[baobob]

> To manufacture each EV battery, you must process

> 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium

> 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt

> 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, 25,000 pounds of ore for copper

> Digging up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust

> For just - one - battery.

https://twitter.com/brianroemmele/status/1503176565974216710

Would appreciate a fact check if this is anyone's business here

[jjoonathan]

Lithium is storage. You dig it up once. Then you recharge and recharge and, eventually, recycle it. You never emit it into the atmosphere.

Petrol is fuel. You dig it up and burn it into the atmosphere again and again and again for every mile you drive.

[Robin_Message]

My rough and ready sums put 30,000 pounds of petrol through the lifetime of an average ICE car.

Meanwhile, I see numbers like this a lot and they always seem to trend high. You're talking 250 tons of ores to make perhaps 250-1000kg of the car; an efficiency of between 0.1 and 0.4 percent over some pretty straightforward, widely available ores. That doesn't really stack up with the numbers you get if you look at the efficiency of commercial ores for those minerals.

So I think the mining is comparable between battery and petrol, but as others point out, you can recycle the battery; the petrol had become problematic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

If nothing else, you could grind up the batteries and treat them as ore for any single one of the minerals used, and by your numbers you'd be way better off.

[DeRock]

> My rough and ready sums put 30,000 pounds of petrol through the lifetime of an average ICE car.

My calculation shows ~50,000 pounds. 200,000 mile lifetime at 25 MPG = 8000 gallons * 6.30 pounds/gallon fuel density[0] = 50,400

Also keep in mind that gasoline is a refined product.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Density)

[sigma_ligma]

This is basically just an appeal to big numbers. "500,000 pounds? That's a lot! ICE cars must certainly be less polluting. I mean, just look at the numbers: you have to dig up FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS of Earth's crust! FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND! That's HALF A MILLION!"

Proper comparisons look at both sides.

[gnarbarian]

They can be recycled once we have a large install base

[washbrain]

Can they? I've seen people make this claim, but I've not seen it actually substantiated. Who has successfully recycled one, what was their yield, what was the cost?

[jjoonathan]

The techniques that separate lithium from ore are extreme overkill for separating lithium from dead batteries. Recycling lithium is like mining lithium on easy mode: better yield and cost. If an EV can justify the raw resource extraction within one car lifetime -- and it can, handily -- it justifies the recycling. We should expect recycling to be (average EV lifetime) behind on the scale curve, though, which will make it a prime source for anti-EV talking points until the market saturates in a decade or two.

> washbrain

Ha, nice try.

[gnarbarian]

https://www.tesla.com/support/sustainability-recycling already happening

[washbrain]

Cool! What are their yields? What are their costs?

[joosters]

i.e. they can't be recycled now.

We judge companies on their actions now, not on what they might do, or might be possible in the future.

[gnarbarian]

as I mentioned above it's already happening https://www.tesla.com/support/sustainability-recycling already happening