the_max•21d agoProlific Poster

Used to think electric cars were worse for the planet because of battery mining

I was one of those people who would bring up lithium mining every time someone mentioned EVs. Then last summer I actually looked at the numbers from a lifecycle analysis out of MIT. Turns out even with the mining and battery production, EVs still come out way ahead on total emissions after about 15,000 miles of driving. Plus most of the mining concerns are being addressed way faster than oil drilling ever was. Anyone else change their mind after digging into the actual data?

3 comments

3 Comments

park.robin21d ago

Yeah lithium mining's bad but oil's worse overall...

jakeb2520d ago

Friend of mine had to reroute a whole shipment of batteries cause the ports were backed up. @park.robin brings up a good point though.

samwalker21d ago

You said "lithium mining's bad but oil's worse" and I get why people say that, but the real issue nobody's talking about is the transport cost. Moving lithium from a mine in Chile to a battery plant in China uses a ton of diesel fuel right now, way more emissions than people realize. Plus that lithium then gets shipped again as finished batteries to car factories in Europe or the US, so the whole supply chain burns oil before the EV even hits the road. Oil's still worse overall for sure, but we're not fixing much if we just swap one dirty process for another without cleaning up how we move stuff around.