The road to hell is paved with lithium-ion batteries

Those who have been to a dense Asian major city knows how awful walking on the streets are due to heat, noise, gas generated by cars and motorbikes.

Now go to Shenzhen China where by my estimation 80%+ of cars and 100% of motorbikes on the road are fully electric. The difference is night and day. Streets are way cooler, less noisy, and have little to no air pollution. It's honestly incredible and there is no way people in Shenzhen want to go back to a world where gas cars roam around the streets.

It's hard to describe the feeling of walking on the streets where the vast majority of vehicles are electric. It feels very futuristic. You just never want to go back.

Walking tour of Shenzhen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFjw_omzE_U

The video doesn't capture the feeling of the air and temperature but it at least captures how quiet vehicles are despite being surrounded by them.

> still require around 2.5 cubic meters of water per vehicle produced.

I always wonder about these statistics: almost every article about an industrial process from silicon fabs to datacentres to cars tuts about water usage. Presumably, while I could believe it's made somehow unavailable to other users (evaporation? pollution? thermally?), it's not bring destroyed entirely and it's never clear what "usage" actually entails.

It slams Tesla over and over… but then says this:

“ Tesla boasts a 92% battery recycling rate at its Gigafactories, a statistic that obscures a brutal reality. This only applies to batteries they directly handle, representing a fraction of the coming waste tsunami.”

Citing Tesla for rage bait, then ignoring it where convenient.

The article completely passes over the costs for the alternatives.