Aluminum requires huge amounts of electricity to produce. Hopefully that electricity isn't coming from fossil fuels.
However it does appear to be highly recyclable, at a fraction of the energy cost.
However it does appear to be highly recyclable, at a fraction of the energy cost.
That’s kind of the point. If you can produce aluminum efficiently (i.e. reduce Al2O3 to aluminum metal without using much more energy than the theoretical minimum) and then oxidize it back to Al2O3 efficiently in a car, you have a battery that stores a huge amount of energy.
There is a rather spectacular non-battery use for this energy: thermite.
There's a production/re-use cycle in Europe wherein Aluminium is processed and smelted in Iceland, turned into ingots which are sent to mainland Europe to be manufactured-with, and then resultant used product sent back to Iceland for melting down and processing back into ingots.
The point being: Iceland uses geothermal energy to work Aluminium, so the entire process is one grand re/charge cycle of a significantly-used and energy-dense process.
Next step - small, modular fission power sources for the likely-hydrocarbon based and heavily-polluting ships transporting it all back and forth.