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Honestly, the virtue signaling surrounding EV cars is pretty annoying. Nobody ever stops to think for a second about two huge issues regarding the production of them- 1) the environmental impact of mining for the minerals needed for the batteries along with the danger to the miners and with the way many of them are exploited...2) the environmental impact of disposing of the battery materials once their useful life is up.
Another thing people seem to be completely unaware of is how clean most internal combustion engines run these days. Most of them have emissions that pose very minimal impact to the environment. On the surface, EV cars seem great until you go even just a little deeper into the processes involved in manufacturing them.
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Originally Posted by Synchromesh
Yes. But you're missing the point. The certain political party that dominates the current government *hates* big oil with a passion and is willing to do anything possible to destroy it. Not that I'm a fan of big oil myself but the electric mafia with monopolized utility companies isn't any better - just look at PG&E which has entire movies made about how awful they are to both the people and the environment (Erin Brockovich).
On top of that, there are tons of Elon boot lickers out there for whom he's the next Jesus and they will fight to the death anyone who says otherwise. The entire EV move is as usual far more about politics and money than it is about environment but that can't be said out loud because then sheep won't buy the product.
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Originally Posted by HereOnMars
They aren't wrong. They both bring up valid points.
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Originally Posted by HereOnMars
I wasn't referencing the "boot licker" comment. There will definitely be some concern as to how to keep up with demand of the fuel source (lithium batteries), not to mention how to dispose of them. There's always consumer waste. No matter what the product is. I happen to agree with mstnghu2 on cie's. They do run cleaner than before. I also think this is politically motivated more than anything else.
Unfortunately, they don't actually bring up very valid points since private EV usage is generally in lieu of private internal combustion engine vehicle usage which has a far larger ecological footprint. It also completely misunderstands how EV batteries function in an EV in analogous function to internal combustion engine. The batteries are not really the fuel. They're more along the likes of parts of the engine along with the fuel tank as the battery manages how much power output is available (to the electric motors and sometimes to some subsystems) and for storage of electrical potential. The battery materials don't get used up when you use the EV traction battery.
Instead, how the batteries under degradation are tiny structural physical and chemical differences in the battery, but none of the materials are actually used up in the process. When an EV traction battery gets to the point where it's so degraded that it's no longer usable for the EV (which generally will take a very long time and outlast the lifetime of the rest of the vehicle), this generally means that the batteries are degraded to the point where they hold substantially less charge than they used to.
Let's go through this real quick. The average new EV today has a median of about 250 miles of range and that's generally been increasing with each year. Substantial degradation where you have less than 70% of the range of when it was brand new generally goes by the number of charge and discharge cycles. EV traction batteries are generally in the ~1,500 to 2,000 duty cycles. This is a rough estimate as there will be different conditions, a bit of probability and randomness, and different chemistries, so some will last longer and some will degrade faster and a few will be straight up lemons, but you're talking about well over 300K miles on average (this is taking the bottom end of 1,500 cycles multiplied by 250 median miles of range, and then the midpoint of 85% between 100% and 70% capacity) before you'll likely want to replace its batteries or just junk the vehicle. That's a lot of miles and well over the average for US vehicles. So that's already one thing there.
On top of that, moving four-wheeled highway legal vehicles at highway speeds takes a lot of energy and so even at 70% or worse degradation, you still have a lot of effective capacity that's still in the dozens of kWh range--it's just that you might find a vehicle that has an effective maximum range of less than 175 miles (250*0.7) to be less than ideal. However, that's still a lot of kWh of storage capacity (taking ~60 kWh * 0.7 to get 42 kWh). This is how you end up with projects like this where they take the battery pack and instead of putting it in a moving vehicle, they instead repurpose it for stationary power storage where effective energy density by weight isn't as important since you're not going to keep moving it. This is how you get projects like this which already profitable.
When they get degraded to the point where they aren't even good for stationary storage systems anymore, then they get recycled, because as stated earlier, you don't actually lose any of the battery materials that was in the battery--they don't get combusted or released, but instead undergo minute structural changes like dendrites building. At that point, you can recycle them and because EV traction batteries, unlike those of portable electronics like laptops and phones, are fairly large and so are a dense concentration of battery materials even more so than the ore they came from, they have already been profitable to recycle and sell against the larger battery materials market.
Now, EVs certainly aren't a panacea, and getting more people to walk, bike, and take mass transit is multiples better versus switching everyone from an ICE vehicle to an EV, but the kind of commentary that gets galvanized when EVs are mentioned is shockingly misinformed.
Unfortunately, they don't actually bring up very valid points since private EV usage is generally in lieu of private internal combustion engine vehicle usage which has a far larger ecological footprint. It also completely misunderstands how EV batteries function in an EV in analogous function to internal combustion engine. The batteries are not really the fuel. They're more along the likes of parts of the engine along with the fuel tank as the battery manages how much power output is available (to the electric motors and sometimes to some subsystems) and for storage of electrical potential. The battery materials don't get used up when you use the EV traction battery.
Instead, how the batteries under degradation are tiny structural physical and chemical differences in the battery, but none of the materials are actually used up in the process. When an EV traction battery gets to the point where it's so degraded that it's no longer usable for the EV (which generally will take a very long time and outlast the lifetime of the rest of the vehicle), this generally means that the batteries are degraded to the point where they hold substantially less charge than they used to.
Let's go through this real quick. The average new EV today has a median of about 250 miles of range and that's generally been increasing with each year. Substantial degradation where you have less than 70% of the range of when it was brand new generally goes by the number of charge and discharge cycles. EV traction batteries are generally in the ~1,500 to 2,000 duty cycles. This is a rough estimate as there will be different conditions, a bit of probability and randomness, and different chemistries, so some will last longer and some will degrade faster and a few will be straight up lemons, but you're talking about well over 300K miles on average (this is taking the bottom end of 1,500 cycles multiplied by 250 median miles of range, and then the midpoint of 85% between 100% and 70% capacity) before you'll likely want to replace its batteries or just junk the vehicle. That's a lot of miles and well over the average for US vehicles. So that's already one thing there.
On top of that, moving four-wheeled highway legal vehicles at highway speeds takes a lot of energy and so even at 70% or worse degradation, you still have a lot of effective capacity that's still in the dozens of kWh range--it's just that you might find a vehicle that has an effective maximum range of less than 175 miles (250*0.7) to be less than ideal. However, that's still a lot of kWh of storage capacity (taking ~60 kWh * 0.7 to get 42 kWh). This is how you end up with projects like this where they take the battery pack and instead of putting it in a moving vehicle, they instead repurpose it for stationary power storage where effective energy density by weight isn't as important since you're not going to keep moving it. This is how you get projects like this which already profitable.
When they get degraded to the point where they aren't even good for stationary storage systems anymore, then they get recycled, because as stated earlier, you don't actually lose any of the battery materials that was in the battery--they don't get combusted or released, but instead undergo minute structural changes like dendrites building. At that point, you can recycle them and because EV traction batteries, unlike those of portable electronics like laptops and phones, are fairly large and so are a dense concentration of battery materials even more so than the ore they came from, they have already been profitable to recycle and sell against the larger battery materials market.
Now, EVs certainly aren't a panacea, and getting more people to walk, bike, and take mass transit is multiples better versus switching everyone from an ICE vehicle to an EV, but the kind of commentary that gets galvanized when EVs are mentioned is shockingly misinformed.
Unfortunately, they don't actually bring up very valid points since private EV usage is generally in lieu of private internal combustion engine vehicle usage which has a far larger ecological footprint. It also completely misunderstands how EV batteries function in an EV in analogous function to internal combustion engine. The batteries are not really the fuel. They're more along the likes of parts of the engine along with the fuel tank as the battery manages how much power output is available (to the electric motors and sometimes to some subsystems) and for storage of electrical potential. The battery materials don't get used up when you use the EV traction battery.
Instead, how the batteries under degradation are tiny structural physical and chemical differences in the battery, but none of the materials are actually used up in the process. When an EV traction battery gets to the point where it's so degraded that it's no longer usable for the EV (which generally will take a very long time and outlast the lifetime of the rest of the vehicle), this generally means that the batteries are degraded to the point where they hold substantially less charge than they used to.
Let's go through this real quick. The average new EV today has a median of about 250 miles of range and that's generally been increasing with each year. Substantial degradation where you have less than 70% of the range of when it was brand new generally goes by the number of charge and discharge cycles. EV traction batteries are generally in the ~1,500 to 2,000 duty cycles. This is a rough estimate as there will be different conditions, a bit of probability and randomness, and different chemistries, so some will last longer and some will degrade faster and a few will be straight up lemons, but you're talking about well over 300K miles on average (this is taking the bottom end of 1,500 cycles multiplied by 250 median miles of range, and then the midpoint of 85% between 100% and 70% capacity) before you'll likely want to replace its batteries or just junk the vehicle. That's a lot of miles and well over the average for US vehicles. So that's already one thing there.
On top of that, moving four-wheeled highway legal vehicles at highway speeds takes a lot of energy and so even at 70% or worse degradation, you still have a lot of effective capacity that's still in the dozens of kWh range--it's just that you might find a vehicle that has an effective maximum range of less than 175 miles (250*0.7) to be less than ideal. However, that's still a lot of kWh of storage capacity (taking ~60 kWh * 0.7 to get 42 kWh). This is how you end up with projects like this where they take the battery pack and instead of putting it in a moving vehicle, they instead repurpose it for stationary power storage where effective energy density by weight isn't as important since you're not going to keep moving it. This is how you get projects like this which already profitable.
When they get degraded to the point where they aren't even good for stationary storage systems anymore, then they get recycled, because as stated earlier, you don't actually lose any of the battery materials that was in the battery--they don't get combusted or released, but instead undergo minute structural changes like dendrites building. At that point, you can recycle them and because EV traction batteries, unlike those of portable electronics like laptops and phones, are fairly large and so are a dense concentration of battery materials even more so than the ore they came from, they have already been profitable to recycle and sell against the larger battery materials market.
Now, EVs certainly aren't a panacea, and getting more people to walk, bike, and take mass transit is multiples better versus switching everyone from an ICE vehicle to an EV, but the kind of commentary that gets galvanized when EVs are mentioned is shockingly misinformed.
It's good you have such a positive outlook for EV's and their future. Good luck with that.
Those batteries are going to be an issue when they have to be stored for decades before the internal components degrade enough to do what you say.
Can you imagine how many batteries will accumulate before they can be disposed of? And don't think every dealer that is in charge of disposing these things will be honest about it. They won't. If you don't believe me, read all the old stories about companies caught and fined for dumping toxins onto land and waterways. One such story comes to mind although maybe too long ago for the majority here to recall. In the 60's, Ford Motor Company was dumping toxic paint sludge on native American land in NJ, causing residents there to develop cancer. The plant that was responsible for this has been closed for many years but the toxins remain in the ground even though there's been numerous attempts to clean it up. It still remains. And Ford Motor is being sued for it, too.
So don't think some company won't try this with those batteries. They will.
And what about this ban on cie's that's supposed to happen by 2035. How do lawmakers expect everyone to eventually buy an EV or pay 20K for a replacement battery when they're living paycheck to paycheck, driving a car that probably won't last another 20 or 30 years? What do they do when the car finally dies and they don't have the money to buy an EV?
You say get a bike, take public transportation. Very good ideas ... if you live in an area where that sort of travel is available. What about those who live 10, 20, 30 or more miles from the nearest grocery store or their doctor? How do they get there when their car is inoperative now and public transportation isn't available for them? Maybe biking is the answer, and riding down the mountain is a piece of cake but could you pedal back up that mountain? I know I couldn't. Not to mention, how well does a bike handle in the snow?
Do the people who come up with these things or mandate consumers to buy what they're peddling (no pun intended) when a lot of people aren't in a financial position to do it? No. They don't think. Because they don't care. It's all about the money and they're all going to profit big from it. As far as this 2035 ban on cie's goes, it's reckless, it's unfair and it's just shows how out of touch these lawmakers are.
Not only that, they're the gullible ones if they think all that waste product will be recycled properly. Nope. There will be more stories like the Indian reservation in N.J. There already are. I just chose that single story but there are plenty of stories like that one and many that came before and since.
On another note, if lawmakers in this state and across this country really want to protect people's health, they should go after food manufacturers. Take a closer look at products that contain ingredients that contribute to heart disease and diabetes. Ingredients aren't even allowed in Canada. Take a bottle of Heinz Ketchup, for instance. Look at the label from the one made in Canada vs. the one produced in the U.S. See the difference. Canada's Heinz product doesn't contain the garbage ingredients that is found in the U.S. version. You can buy the same ketchup here, if you want to pay over a dollar more and get one ounce less in the bottle. But with so many Americans trying to save money, the healthier version isn't an option for them.
That's how we do it here in the U.S. It's all about the money. It's always been about the money. Make no mistake in thinking that EV's are the way to a brighter, healthier and happier future. Those rose-colored glasses that you're looking through show only the beauty because they hide all the truth. (okay, that last line is actually song lyrics)
I don't think you quite understand what's being written then if you think you can positive outlook things into existence for engineering and physics. It doesn't seem like you have much of an understanding of how secondary cells work, and you haven't really taken the time to think this through. The battery materials do not get used up. Those materials are quite pricey and it is *profitable* to recover those battery materials or even to just have a second use case as stationary storage. This isn't to say every kind of battery material is profitable for recovery--it's to say that EV traction batteries specifically are profitable even after vehicle use and degradation. People can try dumping them if they want, but that's incredibly stupid since they can earn money from selling it for reuse or recycling. You don't seem to understand how this works if you think this is equivalent to dumping toxic paint sludge left over from the manufacturing process. Can you imagine someone who has so little clue about the actual subject matter that they end up going on and on with analogies that clearly illustrate they have no idea what they're talking about and being completely unaware of it? I can.
There's so many assumptions in your original comment that I don't even know where to start. But let's see. I've watched documentaries on current car battery recycling methods. Current methods suck. First of all, all manufacturers use proprietary tech for their batteries. Meaning to do this on a very large scale you need a place that's equipped and has experience dealing with a many dozen different types of batteries with different components, chemistries, assembly, etc. Such places aren't around quite yet. Most of the time the manufacturer itself gets the bad battery back, they recycle it and pass the cost of that to the consumer.
Second, as for recovering metals - yes, most of them don't whither away after the battery goes bad but (see above paragraph) getting them back out is a headache and is only profitable if retrieving them costs less than newly mined stuff that comes out of the ground. From what I hear newly mined stuff is currently cheaper and until the day it's not manufacturers will try to skirt as much recycling as possible.
Then there's another issue with batteries that are destroyed in various ways such as fire, flood, explosion, etc. They release lots and lots of toxins into the atmosphere/water/ground when this happens and are not very recyclable afterwards, now are they? What do we do with those? That's another rub of the EV - if you totaled it before it broke even on the emissions you just polluted a more. If you totaled it when it's barely been used - you just polluted a lot more compared to ICE. That's something that seems to be overlooked but it's true and it seems to upset Elon fans much too.
Then we get to the battery longevity. There are tons of factors here as you mentioned and 300K is just as unlikely as it is with ICE. Why? Because most people treat their cars like crap. I mean most Toyotas/Hondas can do 300K easily if taken care with regular maintenance but they don't. Why? For the same exact reason - rust, accidents, floods, fires, cost of repairing of other components, etc. Same applies to EVs. I mean all it takes is for some manufacturer to say they don't make ECUs for some specific EV of which they have like 5 inside and then 1 breaks - bam, your EV is junkyard material. EVs are basically all computers at this point, there's very little mechanical stuff there aside from a primitive transmission in some cases. This is especially likely with Tesla which loves to control what customers do with their cars and wants them to buy as often as possible.
I can keep going but you get the picture - EVs come with a whole 'nother set of problems which fanbois absolutely refuse to acknowledge and/or address. That said, I've driven a pair of Teslas - no thanks. If that's the future of the car I'm going to be stuck in the past and will be driving ICE as long as I possibly can.
There's so many assumptions in your original comment that I don't even know where to start. But let's see. I've watched documentaries on current car battery recycling methods. Current methods suck. First of all, all manufacturers use proprietary tech for their batteries. Meaning to do this on a very large scale you need a place that's equipped and has experience dealing with a many dozen different types of batteries with different components, chemistries, assembly, etc. Such places aren't around quite yet. Most of the time the manufacturer itself gets the bad battery back, they recycle it and pass the cost of that to the consumer.
Second, as for recovering metals - yes, most of them don't whither away after the battery goes bad but (see above paragraph) getting them back out is a headache and is only profitable if retrieving them costs less than newly mined stuff that comes out of the ground. From what I hear newly mined stuff is currently cheaper and until the day it's not manufacturers will try to skirt as much recycling as possible.
Then there's another issue with batteries that are destroyed in various ways such as fire, flood, explosion, etc. They release lots and lots of toxins into the atmosphere/water/ground when this happens and are not very recyclable afterwards, now are they? What do we do with those? That's another rub of the EV - if you totaled it before it broke even on the emissions you just polluted a more. If you totaled it when it's barely been used - you just polluted a lot more compared to ICE. That's something that seems to be overlooked but it's true and it seems to upset Elon fans much too.
Then we get to the battery longevity. There are tons of factors here as you mentioned and 300K is just as unlikely as it is with ICE. Why? Because most people treat their cars like crap. I mean most Toyotas/Hondas can do 300K easily if taken care with regular maintenance but they don't. Why? For the same exact reason - rust, accidents, floods, fires, cost of repairing of other components, etc. Same applies to EVs. I mean all it takes is for some manufacturer to say they don't make ECUs for some specific EV of which they have like 5 inside and then 1 breaks - bam, your EV is junkyard material. EVs are basically all computers at this point, there's very little mechanical stuff there aside from a primitive transmission in some cases. This is especially likely with Tesla which loves to control what customers do with their cars and wants them to buy as often as possible.
I can keep going but you get the picture - EVs come with a whole 'nother set of problems which fanbois absolutely refuse to acknowledge and/or address. That said, I've driven a pair of Teslas - no thanks. If that's the future of the car I'm going to be stuck in the past and will be driving ICE as long as I possibly can.
There's an awful lot of conjecture in the bolded. The only car I've had that hasn't gotten 200k+ miles on it was a gas guzzler that I sold at 145k. My current hybrid has 213k on it.
The Bay Area is definitely an outlier when it comes to EVs and hybrids, and it's been that way for a long time. Of course, they are also among the highest gas prices in the USA. I remember flying to Oakland in 2008 for a wedding in Santa Clara, and borrowed my sister-in-law's 2007 Prius instead of a rental car. We got there early and parked pretty close to the venue. After the wedding We were dismayed to find that about every other car was a Prius, and most were the same color blue. It took pressing the door lock button on the key fob to find hers, which was surrounded by two others the same color.
If you look at the link with the report that's cited, you'd see that the Bay Area isn't a huge outlier but rather the top of a pack of vehicle markets in the March report. As quoted:
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The S&P Global Mobility analysis indicates the Bay Area results in March are not an anomaly. While San Francisco was the first DMA to reach 50% electrification, other DMAs are not far behind. Five DMAs' electrification rates (besides San Francisco) surpassed 30% in March, including Seattle, San Diego, Portland, Los Angeles, and Sacramento, with the first two exceeding 35%. As more EVs become available in the US market, an increasing number of DMAs will achieve a 50% electrification rate - and beyond.
Seattle where you're located, and surely you couldn't have missed this trend, and San Diego were both already above 35% plugins for new vehicle registrations. Nearby to Seattle, Portland along with LA and Sacramento metropolitan areas were also above 30% already. Tailing that are many more above 25% and 20%. Remember, that was in March of this year and we're closing out June and during that time there had been new releases and ramp ups of existing vehicles.
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Originally Posted by joosoon
It's amazing how much power can be cleanly and efficiently squeezed out of a drop of gas these days. But that doesn't mitigate the c02 issue which is what now steers the climate goals.
The problem with electrics is they aren't an equivalent product of convenience compared to traditional vehicles, because there is no ten-minute fill up. Ranges have gotten better, but not enough to make all travel types equitable.
The other problem which hasn't been addressed very well (or at all) is the fire danger of lithium ion batteries. Much smaller Li batteries have burned down homes, etc. and those fires are very difficult to knock down.
It is amazing, but even at the best of conditions with hybrids, we're topping out around 40% efficiency and that's for a very narrow band of conditions for only a very small segment of conventional hybrids. It's still a lot wasted as waste heat.
The problem you're citing has narrowed pretty quickly in the last decade where a decade ago the best you get for 10 minutes of charge time is about 50 miles. Now the top line for a mass production vehicle is about 150 miles in ten minutes which is a three fold improvement in a decade.
That's for DC public charging which is the closest analogue to gas station fill-up--with electric vehicles you actually have another option which is to slow charge them at home or at work when the vehicle is parked anyways and which is the vast majority of all charging done for EVs. You presumably are for the most part going to have your vehicle parked for hours at a time every single day and the convenience factor there is that most EV owners get their miles from charging when the vehicles would be parked anyways so it ends up being far more convenient. This changes once the market for those who have a pathway to charge at home (about half of US households) is saturated which is close to what the Bay Area is at now, so it'll be interesting to see how that adoption rate goes afterwards which would be dependent on how many fast chargers are deployed, how much faster chargers become, and how ubiquitous things like workplace charging or shopping center and other destination charging becomes. That part is pretty interesting.
The fire danger of lithium-ion batteries is there, but it's a fairly small risk compared to internal combustion engine vehicle fires. Thus far the stats bear out that internal combustion engine vehicle fire risk is about 19X higher than that of EV fires. That is to say, if the fire risk of EVs is unacceptable as they are now, then internal combustion engine vehicles with their 19x greater fire risk are even more unacceptable. There is something to be said that when EVs catch fire, the proportion of those fires are potentially more difficult but given a baseline of 19x greater fire risk, the total risk for difficult fires in internal combustion engine vehicles is even higher since you're talking about a problem space that's 19x worse unless the difficult fire ratio for EVs is also 19X greater than that of internal combustion engine vehicles which has not been borne out of any stats so far and likely never will.
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Originally Posted by Synchromesh
There's so many assumptions in your original comment that I don't even know where to start. But let's see. I've watched documentaries on current car battery recycling methods. Current methods suck. First of all, all manufacturers use proprietary tech for their batteries. Meaning to do this on a very large scale you need a place that's equipped and has experience dealing with a many dozen different types of batteries with different components, chemistries, assembly, etc. Such places aren't around quite yet. Most of the time the manufacturer itself gets the bad battery back, they recycle it and pass the cost of that to the consumer.
Second, as for recovering metals - yes, most of them don't whither away after the battery goes bad but (see above paragraph) getting them back out is a headache and is only profitable if retrieving them costs less than newly mined stuff that comes out of the ground. From what I hear newly mined stuff is currently cheaper and until the day it's not manufacturers will try to skirt as much recycling as possible.
Then there's another issue with batteries that are destroyed in various ways such as fire, flood, explosion, etc. They release lots and lots of toxins into the atmosphere/water/ground when this happens and are not very recyclable afterwards, now are they? What do we do with those? That's another rub of the EV - if you totaled it before it broke even on the emissions you just polluted a more. If you totaled it when it's barely been used - you just polluted a lot more compared to ICE. That's something that seems to be overlooked but it's true and it seems to upset Elon fans much too.
Then we get to the battery longevity. There are tons of factors here as you mentioned and 300K is just as unlikely as it is with ICE. Why? Because most people treat their cars like crap. I mean most Toyotas/Hondas can do 300K easily if taken care with regular maintenance but they don't. Why? For the same exact reason - rust, accidents, floods, fires, cost of repairing of other components, etc. Same applies to EVs. I mean all it takes is for some manufacturer to say they don't make ECUs for some specific EV of which they have like 5 inside and then 1 breaks - bam, your EV is junkyard material. EVs are basically all computers at this point, there's very little mechanical stuff there aside from a primitive transmission in some cases. This is especially likely with Tesla which loves to control what customers do with their cars and wants them to buy as often as possible.
I can keep going but you get the picture - EVs come with a whole 'nother set of problems which fanbois absolutely refuse to acknowledge and/or address. That said, I've driven a pair of Teslas - no thanks. If that's the future of the car I'm going to be stuck in the past and will be driving ICE as long as I possibly can.
Assumptions that are backed up with recent stats and links are not assumptions. You just said a bunch of random things with no support, which as pointed out by blameyourself, is an awful lot of conjecture.
EV traction batteries in terms of battery materials are in essentially two buckets. It's the lithium ternary batteries that generally use nickel-manganese-cobalt cathode in differing ratios and then there's lithium iron phosphate batteries where iron and phosphate are the cathodes. They may different in form factor (prismatic cells, cylindrical cells, pouch cells) and quantity and the chemistry may have different ratios, but they are only in two buckets thus far and for the near term future will remain in two buckets. These don't matter because ultimately they get shredded up when it comes to recycling and then separated in processes that generally do not care what form factor, quantity, or ratio they are in. That process is already underway as posted in the previous link and the process compared to price of raw mined material is good enough now that they are profitable and competitive with raw ore so therefore are fine. The largest issue with recycling right now is just that so few EVs have actually reached their end of life so currently most recycling is from scrappage from battery makers when they have batches that don't pass QA--this was covered in the earlier link citing one of the major recyclers though there are others essentially saying the same thing.
Yes, EVs can get destroyed in various ways just as any vehicle can. Again, the battery materials generally don't get destroyed in the process only the functionality of the battery such as with flooding or car crashes. They're not usable for EVs or for second life usage as stationary storage systems, but they are still valuable and recoverable--they just can't be used for much *except* for recycling. Fires and explosions do happen, but are quite rare overall (and as shown in a previous link, fires are far less common for EVs than they are for ICE vehicles) unless you're trying to say that a majority of EVs or even a substantial percentage get totaled within a few years of production which would almost certainly be complete and utter bull****. For fires, I'm not sure about the extent of how recoverable the materials. Ostensibly, the raw material are mostly or completely still there since fire doesn't atomically change the base material into another element, but how easy it is to recover is probably on a case by case basis.
Yes, there are tons of factors--that's why it was an *AVERAGE*. Do you understand what that means? This includes vehicles treated like crap.
Yea, you can go on and on, and as you keep going on and on it becomes more and more apparent you don't know what you're talking about. Going for length without much thinking does not help your case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blameyourself
There's an awful lot of conjecture in the bolded. The only car I've had that hasn't gotten 200k+ miles on it was a gas guzzler that I sold at 145k. My current hybrid has 213k on it.
Yea, it's foolishness in that it's people chiming in without having much knowledge of the space and seeming to parrot the same wrong things over and over again.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 06-21-2023 at 10:48 AM..
I don't think you quite understand what's being written then if you think you can positive outlook things into existence for engineering and physics. It doesn't seem like you have much of an understanding of how secondary cells work, and you haven't really taken the time to think this through. The battery materials do not get used up. Those materials are quite pricey and it is *profitable* to recover those battery materials or even to just have a second use case as stationary storage. This isn't to say every kind of battery material is profitable for recovery--it's to say that EV traction batteries specifically are profitable even after vehicle use and degradation. People can try dumping them if they want, but that's incredibly stupid since they can earn money from selling it for reuse or recycling. You don't seem to understand how this works if you think this is equivalent to dumping toxic paint sludge left over from the manufacturing process. Can you imagine someone who has so little clue about the actual subject matter that they end up going on and on with analogies that clearly illustrate they have no idea what they're talking about and being completely unaware of it? I can.
I do know how secondary cells work and I know these same batteries will be used after they're no longer a viable option for vehicles. After that, then what? Are there toxic remains that will have to be disposed of without doing what some underhanded companies do? That is my question.
My analogies were meant to show human behavior when profit over people occurs. Nothing more. I still don't think there needs to be a complete ban of cie's, however. Even with the number of EV's on the road currently, they must be making a positive impact on air quality. So why not balance it? Let those who want to own EV's buy them and those who don't, let them buy what they like.
Interesting that this topic is being discussed, though. Logging onto my homepage this morning, a story about another issue with this type of battery. Apparently, there's a increase in E-bike battery fires. This story is out of NYC. The number of lithium battery fires is now tied with the number of electrical fires and have surpassed the number of cooking and smoking fires. Mentioned in the article is the very thing that concerns me most; regulation and safety. As for human stupidity ... well, there's not a lot that will help with that.
Quote:
Reasons for the uptick of these fires are myriad. They include a lack of regulation and safety testing for individually owned devices, hazardous charging practices (like using mismatched equipment or overcharging) and a lack of secure charging areas in a population-dense city with numerous residential buildings, where most fires start.
I do know how secondary cells work and I know these same batteries will be used after they're no longer a viable option for vehicles. After that, then what? Are there toxic remains that will have to be disposed of without doing what some underhanded companies do? That is my question.
My analogies were meant to show human behavior when profit over people occurs. Nothing more. I still don't think there needs to be a complete ban of cie's, however. Even with the number of EV's on the road currently, they must be making a positive impact on air quality. So why not balance it? Let those who want to own EV's buy them and those who don't, let them buy what they like.
Interesting that this topic is being discussed, though. Logging onto my homepage this morning, a story about another issue with this type of battery. Apparently, there's a increase in E-bike battery fires. This story is out of NYC. The number of lithium battery fires is now tied with the number of electrical fires and have surpassed the number of cooking and smoking fires. Mentioned in the article is the very thing that concerns me most; regulation and safety. As for human stupidity ... well, there's not a lot that will help with that. https://www.yahoo.com/news/e-bike-ba...120807964.html
EV's have a place in society but shouldn't replace cei's altogether.
If you read the previous posts and the links with them, after secondary use, EV traction batteries are great for recycling as in they are *profitable* for recycling as in you get money for them. Your question is already answered.
Your analogies are bad because while you understand that a profit motive is important to get things done, you somehow completely ignored the fact that the profit motive is why they get recycled. How you continue to miss that is a bit of mystery. Were you going to at some point pivot and say that Ford could have sold that toxic paint sludge for a profit but decided to dump it to just stick it to people? Where were you planning to go with that?
Yes, there is an increase in e-bike battery fires as there are an increase in e-bikes. I know that block in Chinatown pretty well and those e-bike shops specifically are bad, because they import super cheap batteries from no name manufacturers where the batteries are not QA'd and not UL-certified. I'm all for enforcing UL certification and heavy penalties for anyone smuggling in and selling otherwise. Perhaps you don't know this, but four-wheeled highway legal electric vehicles sold in the US (i.e. the vehicles that are covered by the link the OP posted) *are* UL certified and tested. Wow! I'll go one step further. As the number of EVs increase likely by two to three orders of magnitude as they'll likely within a few decades result in almost total private passenger fleet replacement of ICE vehicles, there will be more EV battery fires. They'll still almost certainly be fewer fires per vehicle compared to ICE vehicles, but there will be in total amounts more fires in the coming years because even though they are *less* of a fire risk than ICE vehicles, the sheer number of them that will likely be produced and on the road as they probably take over market share from almost the entire ICE vehicle market means that you have a larger base to multiply that fire risk.
EVs have a place in society and their most reasonable place is probably in a gamut of consumer vehicles such as four-wheeled highway legal consumer vehicles. I think the question is where do they not fit and where they don't fit currently and probably not for the near-term are, in order of difficulty for electrification, rockets, long distance flights, long distance maritime freight, medium distance flight, medium distance maritime freight and long haul freight trucking as the major ones (though the latter two are maybe on the edges) and some probably niche purposes where local electrical generation or access to grid is prohibitively difficult and there is a very strong need for gravimetrically or volumetrically energy dense sources. Internal combustion engines do have a lot of good uses, but currently for most use cases, and likely for many more given the pace of battery improvements compared to the pace of internal combustion engine improvements, electric vehicles are the better bet for the near and mid-term future.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 06-21-2023 at 01:14 PM..
Nowhere. It was supposed to be a discussion on differing views on the subject. /shrug
Yea, it didn't seem like you were going anywhere. Differing views are great, but if the view being presented doesn't have anything resembling a basis in engineering and physical reality, then it's not really much of a discussion. It's just misinformation at that point.
Again, I don't see electric vehicles as a panacea for everything. They do have issues, but if the argument is centered on between electric vehicles as private transport and their issues versus internal combustion engine vehicles as private transport, then there are actual real and demonstrable physical and engineering basis to compare the two in their overlapping use cases.
I think what's perhaps more alarming is the number of people who seem to have strong opinions on the matter and seem to repeat the same inaccurate criticisms and statements over and over again which you can see even on this thread, but elsewhere including outside of city-data. It's odd how much of a mass of this there is and the kind of ready assent there is from people who very evidently have no real professional grounding or experience to have that kind of certainty. The world really is absurd.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 06-21-2023 at 01:22 PM..
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