The Dawn Of The E-Vehicle Battery Eco-Disaster
It’s all beginning to dawn on the greens: the looming environmental disaster of e-vehicle batteries.
When it comes to lithium-ion e-vehicles and the environmentalist greens and profiteers:
- They know it’s a disaster.
- We know it’s a disaster.
- They know that we know that they know it’s a disaster.
- But they still pretend it isn’t.*
The huge environmental problems of e-cars are emerging
Now it’s beginning to dawn on the greens: They’ve got a colossal environmental problem in the works – a problem they were warned about long ago and one they’ve refused to believe was real because it clashed with their vision of a green utopia.
Greens playing them down, hoping for solutions
At the moment they are playing it down, insisting solutions to avert the lithium-ion battery’s environmental problem will be found in time.
But they are clearly getting uneasy about it as the astronomical dimensions of the problem of producing 200 million lithium-ion car batteries – and the later disposing of them – are becoming undeniable.
Expert: “Urgent environmental issue”
Not long ago, Nobel Prize-winning Japanese chemist and lithium battery researcher Akira Yoshino warned that solutions for recycling these batteries were sorely needed and that it was becoming “an urgent environmental issue.”
Huge mess for the next generations
E-vehicle batteries, once having served their intended use in e-vehicles – after about 8 years – can be reused for other lower demand purposes – a so-called second life – such as a home battery.
But recycling them is inevitable – and it’s complicated, energy-intensive, and expensive. Nobody knows how many are currently actually recycled, or simply just getting thrown into the landfill.
We’re creating a huge, costly mess for the next generations.
Ending up in the trash “prematurely”
Worse, Claudia Scholz at the Handelsblatt here reports (English) that e-vehicle batteries are already increasingly ending up in the trash – and doing so “prematurely.”
“The e-car problem: thousands of tons of batteries end up in the trash prematurely.”
Already thousands of tons of batteries
The Handelsblatt reports how Matthias Schmidt, managing director of the recycling company Erlos, “is astonished”.
“Actually, his industry had expected to be inundated with batteries from recently produced electric cars only in eight or ten years,” writes the Handelsblatt. “In fact, however, thousands of tons of batteries are already ending up at waste disposal companies.”
‘We would never have imagined the quantities that would accumulate after such a short time,’ says Schmidt.
“His company alone and competitor Duesenfeld, both of which specialize in recycling car batteries, are recycling more than 4,000 tons of batteries from almost all e-models this year – including those that have only recently come onto the market.”
The dangerous half-knowledge of green central planners
But that’s the way it is with these self-anointed masterminds, who at their universities were immunized against comprehending the dangers of their half-knowledge. What follows are how disastrous leftist ideas run their course:
- They’re convinced it’s a brilliant idea
- Ignore signs and warnings there is a disaster
- Play down the disaster as it emerges
- Acknowledge the disaster, but insist solutions are coming
- Move the goalposts when a solution doesn’t arrive
- Deny the disaster no matter what. But if you can’t:
- Then admit there is a disaster
- And then insist it was never your idea to begin with
- Hope it will be forgotten
- Blame it all on others if it isn’t
*A variation of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s original quote: “We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they, of course, know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying.”
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D. Boss
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While I do not doubt the insanely dangerous problem of dead Li batteries, the image used for the article is of Lead Acid batteries, which are easily and infinitely recyclable, unlike Li ion batteries. (and lead and sulfuric acid are not flammable either but a lithium fire is far worse than almost anything else)
Bait and switch is something the idiot greens do….. bad image choice in my view.
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Barry
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Totally agree,hard to take anything seriously if the author can’t be bothered to get a pic of an actual lithium battery. The problem with little things like this are it makes all deniers look like we are trying to manufacture evidence just like the greenies do. In the end these practices do more harm than good.
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Frank Toth
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We have had so many free energy inventions from Tesla and on, that we should have been energy independent for 100yrs. Nuclear energy was invented during the early 60’s at the height of the cold war, but yet at the same time of this invention, they had made a Thorium reactor that was clean safe and produced distilled water, and radio isotopes for medical use, but they could not make fissionable materials for bombs, so that tech was left by the way side.
Thorium now is much more in the works by independent makers, and you can look it up on YouTube, as well check out TEDx for more info.
We only need oil to lubricate machinery, and even then petroleum based oil is not needed as much, Castor oil is much better, and withstands high pressure and metal to metal wear. I speak from experience, as I have used Castor in 30K rpm motors, Model Jet engines, and they ran smooth and lasted a very long time.
I believe all batteries should be re-cycled as much as possible, and all material re-used, but the current powers that be are not interested because there is no profit in it.
Tesla had the right idea, but big money could not put a meter on it! SO SAD!!
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Phil Inman
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Well Frank, Why should we not burn oil, gas and coal? You don’t buy into this Atmospheric CO2 is toxic do you? They used to tell us we were running out of oil. Now using oil is destroying the earth. One way or another seems like the goal is increased misery for the masses. Best information I’ve seen, contrary to alarmist fairy tales, the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere cannot be shown to be of human origin. Any part of that increase that is from people is so small , according to Murry Salby, as to be undetectable. Electric cars should not get any of my hard earned money. Nor should these STUPID windmills and such. Total Scam. You mostly right about the alternative reactor you mentioned, the molton salt reactor, But I don’t think it was thorium. Electricity is great at powering stationary motors. But for transportation? Not so much. And the notion that recycling of the batteries for profit is some kind of crime? Where did you learn about the world? All I care is that we who don’t want electric cars, windmills, solar farms and worse, should not be forced to pick up the tab for scamming politicians and unscrupulous venders. Just do a little more research on the gasoline vs battery automobiles. And get over the idea that coal and all are that bad. Give me a break. Now they talking about more trillions spent on city size batteries? Only just a little dumber than putting a battery in a car instead of a tank of gas.
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STEVYN R DEMBO
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Former Tesla co-founder comes up with battery recycling solution…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/09/17/tesla-cofounders-battery-recycling-startup-wins-investment-from-amazon-climate-fund/?sh=588c7fa61a3e
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Doug Harrison
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Steyn R Denbo Nowhere in that article does it say that they can recycle Li batteries. It only says that the usual suspects are giving each other money for a start up that might, one day produce a profitable means of recycling them and did you see that pig flying by?
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Phil Inman
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Not as though the pigs didn’t see a bonanza first in getting subsidies for green products that can’t face the heat of competition. I’m sure they were early aware of and have been since the beginning racing to get patents which will lead to sole provider Federal and State mandates. Just more of the same from “the traditional enemies of truth and freedom?
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T. C. Clark
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I have one of those made in China small hand lights….the micro sized on-off switch would not cut off after some use…I opened the light and there is one Li cell inside and a micro sized circuit board….I attached a couple of copper wires to replace the switch….amazing light from such a small bulb ….I also have a charging device which is obviously another hand sized Li cell….all of these will end up in a landfill one day.
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B.R.
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I have a good, electrical engineer friend who specialties in electronic battery management. We talked a couple years ago about lithium batteries. He indicated at that time, most lithium battery waste was exported to China and warehoused for lack of recycling (technological or otherwise) or options for disposal. He indicated that every few years, these facilities would inevitably burn down. New ones would simply be constructed. Can anyone speak to the environmental impact of combusted lithium??
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Tom
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All this liberal, socialist, green nonsense is always a disaster created for future generations to worry about. Just like endless government debt and laws that end up being disastrous…it’s always the next generation’s concern. This is how politicians and many corporations work…taking no responsibility for the messes they create.
I say dump the batteries in the same landfills as the putrid windmills and solar panels are dumped into. Then the liberals of the future can worry about them. After the great war (WW3) or after gates and schwab clear off the planet of people they don’t want around, future generations millions years from now will dig them up and declare they are priceless artifacts.
The costs to make these things, especially the batteries will only escalate as the ingredients become more scare. But then maybe knuckleheads like Musk are going to send equal opportunity demanding woman and minorities to the moon to mine rare earths.
In any way you measure energy, the green movement is dragging the world into the abyss of less energy and more stone age living. It is more than obvious that unfettered stupidity, unabated arrogance and ultra greed are driving the world to insanity.
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