Resource burden of electric vehicles set to triple by 2050 Demand for raw materials to make electric vehicles will triple by 2050, while lithium-ion batteries could account for more than half the total resources needed for the auto industry by the same date, research from Japan has found. Batteries account for about half of all resources consumed in battery electric vehicle production …
"It would simply mean that vehicles would accumulate miles more quickly & need to be replaced sooner."
I was thinking the same thing. The cars would need to be built to a higher spec. The venerable Ford Crown Victoria that was the staple of police departments is one tough car. After police departments retired them, taxi drivers/companies would pick them up second hand. For something more suited to purpose, a London Black cab might be a better overall design.
Yes, weather and road salt will make a large difference. And some powertrains last a long time. My pickup is 32 years old; the engine (Toyota's famous 22RE) is Just Fine, but even here in a semi-arid climate where roads are untreated there's some body rust.
Car sharing, however, would significantly increase wear and tear on all components — engine, drivetrain, suspension, interior, etc — and has many limitations. So I'm not convinced it would make a large difference in the number of vehicles.
Spot on. Most cars these days are much less likely to rust into a pile of shavings after 5 years (1970's Rovers and Jaguars, I'm looking at you)
My dearly beloved 1995 Jaguar XJ, by contrast, passed away after a full 25 years and 310,000 miles on the clock. Wipes tear from eye....
Depends on what you mean by ambitious. The government in the UK are busy foisting EVs on a market that's not really appreciative of the higher cost, and poor bang for buck that's not unusual with EVs. A change of administration won't be likely to change the way they're doing it, of implementing draconian fines on car makers if they don't sell the bureaucrats's chosen ration of EV to ICE.
Regardless of the nominally changed "end date" for ICE vehicles, it'll be those fines of up to £15k per ICE car that'll ensure that car makers won't sell ICE cars within a few years. Does that count as ambitious?
"When Sir Humphry uses the term "ambitious", it generally means the politician runs away from it."
Also, in a different sense, when he says, '...very courageous, Minister."
'Yes, Minister' was one of the best documentaries to come out of the UK.
>And they've conveniently omitted the insane amount of mining and drilling and refining which occur over the lifetime of an IC vehicle.
That's a big part of the problem with regards to the EV-vs-ICE debate. The logistics (for both construction and operation) are extremely different, and they are both very complex. This makes it very, very easy to make one's favorite tech look better than the other - just pick which aspects to focus on, and which ones to omit entirely. With careful choice, you can make either option appear anywhere from utterly insane to utterly obvious.
Especially the amount of cobalt that goes into petrol refining. That is not recoverable unlike the small amounts used in EV batteries.
This site is clearly anti-EV. Yet, there is another article about the extra load that AI will put on DC's and by implication, the grid...
Connect the dots people.
IMHO, AI can go to hell. As for EV's? I wanna keep breathing in all that unburnt fuel.
Yep, there are at least a half dozen different options in various stages of development, some within a few years of entering mass production others only leaving the research stage to being product development.
There's approximately zero chance that lithium batteries will be in the majority of EVs a decade from now, let alone by 2050.
There are some reasonable arguments to make like how we need more electrical generation capacity and more grid capacity (though that would also be influenced by better/cheaper batteries as that removes the obstacles to renewables as base load and reduces if not eliminates the need for additional long distance high voltage capacity) as well as more practical considerations like "what do you do about people who don't have private parking spaces". Worrying about lithium resources in 2050 would be like 100 years ago worrying about running out of black paint by 1950 because almost all the cars being produced then in the US (i.e. Ford model T/model A) were painted black.
"There are some reasonable arguments to make like how we need more electrical generation capacity and more grid capacity"
There is an enormous amount of electricity used to refine crude oil into transportation fuels. One would think that somebody getting an EV would be trading miles driven in an ICEV for miles in an EV at a higher efficiency. A petrol car also must be provided with petrol that come from a refinery. An EV is agnostic when it comes to how the electricity is generated. For EV owner with their own home, solar could be viable due to charging an EV and being able to fully use their solar installation.
What is an issue is distribution. Unless more people put solar on their rooftop and feed power into the grid, more electricity will need to come down the lines to feed neighborhoods. There's already off-peak tariffs to encourage people to charge in the wee hours which is a very good deal for the power companies. They fill up the late night "bathtub" without having to improve what they already have. I'd expect that to change over time, but not overnight. It makes no sense to radically alter the grid in anticipation unless government gets involved and forces faster change than the market can adapt to efficiently. There's just too many variables. Increasing electricity rates will encourage more people to install solar to some degree. Others will find ways of using power more efficiently such as spending money to install a heat pump in place of traditional HVAC since rising rates will make the move pay back faster. People may also go back to heating and cooling a bedroom and snug rather than the entire house which is how is was done many years ago (not AC, just heat) and a big reason why home had/have so many doors.
When we get cost effective utility scale batteries I think it will make a lot of sense to site some in most electrical substations. Then the feed in from attached solar or wind can charge them during periods of lower usage, and they can be discharged during periods of usage. Basically like someone using rooftop solar with batteries in their own home, but on a larger scale. You'd pay a fixed price for the grid connection (maintaining the lines, the substations, the batteries, etc.) and a variable price for the net energy you use or generate.
That would mean less demand from higher voltage lines feeding those substations that have enough attached solar or wind inflow so less need to upgrade those lines, and in turn less need to upgrade the even higher voltage lines serving higher up the chain.
That's why I don't buy all the grave predictions about how we're going to have to double the capacity of the US national grid because of all the energy moving from ICE to EV and natural gas furnaces/water heaters/stoves to electric over the coming decades. We will probably have less power traveling across those interstate scale high voltage lines than we do now.
The 8 minute charging time only quotes hitting 80%, but doesn't mention where the battery is starting from. If one assumes that it's in the 10% region, that's too fast. More effort should be put into safety and longevity which are often polar opposites of charge time and energy density. The time it takes to get to the loo, conduct business and return to the car on a journey is more than 8 minutes. I find my stops with an ICEV on long trips are right around 20 minutes if I'm not having a meal and 45 minutes for a quick bite. To me, it seems more sensical to get EV's to the point where they will drive at highways speeds for around 4 hours, the typical time between meals, and recharge in 20 minutes on a suitably fast charger and 40 minutes on a charger that's a step down so there time for a meal and a bit of a savings on prices. Outside of long trips, a low parasitic power draw when charging on an AC plug is important so more energy goes into the battery rather than being used to run a computer that's not doing beneficial things for the owner.
UNLESS..... [drum roll please]
unless the site has a load of batteries that buffer the grid. Gridserve's 1st Charging Hub at Braintree in Essex is just like that. A limited grid supply is buffered by a large battery.
As an EV owner, the 19 minutes it took for my car to charge from 16% to 87% is pretty fast. Just time to have a comfort break and get a coffee. That's plenty fast enough for me.
Comfort break? I remember the first time I heard the expression (at a corporate interview). Took me a while to work out what was being said. Being autistic doesn’t help, for god’s sake just say what is meant instead of clouding things in fluffy language. Of course I wasn’t expecting them to ask if I wanted a piss/slash, but asking if I needed the toilet would have been fine.
"Comfort break? "
So many sites will balk at the usual words people use so alternates have come along that mean exactly the same thing. I know one that bans the word "pee" and "piss". Maybe I should see if the old "urinate" is cricket with them.
"Comfort Break" is also all inclusive since it can mean eliminating waste and also for ladies to take care of other health needs as required. My joints get sore after a long time driving so getting out and walking around is also done for comfort.
I see driving on a long road trip as the driving and stopping from time to time as a big part of the adventure. If I just want to get from A to B, there are alternatives that can be faster, cheaper and more comfortable. With my chronic photo habit, driving lets me feed the monkey on my back. As a domestic terrorist (just going by what they tell me), flying is very unpleasant since I'm "randomly" selected for extra screening every time and my checked luggage is thoroughly gone through so I've had to stop using commercial airplanes.
"it is going to need a VERY fat wire connecting the chargng station to the grid "
Some stations/charging companies are adding batteries as a buffer to keep from getting hit with demand charges. EV's don't stay at their max charging rates for all that long and really taper off as they approach an 80% charge and over. There's often a premium price for using a 350kW charger vs. a 150kW charger so an EV owner needs to balance speed of charge with how long their stop might be to be the most cost efficient and avoid idling fees if their car finishes before they return.
In about 65 years we went from the first successful powered heavier than air flight to landing on the moon. In about 40 years we went from theory to nuclear bombs. I'd say there a good chance we can develop better batteries before 2050. Samsung already has new formulations in testing, as do the Chinese.
Batteries are but one part of the EV equation.
Existing power grids will require extensive upgrades (especially for those fast charge times) requiring even more resources. More copper than we currently mine just for starters. If renewable generation is required (which it will be) there will also be massive demand for the rare Earths used in wind turbines.
Firstly, almost all batteries being made today have a lifetime that exceeds the average age that we keep cars in Northern Europe. In southern Europe they tend to keep them a couple of years longer, but the battery would have an easier life in Spain than in Norway.
Secondly, we are already at a point in technology where 50% of new car designs have dumped the nickel and cobalt. Higher spec / performance / cost cars still use NMC batteries, but the newer “affordable” smaller and more realistic cars are using LFP.
Thirdly we are also seeing Sodium being used in smaller cars in China, and this technology is at its growth stage, it will improve dramatically in the next 5 years and will displace the current LFP role, as the current LFP (with manganese) will replace NMC.
In 10 years Li-NMC will only be in specialist applications such as aircraft.
> Firstly, almost all batteries being made today have a lifetime that exceeds the average age that we keep cars in Northern Europe.
Whilst many may change their vehicle every couple of years, most vehicles on the road are secondhand, because that 2 year old car is used by someone else for 2 years before being sold on. Hence most vehicles actually have a lifetime (manufacture to scrap) of 12~15 years. Given batteries general last 5~7 years….
The batteries in my solar array have a guaranteed life of 25 years with an assumed charge/discharge cycle every day, and the Q4 car is similar IIRC.
UK vehicle financing tends to be 4 years before buy/return decisions, so likely 12 years before even possibly being scrapped.
I think your numbers are suspect...
"so likely 12 years before even possibly being scrapped."
Initially, the expectation was that an EV battery pack would last 10 years in the car and another 10 in a stationary application. That's changed up as batteries have improved and more data comes in. 10 years is still a good expectation in the car, but since charge and discharge currents for many stationary applications aren't as demanding, the packs can last much longer. While one would need to replace a pack in a car, the old pack will still have a good resale value that offsets that cost.
I've been hunting for a used EV pack to use for storage at my house and they are impossible to find at a price I can afford. The older very modular Tesla packs are top of the market since they are easy to work on. The newer 3/Y packs are a nightmare and less expensive per kWh, but still dear.
>Given batteries general last 5~7 years….
No, they don't.
Mine is at 8 years and the drop in capacity is impossible to notice without paying extremely close attention. I also nearly always charge to 100%, which in theory should be bad.
And that's a battery from 8 years ago. Now they're better.
Ahh, the old "batteries only last 5-7 years" crap. The batteries that perform the worst for number of cycles are Li-NMC, the smallest number of recharges before they drop to 80% capacity in the market is 3000 cycles, so that's charging from empty to full, every working day, for 10 years. Spread your disinformation elsewhere, the grown ups are playing here.
So the do gooders didnt think that one through did they!!!!!!!!! and what about the recycling of the batteries, and when your shiny 10 year old buggy no longer can be maintained as they dont make that battery anymore as obsolete rules state 5yrs after model obsolescence or a software update screws your battery.
Don't forget your car is now just a computer with an electric motor!
> So the do gooders didnt think that one through did they!!!!!!!!
Remember the primary motivation for EVs was tailpipe emissions and impact this has on street level air quality, not reduced use of fuel.
Somewhere along the line the green washers linked wind/solar/nuclear with EVs and thus started to make questionable “save the planet” claims…
> Don't forget your car is now just a computer with an electric motor!
It’s actually a battery with wheels…
The headline and article was using 'vehicles' and 'cars' interchangeably... was this ambiguity in the source material?
I ask because in some areas electric bicycles have made a significant dent in the number of small journeys that had been made by car. Cargo bikes can carry and adult, a child or two, and a trolly-worth of shopping.
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