As BFD readers may know, I’m not exactly an electric car evangelist. It’s not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with EVs as vehicles, I’m just not buying the “environmental” hype. There is little convincing evidence that EVs are in any way more “environmentally sound” than modern internal combustion vehicles.
From an emissions point of view, road transport is one of the least of our putative worries: globally, road transport accounts for just under 12% of CO2 emissions. And an EV still has to be charged with electricity that is almost certainly (and for the foreseeable future) generated with old-fashioned coal and gas-power.
But EVs are responsible for a whole lot of other pollution, especially CO2, during their manufacture. This is mostly related to their batteries, which consume vast amounts of coal-fired energy in their manufacture. So much so that environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg writes that, “Just producing the battery … can emit almost a quarter of the greenhouse gases emitted from a petrol car across its entire lifetime”. An analysis by the Wall Street Journal found that a Tesla generates 65% more emissions than a RAV 4, even before its first drive. Even the most efficient batteries take about three years of driving before they conquer the massive carbon deficit they start with.
They’re not much more environmentally-friendly at the other end of their very short life span.
Industry data shows that the service life of lithium batteries used in electric vehicles is generally 5 to 8 years, and the service life under warranty is 4 to 6 years. That means, tens of thousands of electric car batteries will soon need to be discarded or recycled, and millions more down the road.
According to the latest data from China Automotive Technology and Research Center, the cumulative decommissioning of China’s electric car batteries reached 200,000 tons in 2020 and the figure is estimated to climb to 780,000 tons by 2025.
EV batteries can make a lot of very toxic pollution when they’re thrown away.
According to Li Yongwang, a chemical engineering expert in China, pollution caused by NEV batteries is very likely far worse than the exhaust pollution from gasoline-run vehicles.
If they are buried or discarded at will, Li said, they are not only toxic for the environment but they are a direct danger to people’s lives given they can explode from heat.
But surely they can be recycled?
There are currently two different methods for recycling electric car batteries. One is to recover valuable raw materials after disassembly. The other is secondary utilization in other fields.
At present, automobile power batteries are mainly divided into two types: ternary lithium batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries.
Ternary lithium batteries have a relatively high content of rare metals such as nickel, cobalt, and manganese, and it’s more worthwhile to recover these.
The main ingredients in lithium iron phosphate batteries are lithium and iron, which are less worthy of recovering. This type of battery is often recycled through secondary utilization, as its service life is longer.
In China, at least, such recycling is beset by government inertia and consequent black marketeering. The CCP has officially mandated that EV manufacturers establish battery recycling channels. The only problem is that there is little financial incentive for doing so. The black market pays more than the officially set prices.
The secret companies are able to cut costs by evading regulatory measures, according to China Energy News. As a result, the official companies cannot even obtain any batteries. An industry expert disclosed to Beijing News that about 80 percent of end-of-life power batteries flow into black markets for recycling.
The Epoch Times
“Evading regulatory measures” invariably translates to “pollution”. For instance, an illegal lead smelting plant in Liaoning Province was found with 330 tons of waste batteries. Workers at the plant simply dismantled the batteries and dumped 50 tons of sulfuric acid directly onto nearby land.
But, hey, your average climate change warrior driving their Electric Smugmobile doesn’t see any of that shocking pollution. Out of sight, out of mind.
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