2030 is approaching quickly, this being the year most countries have committed to banning the sale of new Internal Combustion Engine vehicles. Governments around the World are backing Electric Vehicles to solve the problem of emissions, but actually, how green are these? Jeremy Webb looks at what it takes to manufacture and run an EV and are there better alternatives?
Let me start by saying I love driving electric vehicles and have been fortunate to have reviewed several from Tesla, BMW, Skoda and many more manufacturers. As I write this, I am testing a BMW iX3 M Sport and loving it, but I am always concerned about the processes of making an electric vehicle. In my opinion, they aren't as GREEN as makers and governments would like us to believe.
My statement might cause derision from some, but I have been looking into the makeup of electric vehicles, and I question whether they are sustainable? Also, are there better alternatives both for owners and the environment?
As I see it, the situation at the moment is like my friend Paul Godbold stated; it is like choosing between Betamax and VHS.
If you are too young to know what this means, it was a situation in the 1980s where electronics companies were competing to produce Video Cassette Recorders, and buyers faced a dilemma in choosing which system to buy. Many bought Betamax, then the Film Companies opted to release their movies on VHS, and overnight, Betamax sales crashed.
If you were facing the choice of spending $40,000 or more on an electric vehicle now, and within the next three years, Hydrogen-power becomes the go-to source, ultimately making EVs redundant, you would not want to risk your hard-earned money. I have driven the Toyota Mirai, a Hydrogen-powered car in production and seen the labs where they produce the gas. It appears to be an utterly Green source of fuel, but it takes a considerable amount of energy to make Hydrogen from water. If the gas were to be the primary fuel to power vehicles, so much Hydrogen would need to be manufactured that it would require Nuclear power to provide the energy for the chemical process involved in splitting water. The vast majority of the public dislike Nuclear power, so what other power source would be able to cope with Hydrogen production and still be Green and sustainable? There is nothing around at the moment.
Are we all being persuaded by governments and electric car manufacturers to go electric because they know what Michael Faraday, the discoverer of the electric motor, did? He asked for MPs in Westminster to support his electromagnetism and electricity production research. When asked why the British Government should finance electrical production? Faraday replied, "because you will be able to tax its use in the future."
Never has a truer word been spoken as currently, people around the Globe find themselves being charged more and more for the provision of electricity. So you may buy an electric vehicle thinking running costs will be lower than fossil fuels, but when no other forms of transportation are available, you could be paying out a lot more money to charge your Lithium battery.
I can not see the price of Lithium going down; therefore, electric vehicle prices will always be high and possibly too high for the majority of people to buy. Then there will be a lack of mobility rather than what we have been promised, with electric vehicles opening up global mobility.
Lithium is critical in the production of batteries, as seen in the
Tesla Model S with 12 kilograms of Lithium in it. Demand for Lithium is increasing exponentially, and it doubled in price between 2016 and 2018. Cairn Energy Research Advisors predict the lithium-ion industry will grow from 100 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of annual production in 2017 to almost 800 GWh in 2027. The negative impact of the demand for Lithium will be felt by everyone via emissions from mining, carrying and use.
Christina Valimaki, an analyst at Elsevier, stated, "One of the biggest environmental problems caused by our endless hunger for the latest and smartest devices is a growing mineral crisis, particularly those needed to make our batteries."
Vast areas of South America face a crisis through a lack of water and not just drinking water. Mining extraction in South America uses gigantic quantities of water to pump down into Lithium reserves below salt flats. Mining is started by drilling a hole in the salt flats and pumping salty, mineral-rich brine to the surface. The brine is then left for months to evaporate, creating a mixture of manganese, potassium, borax and Lithium salts. Left for 12 to 18 months, the Lithium carbonate can be extracted.
Approximately 500,000 gallons per tonne of Lithium are used in the process, which has devastating environmental problems for the countries where mining occurs.
In the Salar de Atacama in Chile, mining used 65 per cent of the region's water, having a significant impact on local farmers. Australia and North America have more traditional mining, extracting Lithium from rock, but chemicals are used, and areas report dead fish from rivers near the mining.
As well as the environmental costs to find Lithium and turning it into batteries, there is great difficulty in disposing of used batteries. They are not easy to recycle, potentially leak chemicals and are bulky.
Dr Gavin Harper of the Faraday Institution's lithium recycling project states, " another issue is that manufacturers are understandably secretive about what goes into their batteries, which makes it harder to recycle them properly. At the moment, recovered cells are generally shredded, creating a mixture of metal that can then be separated using pyrometallurgical techniques. But, this method wastes a lot of the Lithium."
Harper continues, "Considering that all of the materials in these batteries have already had an environmental and social impact in their extraction, we should be mindful of ensuring good custody."
He believes in creating a process to shepherd lithium-ion batteries safely through their whole life cycle, ensuring that we're not unnecessarily extracting more from the ground or allowing chemicals from old batteries to damage.
Companies from China, USA, Holland and many more countries are searching for Lithium deposits akin to the way. Nations searched for Gold in the New World. We all know the outcome then, and we don't want to repeat that.
While questioning how sustainable electric car manufacturing is, we have to consider why can't we continue with the production and sales of ICE vehicles? Everyone is being told cars are bad for the environment and their emissions contribute to global warming, but if we flip this and look at it from a different perspective, there is an argument to continue with fossil-fuelled vehicles.
All the infrastructure is in place for manufacturing vehicles and gathering and refining oil for fuel. These resources have cost billions to create, and the governments want them to be disused when they still have years of life. The argument is that fossil fuels are bad for the environment, but the latest vehicles are far cleaner than five years ago. So it could be said that keeping production going is far greener and more sustainable than ceasing it and building a whole new infrastructure for electric or Hydrogen-powered vehicles, which will need massive amounts of electricity to power them, and this has a staggeringly destructive impact on the environment.
Summing up, I can't tell you what is right or wrong at this point; it will only be in ten or twenty years that we will find out if switching to so-called greener powered vehicles will prove more sustainable and better for the environment.
I would be interested to hear you the readers' thoughts.