[cogman10]

Well let me ease some of your fears.

Lithium batteries are less toxic than most other battery chemistries (including lead acid batteries). The major toxic portion of lithium batteries comes in the form of production, but not the actual materials involved in the battery.

The battery tech also isn't changing as much as you might think. Don't get me wrong, it is getting better, but a lot of that isn't really by changing the underlying formula for the batteries, but rather tweaking the processes for creating the structure of the battery.

That's not to say that you want to inhale the smoke of a burning lithium battery. But these batteries don't have any heavy metals in them. The materials they do have tend to already be in abundance in the environment. A major part of the reason for that is these batteries do need to be cheap. Heavy metals drive up the price.

[qsera]

You paint a happy path. But the devil is in the details that often come to light only much later.

Sure, we could end up with a tech that have really no pollution potential. But there is much higher chance that we would end-up with something bad, that would go into production with a promise of "proper handling and re-cycling", but would never end up getting done...

[cogman10]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that there was no pollution potential or problems.

My point was primarily that the chemicals within the lithium ion batteries are themselves pretty common on the surface and not forever poisons like lead.

My other point was that the major issue around these was primarily the chemicals used to purify and refine. Those can be nasty especially if not treated well.

But all things considered, the risks and potential damage from mishandling the recycling and production of LiPos is a lot lower than the risks that surround things like recycling lead acid batteries.

[qsera]

But scale matters too. I wouldn't be too worried if we are not going to eventually replace all fossil fuels with batteries.

That is a lot of batteries..

[cogman10]

By volume, there will necessarily be less batteries than there is oil extracted and burned in a week.

I think if you are worried about pollutants, you should be worried about the fumes released every time you start up a fossil fuel engine.

Yes, it's a lot of batteries, but they are batteries with 10 to 20 years of service life as opposed to ~1 week worth of fuel transported, refined, and burned.

When it comes to energy, there's no perfect solution. IMO, LiPos are the best of bad options. Yes they pollute, but they pollute a lot less, particularly over their lifetime.

[qsera]

> you should be worried about the fumes released every time you start up a fossil fuel engine...

I am worried about both. Why are you picking sides? At lease fossil fuels started slow. Here we are switching to an unknown solution(s) on a massive scale..

>but they are batteries with 10 to 20 years of service life as opposed to ~1 week worth of fuel transported, refined, and burned. Yes they pollute, but they pollute a lot less, particularly over their lifetime.

CO2 at least have a natural mechanism by which it gets removed. And the affects of CO2 accumulation is not as acute. I am not sure about the materials that potentially could be used.

Also you say they pollute less. But as I said, the devil is in the details. Remember that the lead that used to get added to gas turned out to be very bad. So may be it is something like that that would be added to the battery chemistry to make it last longer or work better in cold or what not...

It is disturbing that people are just handwaving such possibilities away. I think that was exactly how we got here. But now doing the same could end up a lot more worse...

[cogman10]

> I am worried about both. Why are you picking sides?

Because we need a way to generate motion and one method is clearly less pollutant and less toxic than the other, EVs.

Obviously bikes would be even better, but those don't have the capacity to transport everything and everyone we need. If there was another even better way to do things I'd be in favor of that. But as it stands, batteries and electric motors are king in terms of low pollution. (Ok, the absolute best is electric trains and trolleys. But those require infrastructure governments are unwilling to build out.)

> At lease fossil fuels started slow. Here we are switching to an unknown solution(s) on a massive scale

IDK what you mean by slow, but as I mentioned before, a very large quantity of fossil fuels are burnt and released into the atmosphere. That's not a slow process. BEVs only potentially release pollution on manufacturing and then give 10 to 20 years of service life. That's an extremely slow pollution release.

> CO2 at least have a natural mechanism by which it gets removed.

One that's much slower than the production. But also CO2 is not the only thing released when you burn fuel. The others are also linked to negative health outcomes. PM2.5 globally is almost entirely related to burning fossil fuels (though it also goes crazy when wild fires rage). It is linked to a wide range of health problems [1]

> Also you say they pollute less. But as I said, the devil is in the details. Remember that the lead that used to get added to gas turned out to be very bad. So may be it is something like that that would be added to the battery chemistry to make it last longer or work better in cold or what not...

A very key detail that made the lead in gasoline particularly dangerous and bad is the fact that gasoline is burned and spewed into the air. That's a detail I think you are missing.

There is no part in the battery lifecycle that involves discharging the chemicals used (except for H2O during the drying process) into the atmosphere or general environment. And that sort of waste is particularly undesirable. The goal of recycling the batteries is to capture as many of the minerals involved as possible.

Even the worst and absolutely most irresponsible form of battery disposal where we just throw them into landfills and they release all their internal chemicals into the landfill isn't an environmental disaster. The landfills are already a swimming pool of toxic materials and it's job is to contain them.

> It is disturbing that people are just handwaving such possibilities away. I think that was exactly how we got here. But now doing the same could end up a lot more worse...

What's disturbing is you aren't using critical thinking. You are fear mongering. "There could be some unknown unknown which makes these actually bad". Your argument could be used for why we SHOULD put lead into gas. "Well, we don't know what relies on that lead in the environment, if we remove it we could end up damaging lead organisms that have adapted!"

We've thought about it, a lot. Burning fossil fuels is an ongoing global disaster. Batteries would significantly reduce and potentially eliminate the use of fossil fuels. They result in cleaner air, less emissions, and importantly an extremely easy to contain and monitor lifecycle.

Lead acid batteries completely prove this. There are problems with recycling them but those problems are entirely local issues rather than global issue. LiPo, even if they end up being handled irresponsibly, would still end up doing far less damage to the world environment and everyone that isn't directly working with those batteries. We put everything even potentially toxic about the battery in a welded shut cylinder. In 99% of cases, the only way that stuff comes out is someone using force to break open the cylinder.

In the case of fossil fuels, everything is spewed directly into the environment. All the CO2, NOx, CO, randomly created hydrocarbon molecules, unburnt fuel, etc. These things are measurably causing cancer, asthma, heart problems, etc. Every person on the planet is forced to inhale burnt fossil fuels.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266676572...