Electric Vehicle adoption

Batteries with aligned carbon nanotube electrodes may offer huge gains in energy density and lifespan without using as many obscure elements in their production. Add to that the eventual move toward incorporating the batteries into the vehicle body itself, effectively eliminating the weight of the battery pack itself.

Of course, this does not mitigate the issue of tire dust or the obfuscated cost of road maintenance or the environmental impact of pavement itself. But at least there would be a lot less smoke and noise in the neighborhood.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
This is an old thread so I'm not sure if it's still being followed but...Some people claim that when you consider the mining of materials for batteries, the generation of electricity by fossil fuel plants, etc. the adoption of electric vehicles will not, on the whole, be all that beneficial to the environment, if at all. Just wondering what people here think about that as one always has to question the financial motivation someone might have for advocating a particular position.
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Generally I would say that view is very well subsidised by the oil industry (particularly in the US). The environmental impact of batteries in EV's gets talked about a lot, but you never hear about laptops, iPhones and the like being discussed in the same way (that use a lot of the same core components BTW).
What we need to do is get better at recycling batteries (and other raw materials) and moving away from fossil fuels. We have done enough damage already.
 
mac_in_tosh said:
This is an old thread so I'm not sure if it's still being followed but...Some people claim that when you consider the mining of materials for batteries, the generation of electricity by fossil fuel plants, etc. the adoption of electric vehicles will not, on the whole, be all that beneficial to the environment, if at all. Just wondering what people here think about that as one always has to question the financial motivation someone might have for advocating a particular position.
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There’s been life-cycle analysis papers written on this. Volvo themselves compared their EV to the ICE version of the same car and came to the conclusion that while EVs start on the back foot, so to speak, they will hit a break even point where the EV will pull ahead in CO2 emissions, and just keep going. For their analysis, they looked at it where cleaner energy mixes will push the break even point to 30k mi, while the global energy mix was around 68k mi (110,000km). Other attempts to provide analysis have given ranges as low as under 10k miles as the break even point in places with really clean energy (similar to where I live), and up to around 80k miles for dirty energy mixes like West Virginia’s that are almost entirely coal.

As others have pointed out, being able to reclaim the metals in batteries, or even repurpose old batteries for storage purposes is part of the process. Improvements to the energy mix after the car is purchased can bring down the break even point. If you are already looking into rooftop solar, that helps too.
 
Aptera, which has been producing good solid vaporware for coming up on 2 decades, has an EV that is extremely aero and light and affixed with solar cells which they say can fully charge the car in a couple days and help extend the range. Somehow they have never managed to gain traction in the market, though.
 
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