Cybertruck supersized charging space...

@wandering -- I'm sorry, but you have not put in anything in your post in terms of evidence or empirical data on how batteries are more hazardous or harmful to the environment and the people than oil/hydro-carbon based energy sources.

Sure there will still be drilling (although much less and in fact a lot of pumps have been capped) and gas will still be used for cars until it becomes obsolete. But nobody is arguing against you on that. If fact, I agree. But as someone already said here or in another thread, the transition is inevitable with some countries doing it even faster than us.

And for which the US, as this administration and domestic industries and manufacturers realized, the next opportunity for investments and economic advancement.

Oil will be drilled no matter what, at least until they develop cheap enough other sources of both power and products manufactured from it. The same can be said for the Rare earth mining, but just as oil went through rapid growth in it's consumption, which resulted in the issues you pontificate upon, so too will the rare earth mining for materials for batteries and chip making. Rapid growth caused the oil issues, and replacing that problem with another that has even longer term impact as all these batteries end up in landfills helps nothing.
Nuclear, Hydrogen and to a lesser extent solar and wind will have places, but until they find a friendlier battery source, electric vehicles are not a help.
Fuel injection replacing carburetors was the biggest help in the last 40 years, the amount of fuel wasted has dropped due to that, and some form of conversion to Natural Gas is likely the next big help step, but I cant see switching to an even more hazardous replacement being the solution.

pianotuna wrote:
Until recently, no one did anything to mitigate that clear cutting of the forest.

Bamboo is a good substitute as mature poles can be harvested without Clear-cutting and killing the main plant.. But it will be an expensive operation and process to turn these poles into lumber.

wanderingaimlessly wrote:
Sam, look up the photo's, satellite and otherwise of Sudbury Ontario.

While I agree that dirty mining is bad, the deforestation in Sudbury was caused by the Great Chicago fire of 1871. Until recently, no one did anything to mitigate that clear cutting of the forest.

@wandering -- I hear yeah!

I'm not into false equivalence but how is what you stated less harmful than what the petroleum/oil industry is causing the world.

And on us, with our young boys and girls patrolling the Gulf to keep these volatile region safe and our taxes paying for it. How many already died keeping our so-called "energy security"?

Also yes, we should not repeat the past where winning companies, after making absence profit extracting these resources, abandon them for clean up and restoration under taxpayers dime whether in Canada or domestically..

Sam, look up the photo's, satellite and otherwise of Sudbury Ontario.
The rare earth mining has been devastating. Canada has been working madly for 10 years to start recovering that region.
Yes there are measures that can help minimize the damage, but the desire for those minerals far out paces our production, especially when the conservation measures are enforced.
Do you think China, Thailand or Russia are going to hamstring their industries? They are aggressively mining every ton they can. All so the Li-ion batteries can be supplied as cheaply as possible.
And the batteries ARE NOT being recycled in large quantities, in part because of the cost, in both energy and chemicals, it's cheaper to buy from the dirty mining operations.
recycling


You opine on saving the planet, but consider the whole picture. Often the well meaning are actually the bigger problem.

free radical wrote:


Maybe GM and Ford etc should make their own chips here instead of relying on foreign companies!?

Maybe cars should remain simple as in the past,instead of puting tons of electronic junk in that makes all vehicles much more expensive

The president called a summit to address the chips shortage issue. it appears directionally that domestic chip manufacturing will be strengthened to wean us from total dependence on China and Taiwan.

On lithium batteries, industries are now reviving mining operations. One big Australian company, in fact, relocated to the US. Tesla is also forming a stronger materials team to include research on new materials for batteries --into more abundant sodium instead of the rarer lithium.

Electronics in cars makes it efficient and safe. Estimates by DOT put out 35,000 accidents are preventable with autonomous driving.

I was just to rhapsodize about the water-based paint I just started using yesterday. Easy cleaning with soapy water and less volatile and toxic. Then reading this, I realized someone will find something wrong with it.

Petroleum based extraction and products have been causing so much harm to earth and the people from those islands of plastics out in the Paciific and the Atlantic, poisoned aquifers due to fracking, American servicemen dead and taxpayers' money squandered guarding the Gulf oil shipping routes, Valdez and oil rig disasters...

And we will rage about batteries that's 60 to 100% recyclable -- and unlike tree pulps for paper can be recycled over and over again?

Come on!

free radical wrote:

Sjm9911 wrote:

Reisender wrote:

wanderingaimlessly wrote:
Reis, this is by no means all inclusive, and the main US sources were shut down in the last 10-20 years, but it does cover some of the users and how they would pertain.
rare earth
And our production has fallen to near nothing.

That is an interesting and comprehensive article. Me thinks investors will be investing in companies that can recycle some of this stuff from old electronics.

I’m one of those evil EV drivers. I can tell you right now. As more people test drive these things it will get harder and harder to turn off the transition to EV’s. For many people driving needs they do pretty much everything better than an ICE. If the oil companies don’t find a way to shut down growth real quick there will be no turning off the tap. They’ll have to find another way to come up with the rare earth minerals, or use something else. :). Going to be an interesting decade.

Like hydrogen? Lol. Its hard to say that the car is selling itself through enginuity when most state's are mandating ICE cars and trucks be discontinued in the near future. My fear is that this may lead to other consequences that are unseen, like what to do with all the batteries when they are used up. I can easily see this turning into a bigger environmental hazzard then the ICE vehicals. Im all for green stuff if it works and turns out to atually be green. So far for me , the jury is out on this one. And it has nothing to do with where the volts come from.

What hazard, Bateries can be recycled

https://americanmanganeseinc.com/

If thats true it would be good. Cant tell as its a press release from the compiny itself. I was talking about these articals https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/01/21/opinion/electric-cars-have-dirty-little-recycling-problem-their-batteries
But who knows, i thought i read that the technology use in the batteries are all diffrent across manafatures , so the are hard to recycle because there all diffrent and require diffrent chemicals. So they burn them to get something. If the other compony found a way around it , good. If not then it will be trouble. Its like the single stream recycling now. It costs money to do it, and most of it still goes to the landfill. But people feel good about themselves when they throw that dirty greasy pizza box in the bin. They dont release that its not recycleble.

Batteries CAN be recycled, but most are not, and the process for retrieving the rare elements is extremely energy intensive.
Li-ion recycling
The article is from 2019, but little has changed due to the Coronacrud.