Getty Images/ separating cobalt from mud and rocks in DR Congo

Why electric cars won't save us: There are not enough resources to build them

Now, a letter from the Natural History Museum's head of Earth Sciences, Professor Richard Herrington, along with other experts, points out the scale of the problem of building so many electric cars. They calculate that, even with the most efficient batteries available, full electrification of the auto fleet by 2035 would need a lot more mining.

https://www.treehugger.com/cars/why-...uild-them.html

 

Weight of the car is the critical factor, other two are acceleration rate and average speed in the city!
This ugly microcar weighted 200 kilos but still was capable to carry two people around town.

 

I don't think it's about "Saving Us". It's about evolution.
In those broad statements and current facts, there is a blind ignorance to the yet to be developed or discovered. That includes recycling resources from spent batteries, more efficient batteries, and manufacturing techniques not yet developed and perhaps resources yet to be discovered.

In our support of maintaining a fossil fuel based manufacturing infrastructure, we perhaps unfortunately have never stopped in implementing new ways of continuing to grasp resources. This could include everything from Fracking Coal, to more and more invasive and extensive drilling for Oil as well as constant searching for more source.
At many points in our history up to this point, you could of stopped and said the fossil fuel based infrastructure wasn't sustainable certainly to the point we have reached now. But humanity with all it's ingenuity have found ways.

I'm NOT saying a rechargeable battery based future is the next evolution for humanity. But I think there would be a danger in NOT pursuing evolution in this area, because of predetermined assumption that evolution of possibility was not possible.

 

Did they say that the battery would outlast the car?

 

This is where fuel cells would shine, you don't need to increase the amount of metals used to increase storage capacity, just make a larger tank out of composites. CF, fiberglass, kevlar, etc. Recharging times are comparable to refilling a gas tank, and the tanks can be made strong enough to prevent ruptures at any speed that wouldn't kill everyone inside anyway.

Right now hydrogen is expensive, but if you bring the price of electricity down enough (or if the price of oil gets high enough), it can be competitive. On the side of making electricity cheaper, nuclear power is probably the best method. There's a tremendous amount of political baggage involved, obviously, but there are ways to build reactors that won't melt down, and to produce a fraction of the waste of current reactors.

The only problem is that the clean types don't produce plutonium for weapons, so governments aren't likely to spend a lot of money developing them.

 

I was just thinking of what it would look like when millions of cars of trying to charge at the same time!