Editor’s Note: Ronald Stein, an engineer who has worked for Fluor and Bechtel, is co-founder of Irvine-based PTS Advance, an engineering staffing firm. Stein, along with Todd Royal, this year wrote “Clean Energy Exploitation.” A chapter on electric vehicles is excerpted here. The Business Journal’s annual Special Report on the automotive sector begins on page 25.
Global automakers plan to spend a combined $300 billion on electric vehicles over the next decade, according to Reuters.
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Batteries powering EVs are forecast to make up 90% of the lithium-ion battery market by 2025.
Battery production uses a lot of energy, from the mining extraction of raw materials to the electricity consumed in manufacturing and assembly.
It causes much environmental degradation. Consider dust, fumes, wastewater, and other environmental impacts from cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then add water shortages and toxic spills from lithium mining in Latin America. Altered ecosystems hurt local communities in Central Asia due to nickel mining in Russia. Mining for rare earth minerals significantly impacts air pollution in northeastern China.
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A Tesla lithium EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. Its five key elements—lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite ore and copper—require mining about 90,000 pounds of ore.
To access 90,000 pounds of ore requires digging and moving between 200,000 and over 1.5 million pounds of earth—a rough average of more than 500,000 pounds per battery.
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A recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) showed that batteries that use cathodes with nickel and cobalt, as well as solvent-based electrode processing, have a high environmental impact, including resource depletion, ecological toxicity and global emissions from developing countries with minimal environmental regulations.
Consider adverse effects on human health and humanity atrocities in developing countries with minimal or no labor regulations.
Today, 20% of cobalt is mined by hand in Third World countries like the Congo; it is certainly hazardous to one’s health, associated with a fatal lung disease.
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One of the biggest problems with lithium mining is water.
The South America continent’s Lithium Triangle, which covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, holds more than half the world’s supply of the metal beneath its otherworldly salt flats.
It is also one of the driest places on earth. To extract lithium, miners start by drilling a hole in the salt flats and pumping salty, mineral-rich brine to the surface.
It is a relatively cheap and effective process, but it uses a lot of water. In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, mining activities consumed 65% of the region’s water. That is having a big impact on local farmers – who grow quinoa and herd llamas – in an area where some communities already must get water driven in from elsewhere.
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The Lithium Triangle region is the only region in the world where two species of High Andean flamingos breed and feed.
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In addition to the battery, an EV has an average of 1,000 parts made of plastic, which is made from hydrocarbons.
It’s not the only petroleum product used on EVs: Tires, belts, hoses, electrical wires coated in plastic, power steering fluid, brake fluid, antifreeze, coolant for air-conditioning and transmission fluid.
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By 2021, capacity will exist to build batteries for more than 10 million cars running on 60 kilowatt-hour packs, according to Bloomberg.
Most of the EV battery supply will come from places like China, Thailand and Poland. These are countries that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.
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When a new EV appears in the showroom, it has already caused 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The equivalent amount for manufacturing a conventional car is 14,000 pounds.
Even if the EV is driven for 90,000 miles and the battery is charged by cleaner natural-gas fueled power stations, it will cause just 24% less carbon-dioxide emission than a gasoline-powered car. As the skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg puts it, “This is a far cry from ‘zero emissions.’”
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Both federal and state governments have generous handouts, often easily topping $10,000 per EV.
Furthermore, utilities that stand to benefit from drivers plugging in for an electrical charge are spending tens of millions of dollars on EV charging stations and billing the costs to all ratepayers.
EV drivers do not pay any gas tax, which is highway robbery since they are supposed to pay for the Interstate Highway System. A tax on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is coming.
Who is benefitting from this government benevolence? The people who least need help from other taxpayers and ratepayers. According to research from the University of California at Berkeley, 90% of the tax credits accrue to America’s top income quintile.
Nearly half of all EVs in America reside in one state – California, but they are primarily owned by the highly compensated and highly educated, and driven only about 5,000 miles per year, reflecting that they are only a second vehicle and not the family workhorse.
Polling consistently shows that EV subsidies are wildly unpopular, and most Americans do not even want to give a nickel to pay for someone else’s car purchase.
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EV batteries are only warrantied for eight years and 100,000 miles. Replacement batteries cost anywhere between $6,000 to $9,000.
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An environmental challenge: what to do with batteries once they are exhausted.
We will inevitably need to recycle many of the batteries but harvesting useful materials remains tedious and risky.
More than 1 million electric vehicles were sold worldwide in 2017. It is estimated that those cars alone will ultimately result in 250,000 tons of discarded battery packs.
If those end up in landfills, they run the risk of going through a process called “thermal runaway,” which is basically a chemical reaction in the battery that can cause it to heat up, potentially to the point of burning or exploding. It is the reason why TSA prohibits spare lithium-ion batteries in checked baggage on plane flights.
Addendum:
General Motors in August recalled all its 143,000 Bolts for a fire risk to replace new battery modules. The move, which could cost GM $1.8 billion, came with these recommendations:
• Don’t park your Chevy Bolt within 50 feet of other vehicles in case it catches fire as lithium-ion fires are a chemical reaction they can only be cooled not extinguished.
• Don’t leave your vehicle charging unattended, even if you are using a charging station in a parking deck.
• Only charge the battery to 90%.
• Charge more frequently.
• Avoid depleting the battery below about 70 miles of remaining range.
• Park EVs outside immediately after charging and do not leave them charging indoors overnight.
