I'm all for electric cars but....

swain90

swain90

swain90

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Hi All,

Didn't really want to put this in Motors as this is more an environmental question rather specifically on the cars.

My question is, what's going to happen in 10 years time with all the batteries from these electric cars?

I'm all for helping save the environment, but are these batteries going to cause more problems later down the line?
 
At face value when properly recycled:

From there, a mechanical process breaks the batteries down into six different parts: plastic, copper, aluminum, stainless steel, cobalt, and lithium salt concentrate. Once the battery is broken down, these separated parts go into completely new products. Unlike the recycling of other batteries, 100% of a lithium-ion battery eventually goes into another product. So not only is it safer to recycle these products, but failing to do so is simply a waste.
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The production of those batteries I believe is more polluting than the disposal (recycling).

EDIT: This particularly pertains to the Panasonic 18650 calls used in the Tesla - but largely others will be a similar story.
 
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They'll be recycled. There's still plenty off usages for them when they are no longer good for cars.
And then you can recycle them after that.
 
Same as all the laptop batteries.


So most dumped a few recycled. Probbaly a larger protion recycked as they come in a larger bulk package making recycling easier than hubting through trash for all the old laptop battaries though
 
It's probably going to be better than laptop batteries since you won't get consumers throwing them in the bin and instead recyclers will buy in bulk from scrap merchants.
 
This does open the question of how you would scrap an electric car? Your local wreckers isn't going to be geared up to remove and then pass on a 500kg battery.

Don't you only lease the battery in some cars anyway?

Would you have to send the car back to the manufacturer to be disposed of? Its an interesting thought. We are very geared up for disposing of ICE cars, but that system wouldn't work with battery cars.

Not that battery cars are going to ever reach a level of use that it will be any more than a minority problem anyway. Plus, as people said, you're not likely to be able to just toss them in the bin :p.
 
Must admit I've been wondering how much less pollutants will switching to electric cars completely produce.

Presuming we haven't moved primarily to nuclear or renewables surely the increase load on current generation techniques would put a huge dent in the Eco friendliness?

Also could our grid handle all that consumption?
 
Mynight said:
Must admit I've been wondering how much less pollutants will switching to electric cars completely produce.

Presuming we haven't moved primarily to nuclear or renewables surely the increase load on current generation techniques would put a huge dent in the Eco friendliness?

Also could our grid handle all that consumption?
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What we really need is more local generation (and developments in storage medium) to charge from solar (and maybe other renewables) - but combined with that we need an efficient way to store that power until its needed that has a low environmental impact to produce, etc.

EDIT: Hmm pretty much every petrol station has a massive expenses of roof doing nothing wonder why they haven't already started putting solar panels up there and providing charge points.
 
They'll either be re-worked into alternative uses (e.g. home/grid storage), or recycled, as Rroff said.

At the end of life, it's the OEM who is responsible for the batteries (in the EU at least, not 100% sure about elsewhere, but I think it's similar). e.g. 10 years down the line, if a Tesla is to be scrapped, Tesla is responsible for the recycling/reusing of the batteries from the car to be scrapped.
 
Rroff said:
What we really need is more local generation (and developments in storage medium) to charge from solar (and maybe other renewables) - but combined with that we need an efficient way to store that power until its needed that has a low environmental impact to produce, etc.
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Plausible with current tech or do we need a leap forward in other areas as well?
 
Our local council stopped a solar farm because it wouldn't look nice!! I'm all for electric too but generation must be increased and storage must be improved. battery production is still very nasty (toxic) and recycling/disposal is very early days.
I'm sure overall a small ish petrol car will have done less environmental damage over its life and the life of its components. I'm hoping Hydrogen will be a better system.
Andi.
 
Hydrogen always made more sense to me. Little in by-products and you could potentially fill your car just like you would petrol. Although if I remember chemistry well enough it makes for a nice pop when set alight.
 
Hopefully electric vehicles go the Hydrogen Fuel Cell route rather than batteries. Toyota has a commercial HFC car and there are other HFC vehicles too. Recyling a hydrogen tank is basically just reclaiming the metal.

Plus they're more energy dense than any current battery tech as well.

EDIT: Huh. Ninja'd. Yes, there's a lot of existing infrastructure (aka petrol stations) that can be more easily adapted to provide hydrogen than they can batteries. Takes quite a while to charge a battery and deterioration means even if cars were designed for easy swapping of batteries, it wouldn't take off. Whereas with hydrogen you can have a fuel pump similar to petrol, put it in your car and fill up rapidly the same way you do petrol. Installing underground tanks is a hassle for an existing petrol station but fitting an above ground tank and laying a pipe is fine as initial demand would be low. Oh, and the exhaust is water vapour. Can you imagine London where all the vehicles were quiet and just emitted trace amounts of mist from their exhaust? Much improved, imo.

Whenever I've discussed HFC vehicles online, I've oddly enough been ferociously attacked in the responses not by petrol proponents or those that despise environmentalism, but by battery car proponents who have been practically frothing at the idea of something taking away from their beloved battery future. Even when that something is clean.
 
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Mynight said:
Hydrogen always made more sense to me. Little in by-products and you could potentially fill your car just like you would petrol. Although if I remember chemistry well enough it makes for a nice pop when set alight.
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Hydrogen is expensive and dangerous to store. And the biggest problem is we need vast amounts of hydrocarbons (eg polluting fossil fuels) to produce, making it expensive and polluting to do so.
 
petrol stations cant be adapted to use hydrogen.
hydrogen is extremely small and loves to escape, is extremely energy intensive to produce, extremely hard to contain and well has no support from governments. it isn't going to be the future.
There is no hydrogen infrastructure and no plans for any, while battery infrastructure is expanding every day and as said government support and plans already in place for it. with national grid and others already planning, testing etc for the future of battery powered cars.

even with current make up of the national grid, an EV is already greener than ICE across it's entire life span.
 
platypus said:
Hydrogen is expensive and dangerous to store. And the biggest problem is we need vast amounts of hydrocarbons (eg polluting fossil fuels) to produce, making it expensive and polluting to do so.
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Reading up on it a bit more suggests it's not as good as I thought.

Seems to be a lot of conflicting verdicts out there on it :confused:.
 
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