Hacker News Reader

Comment by dirtyaura | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I'm wrong, but quick calculation indicates that Tesla using only energy from Cholla (one of the dirtiest plants in the US) would produce about the same amount of CO2 (13.6kg per 100km) as 5L/100km car (Ford Fiesta) would produce (12kg per 100km).

As you can probably improve your electricity mix quite easily, it sounds like that from fuel CO2 emission perspective, electric car is always at least as good choice as gasoline car.

View on HN

Once you factor in the environmental cost associated with production, I'm not sure it's as clear cut. Batteries are nasty.

They can also be recycled almost indefinitely.

I'm not aware that lithium batteries can be recycled at all?

Lithium ion batteries have been recyclable for a while now-- Best Buy has receptacles for used ones. It's been slow to get off the ground because virgin production is still rather cheap.

Hm. This article seems to say that no process is available yet. Perhaps they're not being 'recycled' but re-used? http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714...

There is no process for recycling /automotive/ lithium ion batteries, but that's because their use is so recent--the first commercially available lithium ion EV (Tesla Roadster) wasn't released until 2008. However, EV batteries are essentially the same as commodity lithium ion batteries (e.g. stacks of 18650 cells that you can buy on Amazon), and those have been recycled for a while.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com