Jefe13

Great read regarding Electric Vehicle green facts truly somethings to think about if you haven't as of yet.

This is an excellent breakdown.

Batteries, they do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.

Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?"

Einstein's formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five-thousand-pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.

There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.

Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium. The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.

All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old, ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery's metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill.

In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle single-use ones properly.

But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive production costs.

A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto 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, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust for just - one - battery."

Sixty-eight percent of the world's cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls, and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?"

I'd like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being 'green,' but it is not. This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades.

There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions.

Going Green" may sound like the Utopian ideal but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth's environment than meets the eye, for sure.

Obviously copied/pasted.

GC996

Ill take an ice engine with biofuel any day.

neilll

You say it’s an excellent breakdown, I would say it barely borders on readable let alone factual. It’s a bunch of mindless statements without analysis.

1. The first portion about the way EVs are powered by the grid discounts the huge efficiency gap between electric and ICE engines. I don’t think anyone believes EVs to be zero emissions. It’s such an embarrassing exclusion to not mention engine efficiency that it shows whoever wrote that paragraph knows almost nothing about the topic or is biased. Electric motors are about 80-90% efficient, compared with 25-40% for ICE. So an EV charged from a grid which is mostly reliant on say, coal still produces less CO2 than a comparable ICE powered car. It’s been demonstrated time and time again by empirical studies that the life long CO2 benefit including manufacturing and disposal tips to Electric vehicles.
2. Oil and gas extraction and transportation is wildly problematic- so to discount the CO2 benefits of EVs because of the other potential humanitarian or environmental concerns about extraction of materials needed for battery production is pretty disingenuous. Oil spills, pipeline spills, the gulf war, oil fields abandoned once dry, questionable middle eastern regimes built on oil … Gas extraction and transportation has just as many humanitarian and environmental “dings” against it as mining. We could solve and mitigate those concerns, and still have EVs.
3. When it comes to any green technology, they are all in their infancy compared to internal combustion engines, battery recycling is advancing at leaps and bounds, wind turbine blades are also beginning to be repurposed. Remember after a hundred years, the most that internal combustion engines could muster was a bleak 25-40% efficiency.

But all of that said, we are all adults who can make informed decisions and decide how much we are dedicated to hopefully treating earth as well as we feel we can. For some people they might do nothing, me, I drive cars I like sometimes that I know aren’t as environmentally friendly as the alternative but I try to be mindful in other ways. What none of us should do its rely on really poor arguments that align with what we wish to be true because it’s convenient.

All that said, I hold out great hope for Porsche’s synthetic fuel production in the future, nothing would make me happier than to fill up my car with some $10 a gallon low emissions juice.

philbert996

Recently I had to fake interest when my neighbor wanted to show me his new Model Y.

It would have been more exciting to check out a new vacuum or dishwasher.

But according to the people who fly private jets to climate summits, he’s saving the planet.
So congrats to him

GC996

Many choose to ignore the massive environmental damage done to the earth from the mining of materials needed to make batteries and iPhones. Not to mention the inability to recycle these things.

I can only imagine the commercials we will see in 10 years about saving the whales and turtles from plastic and aluminum trash in the Pacific and saving something else from the massive waste sites with non-recyclable batteries and electronic trash.

Another inconvenient truth.

The only solution is to stop the madness and buy a 996. I'll take an ice powered 996 running biofuel any day. While its exhaust may smell like a french fry, it's going to be cleaner fuel from start to finish along the process.

​​​​​​

FLT SIXX

It's not true at all that you cannot recycle lithium ion batteries. The technology is already in use in Asia and Europe and making it's way to the US now. I'm an engineer/project manager actively working on just such a project. The technology exists. Batteries are disassembled, discharged, shredded, and separated into their base materials first by physical separation and then by chemical extractions eventually rendering out base materials that can go back into new battery production.

FLT SIXX

The sheer fact that the original writer thinks that Einstein's theory of relativity equating energy to mass times the speed of light squared is the same thing as Newton's second law applied to two equivalent masses discredits the rest of the drivel. The article acts like we aren't already mining all of those materials and again as I said in another post they state FALSELY that we don't know how to recycle li-ion batteries. I am actively working on a project with proven technology to do just that.

I'm not super excited about EV's because the US infrastructure is not ready for everyone to be charging cars all night simultaneously in neighborhoods nor do I like the idea of twiddling my thumbs for 20 minutes every few hours on a long road trip but don't try to pull the wool over my eyes with nonsense either.

GC996

I suspect we can recycle just about anything we want. Just like we can with plastic and aluminum. But, it just so happens we have a trash problem in the Pacific from 3rd world countries that choose to recycle by throwing the trash in the ocean. What makes you think this is going to change?

It won't. Better off with biofuel.

neilll

I don’t think people ignore the damage done by mining they are just cognizant of the fact that petroleum extraction and transportation is massively problematic as well, like I mentioned above; oil tanker spills; underwater extraction catastrophes, gulf war… I would say that to the extent EV fans ignore mining problems; auto enthusiasts are as likely or more likely to ignore oil extraction and transport problems. In fact I don’t think I’m the last 5 years of seeing enthusiasts bicker about EVs and mining I’ve ever seen someone counterpoint the huge environmental impact of oil extraction. (And even biofuels as you mention have a big environmental and good source impact though less humanitarian impact).

I guess to me, I never get why car enthusiasts get their undies all in a bunch about what other people like and buy; and get defensive about the science. Consumer auto use is a big source of CO2 emissions but it isn’t the biggest; there’s other low hanging fruit to advocate for while enjoying your car. And, if other people buy the cars- it really pushes things in the right direction without us having to do squat. We should jump for joy when people buy EVs; it doesn’t effect us at all. And really sports cars seem to be maintaining a decent foothold in the market and gas infrastructure will inevitably be around for at least 50 years.

GC996

Agree with your thoughts. Debate is good.

Still bullish on the 996.

philbert996

Should we be jumping for joy because the government is banning the sale of the internal combustion engine?

Jump for joy that the government NOT consumer demand is forcing the auto industry switch to EVs?

3/98 911 coupe

i agree with you that infra structure is not there. Two quick examples that I saw with my own eyes this week. Planet Hollywood 2500 rooms, 5 chargers. The shops at the Venetian 3
chargers, some places no chargers at all. We saw these because as we went to different hotels, etc to eat watch shows the Uber or shared ride pick ups where sometimes in the garages. I would really like to know how much they were charging in Vegas to these cars on the chargers. Vegas unleaded regular $5.17/gallons, here by my house shell regular $3.75.

Porschetech3

Porsche's new mystery fuel is probably based on synthetic alcohol with some benzine or nitro or other exotic fuel mixed in.

Alcohol is a very good fuel, don't drink it and **** it away, burn it in your ICE !!

https://www.americanenergyindependen...olengines.aspx

Dr_Strangelove

Porsche spends a lot. (A lot.) Of money to find out who buys their cars and what sort of cars those people want to buy. This is your answer.

philbert996

So people want mediocre 4 cylinder SUVs.
Great