The dark side of electric vehicles: even the “green” option has its environmental costs due to the lithium-ion battery

Many bet that electric vehicles will be the solution to the planet's climate issue, but few know that this market has already had 3 implementation attempts and all ended up failing at some point in our recent history.

Combustion vehicles emit a huge amount of pollution into the atmosphere, but electric vehicles have their own problems. To solve the climate crisis, we need to stop emitting greenhouse gases. 

Popular cars produce a lot of them, so the solution is to replace them with eletric cars. And this is a great solution for car manufacturers because they can continue to sell vehicles to the public.

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But these cars still cause a lot of pollution, they still run over and kill people at intersections, and they still require massive carbon-producing resources to build them. And that's before we even get to batteries, which rely on scarce resources that need to be mined.

“The reality is that manufacturing large numbers of batteries for electric vehicles, while formidable, is quite a challenge,” he said. Ron Cogan , editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal.

The battery is still the big problem of the EV

Electric vehicles (EVs) are much better than gasoline cars in many ways. They don't pollute the city's air. They are much quieter at low speeds and can run on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. But they are only “green” when compared to fossil fuel vehicles today. build a electric car is still building a car. The biggest problem of a EV are your batteries . 

EVs run on the same type of lithium ion batteries that power your laptop and smartphones, only they're much, much bigger. The main material needed is lithium, which comes from mining or salt deserts. And like any natural resource, the quantity is limited. 

“Every major automaker is moving to electric cars in some capacity, whether hybrid or fully electronic. The question this poses is: how can we have enough lithium? It depends on how we can rebuild our power grid and find other solutions and it also depends on whether we are willing to recycle these batteries (which is possible) to be repurposed and reused,” John Shegerian, CEO of electronics recycling provider ERI, told Lifewire by email. 

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Battery recycling may be the most important thing we can do as we make the transition to electric vehicles. 

Batteries are already big business. Not only are they used in consumer electronics and cars, but they are also needed to offset the trade-off between renewable electricity supply and demand. That is, batteries store excess energy when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining and save it for when it is not. 

“Leading electric vehicle battery manufacturers such as Panasonic are already investing billions of dollars in battery manufacturing facilities across the US.

Battery recycling may be the most important thing we can do as we transition to electric vehicles. 

“One of the most critical technology developments will be capturing recycled battery materials from production scrap and end-of-life vehicles in the US,” he said. Anthony DeOrsey , research team leader at Cleantech Group, told Lifewire via email. 

Creating an electric vehicle market without designing the infrastructure to serve it could be a mistake.

The assumption in all of this is that we have to have personal vehicles exactly like the ones we have now, just with batteries. But as cities like London, Paris, Barcelona and Copenhagen work to drive the car out of urban life, shouldn't we entirely rethink the role of the car? Even if batteries aren't as sustainable as we'd hoped, we still have to build one. charging infrastructure to power all those electric cars. 

Instead, we should reduce cars and increase alternatives, especially in cities where population density and the relatively short distances we travel make it feasible. 

“Riding services like Uber and Lyft will lessen the need for personal vehicles for some people. Hopefully, improved transportation options such as light electric trains, electric buses and even electric bicycles for commuting will complement the convenience of personal vehicles, working in harmony to achieve crucial environmental goals,” says Cogan. 

In Germany, there are car-sharing schemes, bike-sharing, public transport and bicycles are popular and standardized ways of getting around. And that may be the biggest barrier – getting people to give up their cars.

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