Featured Is it ethical to purchase a lithium battery powered EV?

Perhaps the only thing that's even more "too filthy for any self respecting person" is the failure to scroll through all the articles this fossil fool industry schill has written and fail to realize misinformation when they see it: Ronald Stein, Author at CFACT

Seriously @kenmce did you even bother? You're in the wrong echo chamber bro!

Do you really think people are going to turn down the opportunity to no longer be robbed at the gas pump if they can afford an EV? No amount of fossil fool industry disinformation is going to change that.

 

I'd say most points are misleading.

The first is the scare of states banning gasoline cars in the next decade. It is true that 12 states are adopting a profile to stop selling new gasoline cars - with washington state the only one in the next decade 2030, the rest at 2035. The washington state governor partially vetoed the law which called for that change after 75% of vehicles paid tax by mile a very controversial change. I doubt that these laws will actually go into effect, but still they are troubling.

The picture of strip mining lithium is troubling but it is a practice used for mining many products. Lithium can be ethically extracted. Cobalt has the most ethical problems, and all auto manufactures are reducing or eliminating cobalt. The US has stopped imports of ethically challenged Russia, Venezuela, and Iran, it is not as if using oil does not have its own problems. Saudi Arabia and Iran both funded by petro dolllars are fighting a proxy war in yemen and have awful human rights. Oil is burned and disapears, lithium can be recycled.

 

Realistically. 2035 for the last sale of hybrid. It took 15 year to switch between Leaded petrol to unleaded from end of life to end of sale. That thinking in mind so… 28 years of hybrid driving before having to commit to EV. No rush.

 

His points aren't anything new to the discussion.

Drilling and pumping oil is not a benign process, as he makes it seem. It is loaded with toxic chemicals, and there is plenty of spills and leaks along the production and transportation chain. The drilling brine used for lubrication that comes back up to the surface should categorized as radioactive waste. Then we aren't allowed to know what is in fracking mud. CFACT doesn't believe in AGW, so he ignores the impact of global warming.

Yes, we get lots of useful things from petroleum. Maybe we shouldn't be burning nearly all of it.

Batteries, solar panels, and wind mills aren't the only things made from mined minerals. We can do this better regardless of whether it's for EV batteries or not.

For not being worried about global warming, I'm not sure why he brought up the grid. well, besides for denigrating renewables. For most of the country, plug ins do much better than ICE cars in terms of carbon emissions, which is partly due to them making efficient use of the fuel.

 

I'm paying a 'filthy' $2.75 for every 100 miles around town. But this evening, I also added 10 free miles at Whole Foods.

He is just parroting a common talking point about "green" and "clean" previously aimed at our Prius. Same old sh*t.

Bob Wilson

 

Art Spinella has apparently been Reborn.
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Cobalt is the real demon in the EV battery world and the sooner they move away from using it at all, the better the "clean" image will be.
I wonder how long it will take lithium titanate (LTO) to become the primary cell chemistry .... although the incredible cycle life might be a bridge too far, a bit like LiFeP04 chemistry replacing lead acid for electrical energy storage and off grid power systems, the resellers won't get repeat custom if the battery lasts as long as the car, then gets repurposed as a home storage battery.

T1 Terry

 

Probably the biggest argument against EVs has nothing to do at all with the relative merits of different ways to power cars, there's little doubt that right now an electric car is the best individual choice for a low carbon car purchase, it's that every cent of public money spent on them is probably better spent on electrifying rail, including freight rail.

We don't really have a good solution for transporting freight that's zero carbon except electrified rail and the reality is, while many people can work from home without driving at all, food and goods need to get transported to where people live no matter what.

Battery trucks are not happening any time soon, even Tesla seems to have realized that now, and hydrogen is also still a way off for these large applications. There's a good reason Koch Industries and the Saudi Siberian Wealth Fund are backers of electric vehicles, it's basically the same as hydrogen was during the Bush years.

 

I can't quite see the push for 100% electric BEV when you can get better miles per kWh from the Prius Prime design. Yes, I get greater than 5 Miles per kWh on an average day. If I buy a Tesla (one of the leading BEVs and rated 4 miles per kWh) I will have to buy a car with a large battery pack to allow significantly fast charging and it only gets 4 miles per kWh. This is even though most of my mileage is around town.

During my average day I travel less than the 28 miles per charge that the Prius provides.

When I do need to travel long distances, I still get better than 60 miles per gallon of gas on the freeway while traveling more than 65 miles per hour.

 

My 2019 Model 3 Std Rng Plus:

• <250 Wh/mi around town
• >275 Wh/mi in highway UNDER 70 mph

It has 69,000 miles and an expected 9% battery degradation. Happily the Supercharger network continues to expand faster than the battery capacity loss. For example, I used to require 3 hrs on an L2 charger at Ozark AR. Tesla added two more Superchargers on my routes to Oklahoma and Kansas.

Bob Wilson

 

In addition to ignoring global warming, the article also ignores the impact of the other emissions coming out of the tailpipe. Which can be severe in a location.

If you are beating EPA in your Prime, the odds are you will beat it in a Tesla.

Like the Prius in the past, the Prius Prime is the outlier when it comes to efficiency. While they get better engine fuel economy by virtue of being a hybrid, the other PHEVs available do worse than BEVs on electric in most cases. So they need a larger battery for meaningful range, or use gasoline more often. This goes for the Rav4 Prime too.

 

First I would disagree that this is an argument against EVs, but lets look at freight and public transportation. Trains only take up a tiny percentage of of transport fuel (they are 15% of freight dollar volume and given their higher efficiency than trucks and planes likely take less than 10% of freight fuel and less than 1% of human transport fuel). This is not low hanging fruit as electrifying the countries rails is likely very expensive for each gallon of crude saved.

Still given that demand for plug-ins is higher than manufacturing capacity (see dealer gouging and tesla price hikes) it doesn't seem like much reason to spend public money here either. Tesla has built a pretty good network, but government money can make electric car fueling for other companies more competitive which may be a good thing for future growth. This infrastructure can help with fueling like trucks and delivery vans likely saving much more fuel than electrifying rail.

I completely agree about phevs being part of the solution. These are a strong argument against legislating against the ice in the US. People should be free to make there own efficient choices. The loophole in the 12 states is this applies to new cars. What will happen is people in those states will start paying more for slightly used ice cars from other states.

I don't buy the prime is much more efficient than a tesla model 3 with electricity, but if you like it you should be able to buy it. It is much less expensive to buy and many people don't like the way the tesla is laid out, but some of us do. The rav4 prime even though it uses about 50% more electricity on the highway than a tesla model 3 is still efficient enough for most of us.

 

I am a firm believer in people being able to choose what works for them and am not particularly fond of the government muddying up the waters of Capitalism by picking winners and losers.

The article in the beginning of the post talks about the destruction of land for mining lithium - this is also the case with strip mining for coal and other fossil fuels.

In the energy game you don't get anything for nothing. There is always an environmental consequence- Disposing of nuclear waste, lost of land and habitant for solar farms, environmental consequences of wind farms and their negative effects on nature, disruption of native habitant and natural waterways with hydroelectric, and then you can get into the environmental consequences of manufactuing solar cells, windmill turbines and blades etc. I can initially think of no generation of electricity that doesn't involve a transformation of a natural process thru technology and manufactured parts into a useable commodity.

I can also think of no means of mobility that isn't consuming something from nature. I ride a bike but am aware enough to realize the manufacture of the bike and its components required factories, power and many natural resources. Even walking I require shoes, clothes and energy that has to be manufactured by eating vegetable and animal products that are provided by the agricultural industry.

A BEV is a car with almost all of the same parts that a normal cars has. The manufacturing of a BEV is just as energy consumptive as a regular car and it propulsion requires energy just as a ICE vehicle does. Sometimes the arguing over which is greener sounds ridiculous. They both have tremendous environmental impact when they are built, when they are operated and when they are eventually disposed of.

There are no perfect solutions. Maybe just a difference of the degree that they affect the environment.

I have a PHEV and ride a bike but am no better steward of the earth than someone who drives an ICE vehicle.

 

Like you I got better than 5 m/kwh in my Prius plugin (and got >55 mpg in my three earlier Prius's)
In my Tesla Model 3 I am getting 209 wh/m lifetime (or ~4.8 m/kwh) and this includes all faster freeway driving.
My typical driving includes mostly 35-50 mph, and about 25% 65+ mph freeway.

So you can't compare the spec of one car to what you get on another car.

Mike

 

You can compare what you getting with a car to its official rating, and use that ratio to get an estimate of what you'll get in another model from its rating.

 

Any idea of the % of total miles you are "forced" to drive 70 or better by traffic? IOW, are you free to set your speed safely?

I drive a Rav4h which is a brick in terms of aero. I regularly drive 30-50 miles doing 65-70 MPH. I can see the difference even 3 MPH makes. I drive that 3 MPH slower when I can as dictated by my trip urgency and the traffic around me.

 

I prefer to follow, not tailgate, semi-trailer trucks, large towed trailers, and RVs. Nobody forces them to drive at any speed other than what they want.

Bob Wilson

 

I was doing that in my '74 VW Kombi heading down the long hill to cross the Hawksbury River Bridge on the Pascific motorway. The truckie wound it out till it wouldn't go any faster, then dropped it out of gear. A double trailer rig at this stage doing ..... well the VW speedo needle was around the centre of the odometer ... the numbers stop at 135km/h at around the 4 o'çlock mark and the needle was at around the 6 o'clock mark ..... he changed lanes to pass a slower vehicle .... absolutely no choice but to follow him because we would never have slowed down in the available space and whistled past another van, all passengers and the driver with eyes the size of saucers ........ being passed by a two trailer truck at that speed was bad enough, but a poor old kombi campervan right up the trucks butt was just a tad too much :lol:

Needless to say, that broke me of the habit of tailgating trucks for quite some time
The really interesting bit was the wife, she just sat there in the passenger seat doing her crochet

T1 Terry

T1 Terry