks walk around etc which eats into the time lost.
For a long day of driving, say, 700 miles, assuming charging available at both ends, this means two charging stops of 15 minutes each instead of one gas stop of 5 minutes.
IMO while this can always be improved, this is now at the "good enough" point for long distance driving. Obviously to make this a true reality, there needs to be widespread charging available in parking lots, and more 250kW Superchargers, but progress towards this is rapid.
It's about half the height of a parking meter. The power is right there under the pavement. Probably cost £800 to install, which could generate £200 in revenue each year.
Not every charger needs to be a super charger.
Getting lots of 11kw chargers in every parking bay would be a higher priority than everywhere having super chargers. Most people could keep topped up and those doing long trips use the faster charging points.
We have many blocks (roughly 10x10 blocks, so 100 square blocks) sharing a single charger site now and for the last 3 years with only two plugs in a high EV density area and we don’t have any conflicts that I know of.
Most of these objections are just imagined problems coming from the minds of people without actual experience of owning an EV.
That being said, some EVs, once bought, are an easier ownership experience than others, but that’s getting off track.
Hi, previous EV owner here, had to get rid of it because there was too much range anxiety thanks to the lack of chargers near my house and inability to use my house's power thanks to street parking. Saw multiple conflicts at congested chargers, mostly passive, some aggressive, because the infrastructure was insufficient to meet the demand.
Fast charging sounds so great! It sounds like you've got two Teslas in a place where fast chargers are plentiful. That doesn't describe where I live. So, good for you, but please remember that people aren't necessarily idiots just because their life experience differs from yours.
But, hey. Credit where credit's due... at least you didn't say FSD.
When I had an EV, it frequently took several hours of combined searching and waiting to find a charge per week. That's not counting time to charge. Frequently, broken chargers would remain listed on apps for weeks, which made it a terrifying gambling game when range was low.
What you say is indeed right for some EVs and some locales, but give it time, it’s getting better.
The real issue - and the one that prevented me from buing an electric car so far - was that without my own charging spot I would have an issue leaving the city for a month or two, or just swotching to transit for a while. With ICE I can leave the car for 6 months unused and it’s not a big problem.
Of course this doesn't work well if your neighbors park right in front of your house, oops. (In most American cities, AFAIK, home owners have no claim over the parking space directly in front of their home)
Not sure what to do in "real" dense cities, Chicago row houses and such.
Honestly making them public infrastructure where people pay a monthly fee subscription fee to the city might just work. (And generate revenue for the city!)
What EV has over ICE is that these energy-giving places can be located anywhere - my work, the supermarket, a town car park, a mate’s house, an extension cable pit my window in absolute emergencies, etc. I really don’t see why this is a good argument against EV. Yes I can’t fill up outside my house, but I can’t do that with a petrol car either.
Really, people should just have fewer cars.
But it's not convenient if you have to park on the street... because there's nowhere to charge. That's the point.
In Warsaw city center there is a such a public parking spot every 300-500 meters or so, where you can park for free as well if you have an electric. Those will get even more common as electrics get more popular.
The only issue is if you tend to leave your car unused for extended periods of time.
(Not to mention that "green" hydrogen requires at least 3x as much energy as plain electric cars)
Not saying it is impossible, but it is not trivially easy.
Barring roadtrips, charging at home costs about 30s. Even factoring the longer time supercharging on roadtrips (relative to gas), I'm confident I spend far less total time charging my EV than filling my gas tank.
On a model 3 range, you maybe change 3x as often as fill up.
Gas is a 10 minute overhead generally. So 90s vs 10 minutes per 400 miles or so.
If the justification is doing something productive with that time, then washing your windshield or going into the C-store to get a snack and a drink shouldn't count as gas up time.
I get that progress is being made, but the contortions required to prove that the status quo is "good enough" are frustrating, at best.
The best way to get a person to commit to an ice vehicle for life is to mislead them into committing to an EV before it or the infrastructure suits their needs.
Contrast that with the experience at a gas station, where I have to stand awkwardly next to my car while I keep my hand on the pump handle (there are no "locks" on the handles anymore), then wait in line inside the store to pay while the old lady in front of me buys a gazillion lottery tickets in pennies (tongue-in-cheek, but hey, it happens).
Not having to do that every week is very nice, IMO.
Then you have the roadtrip experience, where yes, you have to wait a bit while you charge, but it's a lot less of a problem than people think. I did a roadtrip in a Tesla back in 2015 with 3 other guys. We did Montreal - Atlanta for a conference, and we were driving non-stop, changing drivers every time we charged. There were maybe 2 stops total where it was inconvenient because we had to wait in the car, but the dozen others were often longer than the car wanted because we found a nice restaurant / café. Again, this was in 2015. 6 years later, I imagine it's improved a lot.
I also don't see how Toyota "deserves" to lose. When you take into consideration their longevity and fairly good track record on gas mileage...they are better than a lot of manufacturers that are now pushing hard for electric. People tend to forget that manufacturing a car and replacing a car wears on the environment just as much as driving it.