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Comment by ianai | Hacker News Reader

These are downright lazy arguments at this point. The F150 ranges 4000-5800 lbs. The F350 ranges 5900-7700 or more. Similar numbers for the Silverado to the F150 I think. And where I live at any given time in any given parking lot a random rock/cinder block is more likely to hit them than any other model. The metals thing is a problem the markets will solve because the tech is largely solved.

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Yes and we need to end the weapons race of ever increasing car sizes. It makes accidents much more deadly, uses much more energy to move people and takes up unnecessarily large amounts of space in our cities.

Agree, but probably inappropriate to expect EVs to end that weapons race alone. Perfect not being the enemy of the good and all that.

And the comparable GMC Hummer EV is 9,063 lbs, 2,923 pounds of which are batteries.

> The metals thing is a problem the markets will solve because the tech is largely solved.

The metals thing comes from Russia (nickle) and Congo (Cobalt), and Argentina/China (Lithium).

The steel thing is *already* solved, with 88% of USA's steel being composed of recycled steel. You're hoping that some magic recycling process spins up over the next years to make Lithium sustainable, when it clearly isn't right now.

Nickel is mostly produced in Indonesia and some pacific islands. Most growth of new nickel is in Indonesia. Its refined in China.

Lithium is mostly from Chile, Argentina and Australia but its mostly refined in China.

> You're hoping that some magic recycling process spins up over the next years to make Lithium sustainable, when it clearly isn't right now.

The amount of lithium even if 100% recycled isn't nearly enough to cover what is needed. We know how to recycle it, in fact we have far more recycling capability then we have material that we can recycle. Everybody invest in recycling but there is not much to actually recycle yet.

Saw a new GMC Hummer a few hours ago for the first time, it was pretty strange to see because I thought it was a "new Bronco" at first or something (from the front). Then saw Hummer and GMC and was even more confused, but least knew what it was.

Seeing your comment above made everything make sense; it's pretty dang "not my style" but whatever floats (or tows) your boat

> The metals thing is a problem the markets will solve because the tech is largely solved.

There's lots of things the markets haven't "solved".

Also, getting a lot more nasty things out of the Earth will also most probably mean more dead kids in the mines of Africa, but I'm sure the market won't advertise that. At least the Saudis don't directly kill kids in their oil-fields explorations (they kill them only indirectly in Yemen, with the guns they've purchased from the West using the money they got from the oil-fields).

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