Tesla is also recycling batteries, but their cars are only 10 years old and so they don't get many back (because the batteries are working pretty well after 10 years). Don't compare the terrible lifespan of leaf batteries with cars with decent battery management technology.
The average monthly high temperatures in Las Vegas by comparison are 104f in July, 103f in Aug, and 100f in June. https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/las-vegas/climate
Critically for battery degradation high temperatures when in actual use get well above ambient temperature. So, if you avoid driving in the heat of the day things can look better than local climate suggests.
That 116 degree day last year... x_x I have central A/C and it couldn't keep up. It was 85 degrees in the house and it sucked. Can't imagine all the poor sods that didn't even have A/C. I probably would have just sat in the bath tub all day.
And then last month when we had a 75 degree Thursday followed by snow on Monday...
I just want some nice weather so I can take my new mountain bike to Gateway Green.
For me it was a “drive into town, and back, and back in, and back” situation where I didn’t have the luxury of charging for hours at a time.
That's just one of the main issues. EVs would be very nice if they cost nearly the same of ICEs for similar distance ranges and target only retirees and teleworkers witch means some who do not/can not use a car every day and IF they own a small domestic p.v. so can wait a day to recharge from the Sun instead of the grid. Not more, so far. Honestly IMVHO in this scenario:
- cities will only be able to offer public transportation GRID-CONNECTED (witch means rails/filobus), forbidding private transportation, just some inter-modal hubs for those who came from outside and working vehicles only (emergency services, plumbers, builders etc);
- outside probably the cheapest and most effective option for private transport for both individuals and whole society will be via flying cars to cut distance effects and roads needs (with their regular hyper-expensive upkeep). A substantial revolution we already see possible but still too costly for too many [1]
witch means in turn: ~90% or so of the people unable to travel autonomously anymore for mere practical economical reasons, concentrated in "developed-Asian-like" urban settlements and a wealthy 10% living a good life in large Rivieras... I really do not see, given the input, different possible outcomes for an all-EVs scenario and I'm curios how someone can prove the contrary.
I still not have an EV simply because for my use case and their price they are too costly compared to classic diesel cars, but I do have a small p.v. with lithium storage: after an year of VERY LITTLE usage (minimum SOC if grid is operational 90% only if tomorrow meteo is good enough) I've already lost 1% of the total battery capacity, EVs since they get far more stress (accelerations AND sudden deceleration witch led to high ripple on battery side) will offer less endurance (mildly confirmed by some neighbors with moderately new Teslas and a Renault Zoe). Surely IF we will not being able to source diesel/petrol there are no other options, but that's a different story with a far larger impacts since from oil we get much more than fuels AND anything we get from oil&gas, from sweeteners/flavours to lubricants and plastics and fertilizers will be far more expensive if oil/gas is used only for them and so all that use them will be far more expensive as well... Not very optimist, so to speak...
[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/uk-first-airport-elec...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/12/technology/flying-cars.ht...
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20201111000877
https://tass.com/economy/1395363
...
This is simply wrong and totally incorrect. No one doing it "on scale" because there simply isn't enough recyclable material yet, not because it's non-profitable. (In fact the small lithium ion battery recycling companies are quite profitable already and they haven't even scaled up.) Most EVs are way too new to hit the recycle stream yet. Almost all EVs built are still driving today and on the roads and the ones getting recycled are the ones with the smallest batteries. This is a completely non-issue.
> flying cars
Flying cars will never happen because of noise and safety reasons.
Lithium batteries are heavily used outside EVs since more than a decade, witch means we have many "recyclable material" since years, did you know just how many UPSes we sent to landfills any years? How many used mobile phones? ... So sorry, no that's propaganda, not reality, in reality the small companies you mentions are just small startups hyper-funded by Green New Deal giants who want to show them as profitable, but they aren't.
> Flying cars will never happen because of noise and safety reasons.
They are already there, and keep expanding at a steady pace, only most people do not even know that because beside some unis, govs and think tanks so far we have zero propaganda on them and we have propaganda against human fly "for environmental reasons" where the real reasons are that élites want to cut journeys in general to isolate populations for better directing them.
If you think that's just an extreme and fantastic theory try a serious mind experiment: how much it cost not merely economical but also environmental costs in gazillion of tons of concrete, steel so iron, coke etc and how many years it take to build a trans-national rail line? Let's say from China to EU through central Asia as an extreme example. That imaging in such timeframe how many things might have changed making such big investments a dead project before completion. Now do the same for airborn and waterborn means: surely they need some "ports" on both ends, but they can go anywhere under a certain range. Try do do the same for road infra. We can debate on the why some push against human fly, but the economics of small flying devices and their effectiveness is clear. Cars demand much more raw material and much more regular entertainment (just for tires), flying demand far lighter and simpler cars, mostly aluminum witch is recyclable ad infinitum, and can last 50+years with regular checks and not much raw material demands. The same happen for ships vs trucks.
As I said try to find such data yourself: you'll see a deep decline on anything "giant on scale" from big ships and planes to big land-based infra, toward small and flexible systems. You'll see a growing trend toward autarchy and isolation, witch deeply need ability to change quickly since it's something experimental in the present world so something that keep change at a fast peace, run your scenario and imaging the future remembering how much the society is changed in 50+ and 100+ years any 50/100 years in recent human history, so if you imaging something equal to today you know you are probably wrong, and try to depict a possible future.
EVs use dramatically more lithium ion material than had ever before even considered. Also small batteries as a portion of their total mass have a lot more packaging material (like plastics) that require manual work to separate from the battery metals. Larger batteries that are more uniform are easier to automatically disassemble.
There is no "Green New Deal". That failed. These companies say they're profitable even without subsidies.
> They are already there
No they aren't. Sure you can strap some high power jet turbines on to a car and call it a flying car, but that doesn't make it any quieter nor does it make it safe.
About flying cars
https://vertical-aerospace.com/
https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/zero-emission/urban-air...
Just to show some producers, and those are ONLY eVTOL models. This report is not bad https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/... so is classic BBC https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201111-the-flying-car-i... some other random picked https://asiatimes.com/2021/06/virgin-atlantic-going-vertical... and http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20201111000877 or https://tass.com/economy/1395363 or https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/03/europe-moves-closer-to-mak...
Some official info https://www.easa.europa.eu/light/topics/urban-air-mobility
Edit: I'm not copying mlindner. I just had the same idea.
The point is that:
- there is no standard, most batteries are similar but not that similar to being able to disassembly them for easier processing, there are not really standard size and shapes etc;
- disassembly is dangerous, it's easier to light a fire, just try to see this live experimental recovery by a Chem researcher https://youtu.be/IH3djjP6tiA
- recovered material are not much easy to re-use
This are just SOME of the obstacles, the most technical, than we have the most social witch means where to move large quantities of batteries to process them, since the process is pollutant and far from safe and clean in environmental terms so not much want it in their backyard, how to create a supply chain etc.
My point is simple: there are some interested players who push this tech by any PR and lobbying means, selling anything as already there and perfectly doable in scale, at a scientific level not much different than "cold nuclear fusion" and similar stuff. Yes, lithium IS revolutionary but not as revolutionary nor scalable as that. So yes we can build EVs, but definitively not at the actual ICEs scale. Synthetic petrol, not a new thing, again is perfectly doable but again not at the same scale. We can't build&power enough vehicles on scale.
That's why we start reading here and there that most, intended as new and old poor must be concentrated in dense small/mid-size cities witch looks like https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/34827717.html && https://youtu.be/p-9X8Z2kJt8 in advertisement while in practice are more like https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/19/why-greeces-ex... witch essentially means padronal factories where 99% live to work at the owner conditions, and only few will profit from the new society because with such tech only few can profit.
Economically I can count myself in such few's, I built my house with modern insulation, VMC, heat-pumps, p.v. etc and I can afford actual EVs, I WFH so potentially I can recharge them via p.v. etc BUT there is a thing I know: divided society does work only if divisions are not much strong, otherwise they do not last longer and end up in deep unrest and disasters. Also no quick revolution end up well, things that last happen at a certain point in time, but spread slowly. Quick fires end quickly, with much damages.
That's is.
I'm deeply convinced that a new society have to born since the actual one is untenable and dying, that's not a matter of neoliberal's Great Reset or Xi new society etc, that's a fact now. I'm deeply convinced that the new society must have a far reduced environmental footprint. I'm deeply convinced that we are simply too much in numbers for our planetary resources and that's end up as always in unrest, wars, calamity of various kind to simply makes a big reduction in population by an extraordinary number of deaths (and that's NOT "green" at all in general). Simply the actual new society we see from propaganda can't work IMVHO. I can understand the idea of a mass guided disaster and genocide, really, it's not a moral question, but I can't understand the optimism and enthusiasm hypocritically sold and spread by any means.
When driving any distance, I frequently see cars stopped on the side of the roadway. They’ve run out of fuel, had an accident (maybe very minor), had a mechanical problem or even a flat tire. If these were flying cars they would be full of serious casualties.
A problem in the air that puts a “flying car” into free fall results in approximately 80 km/hr of additional velocity within 2.25 seconds. If the “car” has even a modest forward velocity the results will be fatal. At low altitudes there is going to be no way to effectively put on the brakes.
Well one might think, why isn’t this a problem for planes and helicopters? Oh but they do have this problem caused by gravity, and they solve it with big wings or rotors, sophisticated avionics, trained and redundant pilots, special places that have room to land and take off, air traffic control, etc.
The difficulty of addressing the safety problems of vertical take off and landing, flying below glide speed, collision avoidance, small size, and extreme reliability prevent even the military of from building such things.
BEVs are extremely heavy and rely on lightweight hard to recycle plastic and alloy body components to lighten kerb weight. Tires produce far more pollution than 'tailpipes' (BEVs just move the pollution somewhere else of course, they are wonderful for affluent cities). https://www.tiretechnologyinternational.com/news/regulations...
The other worrying aspect of BEV battery module recycling is fire risk- as the current generation of BEVs age we can expect to see more trapped energy thermal runaway events from faulty batteries.
I'd say we have a way to go solving these realities before increasing BEV volume manufacture - hybrid cars are the best solution IMO for the foreseeable future especially given the perilous state of western world electric grid reliability
> fig leaf of 'recyclability'
It's not a fig leaf if it's 95% recyclable for profit?
> Tires produce far more pollution than 'tailpipes' (BEVs just move the pollution somewhere else of course, they are wonderful for affluent cities).
ICEs have tires too? And BEVs -- even those powered by coal, will clean up as the grid cleans up. ICEs will never clean up.
> as the current generation of BEVs age we can expect to see more trapped energy thermal runaway events from faulty batteries
It's been a decade. We see very little of this.
> hybrid cars are the best solution IMO
The complaints you list are non-issues or already solved. Hybrid cars also have batteries and many also plug in and so would be subject to exactly the same complaints you list.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/dec/08/the-curse-of-wh... The curse of 'white oil': electric vehicles' dirty secret
https://electrek.co/2022/03/21/heres-what-the-future-of-batt...
'EV batteries have a 10–13 year lifespan, so while they may not be ready to be recycled in large volumes just yet, we know they’re on the way. Companies worldwide are already investing in recycling plants to meet this demand. From our perspective, the biggest hurdle is figuring out how to create a system of shared collections across multiple original equipment manufacturers and recyclers for both cost and environmental efficiencies.'
Lithium-Ion Battery Fires in Electric Vehicles - Safety Risks to Emergency Responders https://youtu.be/J6eS6JzBn0k
We are just beginning to grapple with some of the core issues should the BEV political sales onslaught and incentives succeed.
This BEV bus blowing up in RATP Paris this month should give you some pause for thought, fortunately it wasn't full of people https://youtu.be/5r-yN8SugWM
Multiple buses burnt as a result of a charging fire in Germany https://www.sustainable-bus.com/electric-bus/sbb-stuttgart-f...
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2022...
ICEs are literally carrying explosives too. It also took time for them to become “safe”, and it’s still a work in progress.
Doesn’t seem like you’re trying to really learn anything here. Maybe you think you already know everything. The world is moving on.