One issue with electric cars now solved...

[Fielder 3,724]

The land owner(s) gonna be rich...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12504841/Worlds-largest-lithium-deposit-McDermitt-Caldera-US.html

[dave2013 1,148]

The article also states:

"Over a year, producing 60,000 tons of lithium could devastate the surrounding environment - up to 30 million tons of earth needs to be dug. 

This is more than the annual amount of dirt dug up to produce all coal output of all but seven or eight US states

In May 2016, dead fish were found floating in China's Liqi River, where a toxic chemical leaked from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine.

Cow and yak carcasses were also found floating in the river, likely killed by drinking the contaminated water.

Lithium extraction also harms the soil and causes air contamination."

********************

It also takes massive amounts of water, scarce in the desert locations where lithium ore is found, to extract the lithium from the ore.  Massive amounts of waste is produced just to extract a small amount of lithium.

The batteries also need cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper, manganese, steel, aluminum, and other materials.  Many of these materials are not sourced from North America or Europe, but from countries such as China, South Africa, and Congo.

Mining production will have to increase immensely in order to produce enough materials to make millions of EV batteries.  This doesn't count the huge battery banks that are necessary for intermittent renewable sources of energy such as wind turbines and solar panels.

Vast amounts of fossil fuel energy will be required to mine, refine, process, and produce the batteries, not to mention the production of big wind turbines and solar panels.

This trend towards EVs and renewable energy seems to be inevitable, so I hope that more of the mining and production can be done in North America, Europe, and Japan, as opposed to other countries that are not so reliable and not so friendly.

Recycling can recover much of the original source materials, so this needs to be ramped up on a huge scale.

There is no free lunch.

Dave

[Fielder 3,724]

Indeed. To be sure.

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

Locking now because I know where this one’s headed, same place as they always head when these topics pop up.