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H1ld3gunst t1_j1ctd49 wrote

Reply to comment by joepeoplesvii in US Postal Service commits to buy 66,000 Electric vehicles— finally by MrMike

Most Lithium is sourced in the Atacama Desert.

Remember all those Oil Spills in the Caribbean? Exxon Mobile? Whole Oceans covered in Toxic Liquid? The Rainforests of Nigeria and Borneo being cut down? Saudi’s Arabia, Venezuela, Iran and Russia making Trillions while being able to hold the whole world hostage?

Now tell me that’s better than exploiting small amounts of Lithium in a lifeless desert in the democratic states of Chile and Bolivia.

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joepeoplesvii t1_j1gtbkm wrote

Are you stupid? Lithium ion batteries have more than just lithium and have a huge impact environmentally before and after production. I get the push and I am not for continued oil consumption but at the same time there aren’t enough considerations being made to the supporting structures and processes that are required for the construction and disposal of these batteries. Lithium literally explodes when exposed to water and currently there are no requirements for companies to recycle lithium ion batteries so what happens when these vehicles age in 10 years and require new batteries?

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H1ld3gunst t1_j1hbu00 wrote

1 ev needs 1 battery. Not millions of gallons.

The batteries are not recycled because they are reused first. Stationary power storage does not need new batteries. Only EVs do.

Just mind that a lot of the information out there is sponsored by the oil industry. If you try to read up on it in professional sources, ICE cars have been overtaken by EVs in sustainability long ago.

The sources arguing they are worse are easily found out: They usually start with a pre built ICE car, and only count environmental impact from combustion itself. But the EVs are calculated from scratch, including mining, production, transport. ICE cars need cobalt too. They have chips, too, in fact, almost the same amount. Oil needs to be drilled or fracked. Then refined. Transported. Now we are at EVs being more sustainable.

If we wanted to be fair, now we would start to calculate health problems caused by combustion taking place in front of where we work and where we live. All the particles and NO^x and the health care costs it produces every year.

Don’t call people stupid if you haven’t understood the statistics yourself.

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joepeoplesvii t1_j1juib4 wrote

I asked if you are stupid. The crystalline structure of the batteries break and the batteries become useless. Stationary batteries absolutely need replaced as they are subject to the same charge, drain, recharge cycle of any battery. Standard cars don’t use cobalt but fuel refining does. About 1 pound for a few million gallons where a standard lithium ion battery cathode is about a third cobalt which isn’t much until upscaled to millions of units. Cobalt is recyclable in both cases. There is misinformation on both sides as both have agendas and billions of dollars invested.

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