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Comment by edgefield | Hacker News Reader

Clearly EVs without policy changes aren’t going to move us toward a sustainable planet on any timeline that matters.

What is the harm of large batteries if we completely decarbonize all energy production?

The production of batteries is VERY toxic, its mostly hidden by deveoping country production and ignorance. Ironically the most toxic battery has the highest recycle rate and lithum batteries aren't exactly easy to recycle in comparison to lead acid.

1. Toxicity doesn’t cause climate change.

2. With infinite energy we could neutralize that toxicity at no cost.

Energy is the limiting factor for everything short of cattle.

And even there you have animal feed production influenced by fertilizer, which consumes something between 1-3% of total energy via the Haber-Bosch process.

Please don't move the goalposts. The person you replied to was asking about carbon impact, not "toxicity".

I believe them bringing up toxicity is a completely valid answer to the question. I understood the question as "what else is there to consider if we solve the carbon-derived energy problem?" Environmental impacts fits within that.

lol, im not sure if you dropped the /s or not there are some seriously stupid people out there so it makes it easy

Do you have EVIDENCE that production of batteries is VERY toxic?

What, specifically, is toxic?

How do you measure this toxicity?

How does it compare to, I don't know, digging oil in the middle of ocean, occasionally spilling it into ocean or earth.

Plus all the toxic CO2 generated transporting the oil all over the world and then burning it in gas engine.

You don't get to throw around FUD about vague, undefined "toxicity" supposedly involved in making batteries.

When you're CONFIDENTLY making such claims, provide definitions, numbers, supporting evidence and compare and contrast with the thing electric batteries are replacing i.e. the oil industry which involves digging out oil, refining it, distributing it and a few wars to protect it.

I'm not sure I can quantify the harm, especially in contrast to the benefits of decarbonization, but large batteries are heavier, and heavier vehicles:

  - increase road wear
  - increase road fatalities due to larger momentum in collisions
  - require more raw materials for the batteries
  - result in more component wear, mainly tires

Gross Vehicle Weight: Model 3 is 100 pounds lighter than BMW 3 series.

https://www.truecar.com/compare/bmw-3-series-vs-tesla-model-...

Remarkably close. The Model 3 is light all things considered.

Also is gross vehicle weight the right metric? That's the maximum rated operating weight with cargo, passengers and fuel. Curb weight seems more appropriate for a 1:1 comparison.

Is momentum actually what matters in collisions?

Consider a 9 000 pound car at 50 mph. If you are standing there and that hits you you are going to die or be seriously injured.

Compare to a large freight train hitting you at 1 mph. A bit of Googling suggests that the largest freight train had a mass of around 140 000 000 pounds.

The momentum of that freight train would be more than 300 tims the momentum of the car (and the kinetic energy would be 6 times that of the car). Yet a free standing person hit be that train probably won't be killed or even seriously injured by the collision.

Where does the energy come from to mine the materials and to build the large battery and massive truck? How about the energy needed to charge the large battery each and every day?

The same place where stuff comes from, duh!

1. Big “if” on decarbonised electricity. 2. There are a number of other side effects unrelated to carbon emissions that come from driving around in a vehicle that weighs 5 tons. Battery capacity scales linearly with weight, but weight scales exponentially against wear and tear on road surfaces.

Perspective: 5 tons is the lower limit for the US shipping registry.

Just building on this point. Over the last decade or two, it's become real popular to believe that nothing can be made truly carbon-neutral, and the only thing to be done is to constantly shame each other into feeling guilty and using less.

This is false. Completely and utterly false. And it's highly ineffective, as people will overwhelmingly prioritize comfort/happiness over the abstract concept of carbon production. All this really achieves is making the shamers feel like they're doing something, without actually really doing anything.

Energy is one of the fundamental resources underpinning literally everything used by humanity. Energy can be produced/captured in a carbon-neutral manner, and energy can be used to sequester carbon produced by processes that are not carbon-neutral, resulting in effective carbon-neutrality for those processes. And we have oh-so-much clean energy constantly reaching the surface of our planet. Significantly more than would be needed even if every person in the world had the energy consumption of a typical American.

So let's not be dumb about this. Shaming others into using less does not solve the fundamental issue. Solving the fundamental issue solves the fundamental issue. If you truly care about reducing humanity's carbon impact (and if we're not dumb about it, unwinding it too!), please write to your representatives advocating for carbon-neutrality legislation and carbon-neutral energy production. Encourage others to eschew the useless "carbon shaming" approach and focus on the fundamentals. Most typical consumers would simply be apathetic to this approach, but threaten to take away their comforts, and they will fight you. And they wouldn't be wrong to.

somehow a huge chunk of RAM workforce is forced to build a EV truck that is clearly not a good product in many ways.

EVs are great. But not the way they are being built today. Feels like the first movers are making a quick buck.

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