Are Electric Cars REALLY Better for the Environment?| Electric vehicles vs Gas powered vehicles
Some people argue that electric vehicles are worse for the environment than internal combustion engines. Others say that EVs are not even close to as bad as internal combustion. So, I set out to find out once and for all, are electric vehicles worse for the environment? What I found genuinely surprised me. In this blog, we’re gonna do our best to compare the environmental impact of electric vehicles versus gas-powered ones.
First, let’s take a look at some ways electric cars are bad for the environment. And let me tell you, there’s a few. One of the biggest arguments against electric vehicles is that battery production for an EV is much more detrimental for the environment than the production of internal combustion vehicles. So, is that true? Yes!
The initial environmental footprint from current electric vehicle production is greater than production of internal combustion engines. The large batteries that EVs use are made with lithium, which, like any raw material, needs to be mined, and the mining process produces lots of greenhouse gases. It’s a problem that’s only going to grow unless the manufacturing process becomes more efficient. Sales of EVs topped one million per year for the first time in 2017. Some estimates predict that by the year 2030, there will be more than 125 million EVs on the road and those vehicles are gonna need batteries. Needless to say, lithium is in high demand and it all has to come from somewhere. It takes on average about 8 to 10 metric tons of CO2 to produce an electric vehicle. That’s a lot. Obviously, the bigger the battery, the more CO2 it takes to produce it. Some smaller batteries in economy size EVs may take as few as two metric tons to produce but larger EVs with long-rang batteries could be responsible for up to 17 metric tons of CO2 emissions. Conversely, the average production for an internal combustion vehicle produces around seven metric tons of CO2.
Why does EV production lead to a bigger environmental footprint? More than half of the world’s lithium supply comes from the, lithium triangle, an area between Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. In the arid salt-plains of the Atacama Desert, high up in the Andes Mountains, workers drill through the crust of the salt to get to the mineral-rich brine below the surface. This process leaches massive amounts of groundwater from the surrounding area, resulting in a decreased water supply and less accessible water for local agriculture. In a region of Chile called Salar de Atacama, mining companies have used 65% of the region’s water. It takes 750 tons of brine to produce one ton of lithium. But lithium is just one of the components of a battery, it’s actually a smaller percentage than you might think too, at around six percent. A growing concern surrounds the sourcing of another element used in batteries: cobalt. But the issue is more of an ethical dilemma as some cobalt mines use child labor, which is reprehensible. And then, there’s the problem of recycling these things.
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