Electric Cars Are Not Particularly Green - Blowing Up Mountain Not Environmental Virtue

[JBG]

The article, The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles in the far from "denier" New York Times (link), points out that there is much environmental damage from manufacturing electirc automobiles. An excerpt from the article states:

Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade — a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in electric car batteries and renewable energy.

The mine, constructed on leased federal lands, could help address the near total reliance by the United States on foreign sources of lithium.

But the project, known as Lithium Americas, has drawn protests from members of a Native American tribe, ranchers and environmental groups because it is expected to use billions of gallons of precious ground water, potentially contaminating some of it for 300 years, while leaving behind a giant mound of waste.

“Blowing up a mountain isn’t green, no matter how much marketing spin people put on it,” said Max Wilbert, who has been living in a tent on the proposed mine site while two lawsuits seeking to block the project wend their way through federal courts.

While the U.S.'s pall-mall race towards reliance on electric cars may signal virtue, it is far from harmless. The reflex to protect the earth has merit; not all actions taken in its name are beneficial.

 

[VanceMack]

Leftists are quick to abandon their sacred cows for new sacred cows. Remember when leftists insisted that lands couldn't be developed because they disrupted 6 desert horned toads habitats and the horned toads, while not dying, would be inconvenienced?

Well....




and also

 

[phoenix2020]

This is a tough problem that needs to be solved and there are billions being invested annually in how to source lithium, cobalt, nickel etc as cleanly and affordable from mining to deep sea nodules, as well as reducing how much you need.

one long term advantage is that eventually we should be able to achieve closed loop recycling. You see when a battery cycles the lithium isn’t actually lost. It may plate or crystallize in places where it is no longer accessible but it’s still in the battery. Recycle a pack with 30kg of lithium and you should be able to get most of that back for a new pack. The problem is how to get from here to there.

 

[Glitch]

The article, The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles in the far from "denier" New York Times (link), points out that there is much environmental damage from manufacturing electirc automobiles. An excerpt from the article states:
While the U.S.'s pall-mall race towards reliance on electric cars may signal virtue, it is far from harmless. The reflex to protect the earth has merit; not all actions taken in its name are beneficial.

While I do agree that electric vehicles are not the panacea that the leftist propagandists are pushing, since they create more air pollution from the power plants where they get their power, than the equivalent gasoline operated vehicle. I have to draw the line when it comes to mining.

Whether or not a mine is potentially harmful to the environment depends on the mine, and the government oversight. Alaska is a resource dependent State, with a great many mines. A few have had problems, but the overwhelming majority have not. Nor are they harming the environment. The Usibelli Coal Mine is an open-faced mine just outside the border of Denali National Park. Unless you fly directly over the mine, you wouldn't even know it was there and it has been in operation for 78 years.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conversation is very well versed at regulating mines, and they know what makes a mine safe in Alaska (with its 10,000 earthquakes per year). No mine can be legally operated in Alaska without the approval of the DEC.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

The article, The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles in the far from "denier" New York Times (link), points out that there is much environmental damage from manufacturing electirc automobiles. An excerpt from the article states:
While the U.S.'s pall-mall race towards reliance on electric cars may signal virtue, it is far from harmless. The reflex to protect the earth has merit; not all actions taken in its name are beneficial.

Developer Of Aluminum-Ion Battery Claims It Charges 60 Times Faster Than Lithium-Ion, Offering EV Range Breakthrough​

The graphene aluminum-ion battery cells from the Brisbane-based Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) are claimed to charge up to 60 times faster than the best lithium-ion cells and hold three time the energy of the best aluminum-based cells.

They are also safer, with no upper Ampere limit to cause spontaneous overheating, more sustainable and easier to recycle, thanks to their stable base materials. Testing also shows the coin-cell validation batteries also last three times longer than lithium-ion versions.
GMG plans to bring graphene aluminum-ion coin cells to market late this year or early next year, with automotive pouch cells planned to roll out in early 2024.

 

[longview]

Developer Of Aluminum-Ion Battery Claims It Charges 60 Times Faster Than Lithium-Ion, Offering EV Range Breakthrough​

The graphene aluminum-ion battery cells from the Brisbane-based Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) are claimed to charge up to 60 times faster than the best lithium-ion cells and hold three time the energy of the best aluminum-based cells.

They are also safer, with no upper Ampere limit to cause spontaneous overheating, more sustainable and easier to recycle, thanks to their stable base materials. Testing also shows the coin-cell validation batteries also last three times longer than lithium-ion versions.
GMG plans to bring graphene aluminum-ion coin cells to market late this year or early next year, with automotive pouch cells planned to roll out in early 2024.

While interesting, there are significant technology challenges to moving massive amounts of electrical energy around.
We casually can put 330,000 kWh in our cars in under 3 minutes as gasoline, but in electrical form that would be quite dangerous!

 

[Visbek]

The article, The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles in the far from "denier" New York Times (link), points out that there is much environmental damage from manufacturing electirc automobiles.

No one says that EVs are a magic bullet. There is no way to manufacture and power something like an automobile without having any environmental impact. Even if we were making solar-powered cars with bamboo chassis, it would still have an impact.

An EV today isn't super-green. Manufacturing has a significant carbon footprint; so does powering it, if the electrical source is coal rather than a low-emissions source (like wind or solar). Thus, an EV in France is actually cleaner than one in Germany, as the latter relies more on coal. If you know that your utility is relying heavily on coal, an EV is not a good choice.

Overall though, it's cleaner to do things like take public transportation; walk or use a bicycle as much as possible; use a car sharing service; and/or hang onto a car as long as possible (as production and disposal can be up to half of the carbon footprint of a vehicle). Thus, in a fair number of situations, an EV will be cleaner than a gas-powered vehicle.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

While interesting, there are significant technology challenges to moving massive amounts of electrical energy around.
We casually can put 330,000 kWh in our cars in under 3 minutes as gasoline, but in electrical form that would be quite dangerous!

Oh now we're moving the goalposts to "under three minutes?"

I was laboring under the impression that the average person takes between five and ten minutes to fill up.
But the other question is, if I have a vehicle that uses electricity, am I still going to go to a charging station every time I want to recharge my car?
Nope, I'm most likely going to charge it at home the way most people do right now, and I'll only stop at a charging station when it's necessary.

But nothing in your post supports your claim that charging stations will be pushing 300 thousand kWh of current in the first place.
They'll push whatever their infrastructure is capable of supporting, and if that means it takes five to ten minutes instead of three, I think we've pretty much arrived at the tipping point.
In fact, even if you could only get 2/3 of your full range in five to ten minutes we're STILL at the tipping point because 95% of electric car owners would be just fine with that.
They'll still charge their cars the rest of the way when they get to their destination, which is usually HOME.

People were having similar arguments about solid state memory cards in the 1990s in the videotape wars.
Where are all those videocassette based cameras now?
I still have one, in fact it's a very nice unit, in almost new condition.
It's my "throwaway" camera, for use in situations where a nice card based camera might get destroyed.



PS: You're on the side of the argument where you'd be the one insisting videotape cameras will never go away because it's too scary and difficult to make affordable solid state memory cards.

 

[longview]

Oh now we're moving the goalposts to "under three minutes?"



I was laboring under the impression that the average person takes between five and ten minutes to fill up.
But the other question is, if I have a vehicle that uses electricity, am I still going to go to a charging station every time I want to recharge my car?
Nope, I'm most likely going to charge it at home the way most people do right now, and I'll only stop at a charging station when it's necessary.

But nothing in your post supports your claim that charging stations will be pushing 300 thousand kWh of current in the first place.
They'll push whatever their infrastructure is capable of supporting, and if that means it takes five to ten minutes instead of three, I think we've pretty much arrived at the tipping point.
In fact, even if you could only get 2/3 of your full range in five to ten minutes we're STILL at the tipping point because 95% of electric car owners would be just fine with that.
They'll still charge their cars the rest of the way when they get to their destination, which is usually HOME.

People were having similar arguments about solid state memory cards in the 1990s in the videotape wars.
Where are all those videocassette based cameras now?
I still have one, in fact it's a very nice unit, in almost new condition.
It's my "throwaway" camera, for use in situations where a nice card based camera might get destroyed.



PS: You're on the side of the argument where you'd be the one insisting videotape cameras will never go away because it's too scary and difficult to make affordable solid state memory cards.

The 3 minuets, is based on actual energy movement, Most gas station pumps are rated at 6 gallons a minutes,
and so could easily dispense 10 gallons of gasoline in 3 minutes, (the 330,000 kwh, is the energy in 10 gallons of gasoline).
To compare apples to apples, we should talk about the time to move 66,000 kwh of electricity, and that is the efficiency
a ICE can likely extract from 10 gallons of gasoline. Still, is we consider the current at say 480 volts, it is a very large number.
66,000kwh/480 volts = 137.5 Amps for 1 hour, or 2,750 amps at 480 volts for 3 minuets.
As I was saying, to move around the levels of energy we move in gasoline, in electrical form, become quite complicated.
We have to consider the ramification of what a high percentage of battery electric cars would do to the electrical grid!
We should also consider all of our options, before deciding on a path that may not be the best solution.
Electric drive motors have many advantages over heat engines, but the electricity that drives them is not required to be stored
in chemical batteries.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

The 3 minuets, is based on actual energy movement, Most gas station pumps are rated at 6 gallons a minutes,
and so could easily dispense 10 gallons of gasoline in 3 minutes, (the 330,000 kwh, is the energy in 10 gallons of gasoline).
To compare apples to apples, we should talk about the time to move 66,000 kwh of electricity, and that is the efficiency
a ICE can likely extract from 10 gallons of gasoline. Still, is we consider the current at say 480 volts, it is a very large number.
66,000kwh/480 volts = 137.5 Amps for 1 hour, or 2,750 amps at 480 volts for 3 minuets.
As I was saying, to move around the levels of energy we move in gasoline, in electrical form, become quite complicated.
We have to consider the ramification of what a high percentage of battery electric cars would do to the electrical grid!
We should also consider all of our options, before deciding on a path that may not be the best solution.
Electric drive motors have many advantages over heat engines, but the electricity that drives them is not required to be stored
in chemical batteries.

You're basically talking about industrial electric usage.
Please don't imply that the grid cannot handle industrial levels of growth because if electric cars did not exist (as in, impossible to make them work) and we had a booming manufacturing sector, we would NEED to find WAYS to accommodate that increase in industrial level electric use and we WOULD find a way.
Carroll Shelby said "Speed is just a question of money. How fast do you want to go?"

Grid capacity is just a question of money.
If money can be made providing 480 three phase @ 3kWh, we will find a way.

 

[phoenix2020]

The 3 minuets, is based on actual energy movement, Most gas station pumps are rated at 6 gallons a minutes,
and so could easily dispense 10 gallons of gasoline in 3 minutes, (the 330,000 kwh, is the energy in 10 gallons of gasoline).
To compare apples to apples, we should talk about the time to move 66,000 kwh of electricity, and that is the efficiency
a ICE can likely extract from 10 gallons of gasoline. Still, is we consider the current at say 480 volts, it is a very large number.
66,000kwh/480 volts = 137.5 Amps for 1 hour, or 2,750 amps at 480 volts for 3 minuets.
As I was saying, to move around the levels of energy we move in gasoline, in electrical form, become quite complicated.
We have to consider the ramification of what a high percentage of battery electric cars would do to the electrical grid!
We should also consider all of our options, before deciding on a path that may not be the best solution.
Electric drive motors have many advantages over heat engines, but the electricity that drives them is not required to be stored
in chemical batteries.

I don't agree with this analysis as being a significant curtailment to adoption for a few reasons:

1. The majority of users will be sufficiently well served by overnight charging. This is a simple fact and has already been borne out by the millions of EVs on the road globally now; owners (myself included) tend to discover that DC fast charge is not as essential as one originally thinks at purchase time.

2. The majority of users whose needs cannot be met by overnight charging (largely, commercial applications) will be served sufficiently well by a 20 minute fast charge simply because the economics are better and in commercial applications that's what matters. The lower cost of operation more than offsets an extra 15 minutes a day.

Yes there are other cases where a person either needs a 3 minute fast charge or they won't adopt EVs. That's fine - the ~1% who fall in this category can stick with existing technology just as I am sure there was some very small number of people who stuck with horses because horses had some advantage over cars that they considered a deal-breaker.

 

[Lord of Planar]

Developer Of Aluminum-Ion Battery Claims It Charges 60 Times Faster Than Lithium-Ion, Offering EV Range Breakthrough​

The graphene aluminum-ion battery cells from the Brisbane-based Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) are claimed to charge up to 60 times faster than the best lithium-ion cells and hold three time the energy of the best aluminum-based cells.

They are also safer, with no upper Ampere limit to cause spontaneous overheating, more sustainable and easier to recycle, thanks to their stable base materials. Testing also shows the coin-cell validation batteries also last three times longer than lithium-ion versions.
GMG plans to bring graphene aluminum-ion coin cells to market late this year or early next year, with automotive pouch cells planned to roll out in early 2024.

I don't know how many corporate released I have seen that never pan out to boost stock prices.

It's rumor till it happens.

 

[Lord of Planar]

I found some recent material on the subject. Not sure how much to tryst it, as these developments are rather new. I'm sure if these are made cost effectively, and work as advertised al large scale, they will have a market. Not sure sure it well be in cars though. More likely power storage for grid or homes in my viewpoint.

Their breakthrough puts their energy density a little less than what cars are using now. Being able to charge a car faster isn't real practical, and the new solid state batteries make the claim as having a much better energy density yet. We cannot safely charge a car much faster than the stage III chargers anyway. Great to be able to charge a cell phone in a minute, but the safety factor in charging that much power for a car is just not there, to make this practical.

Ultra-fast charging in aluminum-ion batteries: electric double layers on active anode - Nature Communications

Developing high-capacity batteries with high-rate performance has been a challenge. Here, the authors use a liquid metal alloy as anode in the aluminum-ion battery to push the boundaries, enabling the discovery of new roles of electric double layers in facilitating a high-rate charge transfer.

www.nature.com

 

[longview]

You're basically talking about industrial electric usage.
Please don't imply that the grid cannot handle industrial levels of growth because if electric cars did not exist (as in, impossible to make them work) and we had a booming manufacturing sector, we would NEED to find WAYS to accommodate that increase in industrial level electric use and we WOULD find a way.
Carroll Shelby said "Speed is just a question of money. How fast do you want to go?"

Grid capacity is just a question of money.
If money can be made providing 480 three phase @ 3kWh, we will find a way.

Not really! The levels to charge the batteries needed in a similar time to filling a gas tank may be a very difficult technical challenge.
I think the grid is not the issue, but the delivery system. Also it is not three phase, but DC.

 

[longview]

I don't agree with this analysis as being a significant curtailment to adoption for a few reasons:

1. The majority of users will be sufficiently well served by overnight charging. This is a simple fact and has already been borne out by the millions of EVs on the road globally now; owners (myself included) tend to discover that DC fast charge is not as essential as one originally thinks at purchase time.

2. The majority of users whose needs cannot be met by overnight charging (largely, commercial applications) will be served sufficiently well by a 20 minute fast charge simply because the economics are better and in commercial applications that's what matters. The lower cost of operation more than offsets an extra 15 minutes a day.

Yes there are other cases where a person either needs a 3 minute fast charge or they won't adopt EVs. That's fine - the ~1% who fall in this category can stick with existing technology just as I am sure there was some very small number of people who stuck with horses because horses had some advantage over cars that they considered a deal-breaker.

I understand the dynamics, but your statement,"or they won't adopt EVs.", is not part of the equation.
Battery electric vehicles ether fill all the rolls of IC vehicles, are they do not, there is not really a middle ground.
It would be silly to have someone own 2 vehicles because the battery electric cannot fill all of their requirements.
The logistics of of millions of people charging up their car batteries, will have to be addressed, if we move in that direction.
I tend to think the future is electric cars, but not battery powered electric cars! The energy will be carried by some other method.

 

[Glitch]

I understand the dynamics, but your statement,"or they won't adopt EVs.", is not part of the equation.
Battery electric vehicles ether fill all the rolls of IC vehicles, are they do not, there is not really a middle ground.
It would be silly to have someone own 2 vehicles because the battery electric cannot fill all of their requirements.
The logistics of of millions of people charging up their car batteries, will have to be addressed, if we move in that direction.
I tend to think the future is electric cars, but not battery powered electric cars! The energy will be carried by some other method.

EVs do not, and cannot, fill every roll of IC vehicles. They don't have anywhere near the range required. If you were to take a fully charged Tesla Model S from Fairbanks to Deadhorse on the Dalton Highway, you would run out of power 124.3 miles before you arrived at your destination.

Which is pretty damn useless when you are running supplies from Fairbanks to Deadhorse on the daily basis.

 

[longview]

EVs do not, and cannot, fill every roll of IC vehicles. They don't have anywhere near the range required. If you were to take a fully charged Tesla Model S from Fairbanks to Deadhorse on the Dalton Highway, you would run out of power 124.3 miles before you arrived at your destination.

Which is pretty damn useless when you are running supplies from Fairbanks to Deadhorse on the daily basis.

And the hill only get steeper, as efficiencies of fuel vehicles increase.
I see a roll for vehicles carrying their energy as hydrocarbon fuel, for quite a while yet.
In the future they may be fuel cell electrics, but the energy will still be carried as hydrocarbon fuel.

 

[Glitch]

And the hill only get steeper, as efficiencies of fuel vehicles increase.
I see a roll for vehicles carrying their energy as hydrocarbon fuel, for quite a while yet.
In the future they may be fuel cell electrics, but the energy will still be carried as hydrocarbon fuel.

There are other alternatives than either burning hydrocarbons or electricity. There are also hydrogen fueled vehicles. They have made great strides in safety with regard to keeping the hydrogen storage tanks from detonating. Which was the only real pitfall to those vehicles. You don't want to drive around a potential bomb.

 

[longview]

There are other alternatives than either burning hydrocarbons or electricity. There are also hydrogen fueled vehicles. They have made great strides in safety with regard to keeping the hydrogen storage tanks from detonating. Which was the only real pitfall to those vehicles. You don't want to drive around a potential bomb.

There is process called steam reformation, where hydrogen can be stripped off of hydrocarbon fuel in real time, on demand.
the hydrogen could then be used in a fuel cell to power the electric motors.
The efficiency gain for moving from a IC heat engine to a fuel cell, is roughly from 20% to 60%.
So instead of a gallon of gasoline containing 33 Kwh producing 6.6 Kwh, it would produce 19.8 Kwh.
This would only widen the deficiency of battery electric vehicles.

 

[phoenix2020]

I understand the dynamics, but your statement,"or they won't adopt EVs.", is not part of the equation.
Battery electric vehicles ether fill all the rolls of IC vehicles, are they do not, there is not really a middle ground.

This I think is a fallacy. It has rarely if ever been the case that one product or technology completely supplanted another--quickly and at all price points--so sweepingly. Heck, even today there are people who use landlines and flip phones for one reason or another. This is an economics issue, not a philosophical one. If in the long term the economics favor battery electric vehicles for say 98% of the population, BEVs will have that market share. But the remaining 2% will seek something else and a niche market will exist to serve them. The only part of the "equation" that matters is if there is money to be made.

 

[Glitch]

This I think is a fallacy. It has rarely if ever been the case that one product or technology completely supplanted another--quickly and at all price points--so sweepingly. Heck, even today there are people who use landlines and flip phones for one reason or another. This is an economics issue, not a philosophical one. If in the long term the economics favor battery electric vehicles for say 98% of the population, BEVs will have that market share. But the remaining 2% will seek something else and a niche market will exist to serve them. The only part of the "equation" that matters is if there is money to be made.

I'm one of those still only using a POTS landline. I have never owned a cell phone or smart phone, nor do I want one.

 

[phoenix2020]

I'm one of those still only using a POTS landline. I have never owned a cell phone or smart phone, nor do I want one.

Exactly. There will always be a market for people who prefer their horses, landlines or (in the future) ICE vehicles. Just as smart phone manufacturers have become the wealthiest companies on the planet without needing your patronage, battery electric vehicles will become the predominant form of passenger vehicle transportation even if they don't check every last box.

 

[longview]

This I think is a fallacy. It has rarely if ever been the case that one product or technology completely supplanted another--quickly and at all price points--so sweepingly. Heck, even today there are people who use landlines and flip phones for one reason or another. This is an economics issue, not a philosophical one. If in the long term the economics favor battery electric vehicles for say 98% of the population, BEVs will have that market share. But the remaining 2% will seek something else and a niche market will exist to serve them. The only part of the "equation" that matters is if there is money to be made.

There are some examples, like flat screen TV's, but the reality is that Electric cars need to get ether much cheaper or fill a wider range of roles
before they will be widely adopted.
The much cheaper is possible, but they have to fill the list of the virtue signalers first!
In theory, a battery electric car, hub motors, should be much less expensive than a car with an internal combustion engine,
transmission, fuel system, ect. but we are not yet seeing the savings.

 

[Glitch]

Exactly. There will always be a market for people who prefer their horses, landlines or (in the future) ICE vehicles. Just as smart phone manufacturers have become the wealthiest companies on the planet without needing your patronage, battery electric vehicles will become the predominant form of passenger vehicle transportation even if they don't check every last box.

I still keep my 1987 Nissan functional, because it is my only vehicle that still uses a distributor and a carburetor and has no computers. Granted, it only get 10 miles per gallon, if that, but it has proven to be a very reliable vehicle. Getting me out of situations (and my driveway) when other vehicles would not have made it.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Not really! The levels to charge the batteries needed in a similar time to filling a gas tank may be a very difficult technical challenge.
I think the grid is not the issue, but the delivery system. Also it is not three phase, but DC.

Of COURSE the charge is direct current, it's a battery.
But now you're implying that what the charging station is connected to is DC?
Hate to break it to you, we have not built out a high voltage DC grid.

Would you like to see a schematic?