> environmental standpoint if we think about that these Lithium--Ion batteries will have to be replaced and recycled every

I am very interested in this question, but those who raise it never have answers about the negative impacts of mining lithium.

For example, the amount of lithium needed for an EV is an order of magnitude less than the amount of steel needed. What is so bad about lithium mining that it's 10x worse than iron mining, pound for pound?

Nobody has ever answered my request for environmental concerns with a concrete environmental lithium mining concern, such as acidification that can sometimes happen with iron mining.

I've researched and researched, found nothing, which leaves me thinking that the worst case scenario for lithium is no worse than the worst case for iron.

Meanwhile, we have such immense documented harms from fossil fuel extraction that nobody ever questions again, or with the same intensity that's reserved for supposedly toxic lithium batteries.

The apparent benefit is massive, so any delay seems to cause massive harm to the environment.

I think we need to flip the question: where is the proof that coal/oil/iron is better for the environment than mining and recycling batteries? (BTW, it's at least 20 years now for grid batteries, with lifetime going up all the time...)

▲ bcrosby95 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Any analysis of EVs vs ICE cars I've seen put EVs at 1.5-2x the carbon footprint to produce, but win out in the long run. My default assumption has always been it comes from the battery pack - I'm not sure what else could cause such a difference.

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cr125rider 5 days ago | parent [-]

And the cross over point is surprisingly fast:

https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM?si=ITsJsHAKjYtMNZEc

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epistasis 5 days ago | parent [-]

People don't realize the massive amount of emissions from using their car because they don't see the massive amount of material they put into their car every time they fuel up.

A 20 gallon tank produces 400 pounds of CO2 for every fill up.

Even manually filling a tank by lifting a series of five gallon containers would seriously reorient the average person's conception of their fuel usage.

	▲	bcrosby95 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yeah, and the most deceptive thing is that burning 1 lb of gasoline produces about 3 lbs of CO2.
	▲	5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[deleted]

▲ smithkl42 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My understanding (bowing to ChatGPT) is that you can get 1 pound of iron from <2 pounds of iron ore. But to get 1 pound of lithium, you need around 500 pounds of lithium ore.

So if an electric car requires 2000 pounds of iron and 50 pounds of lithium, that works out to 4000 pounds of iron ore that needs to be mined and refined, vs 25,000 pounds of lithium ore.

▲ epistasis 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Interesting, but tailings never seem to enter much into environmental analyses that I have seen, unless you count coal ash as "tailings" which would be a pretty broad interpretation of the idea.

Lithium is also extracted via brine, as opposed to hard rock. Most of the environmental reporting has been on the brine approaches, which currently are in high elevations of South American mountains, and the problem appears to be mostly the use of land and taking that land out of the ecosystem for economic use as drying pools. But the same problem occurs with mining, too!

▲ trhway 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>So if an electric car requires 2000 pounds of iron and 50 pounds of lithium, that works out to 4000 pounds of iron ore that needs to be mined and refined, vs 25,000 pounds of lithium ore.

means recycling of lithium batteries will be a thriving business. (i.e. big difference from recycling of say tires or plastic bottles, more like, pretty successful, recycling of aluminum, and even better than it)

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numpad0 5 days ago | parent [-]

Li-ion batteries are older than you think. First volume production of NMC cells happened 1991. LFP in 1997. Google was founded 1998.

No one made fortune in Li-ion recycling in all those years. Li-ion cells remained disposable.

	▲	adrianN 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Lithium cells are still disposable (eg vapes). The difference is that a single EV contains hundreds of kilograms are we are not used to just chucking old cars in the gutter.
	▲	HeadsUpHigh 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The volume of batteries wasn't there, neither did we really have the network to sell scrap batteries like we do with used cars.

▲ kragen 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You shouldn't post AI slop here. Until a few years ago, no lithium was mined from ore. Now roughly half of it is, mostly spodumene, LiAl(SiO3)2, which you can easily calculate (with units(1)) is 3.7% lithium, 18 times higher than the 0.2% you're claiming. 50 pounds of lithium thus comes, on average, from 25 pounds of brine-derived lithium and 670 pounds of spodumene.

▲ adrian_b 5 days ago | parent [-]

While the rest of what you say is right, you will not find anywhere on Earth a mine with compact spodumene.

Spodumene is dispersed among other minerals into rocks and it only forms a few percent at most of those rocks, if not only fractions of a percent.

The rocks must be crushed and spodumene must be separated from the other much more abundant minerals, by flotation or similar mineral concentration techniques, before going further to chemical processing.

So your 670 pounds must be multiplied by a factor like 100, varying from mine to mine.

Some multiplication factor must also be used for the iron ore, which is also mixed with undesirable silicates, but iron oxide may reach up to a few tens of percent of the rock, so the multiplication factor is much smaller.

▲ kragen 5 days ago | parent [-]

Hmm, I thought the Australian deposits were mostly spodumene. I appreciate the correction, although it's embarrassing; I'd rather be embarrassed than wrong.

▲ nandomrumber 4 days ago | parent [-]

At the mine's current size, it can fulfil a third of the worldwide demand for lithium spodumene concentrate,[1] which is used to produce lithium hydroxide, a component of lithium-ion batteries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenbushes_mine

	▲	kragen 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Further down on the page, it says: > The mine sets a chemical-grade specifications benchmark of 6.0% Li2O minimum and 0.8% Fe2O3 maximum. Spodumene is 0% iron. How much lithium does it contain on a Li2O basis? 8%, I think: `You have: lithium + aluminum + 2(silicon + 3 oxygen) You want: Definition: 186.089 You have: (2 lithium + oxygen) / 2 _ You want: % * 8.0282762 / 0.12455974` That suggests that the rock (pegmatite?) being mined there is about 75% spodumene. Is it possible that this is a misinterpretation, perhaps describing a standard for the output of the froth flotation process or similar, and the rock being dug up really is just a few percent spodumene? No, as it turns out. The paper linked just before that says that none of the rock is quite that lithium-rich https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/segweb/economicgeology/arti...: > The lithium ore zones comprise mainly spodumene, apatite, and quartz, with some ore zones returning upward of 5 percent Li2O. OTOH, that paper is from 01995, so maybe there are new findings since 30 years ago. It says the reserves there were 4% Li2O. Later in the paper, it explains: > The hanging-wall lithium zone in the main pegmatite is generally richer (up to 5% Li2O, equivalent to 60–80% spodumene) than the footwall lithium zone That seems to contradict adrian_b's strong statement: > Spodumene is dispersed among other minerals into rocks and it only forms a few percent at most of those rocks, if not only fractions of a percent. It could still be true at other mines.

▲ 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That's why hybrids are great, hedges your bets between iron and lithium

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eptcyka 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Non-plugin hybrids typically do not use lithium batteries.

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UncleOxidant 5 days ago | parent [-]

Is this still the case? Haven't most of the manufacturers switched over from NiMH?

	▲	eptcyka 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They are better suited for the usecase, as they can sustain far more charge cycles without degradation. Which you end up doing a lot.
	▲	senectus1 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		my 2023 Rav 4 is still NiMH

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dzhiurgis 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Terrible cars tho. Nobody likes their hybrids compared to pure EV.

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LoveMortuus 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

I used to drive a Toyota Yaris Hybrid and I really liked it, I moved to a different country and couldn't take the car with me and now I drive a scooter, but if I'll ever buy a car again, it'll most likely be a hybrid, I really like the range.

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spauldo 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I like my Honda just fine. Granted, I've never owned an EV, but considering I travel a lot and gas stations are plentiful and fast, it's a better fit for me than an EV would be.

I do think a plug-in hybrid would be better for when I'm not traveling, but I bought this car specifically for travel.

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ash_091 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Terrible in what sense? I had no complaints with my Prius C.

	▲	dzhiurgis 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Slow and expensive to maintain. Takes a special person to appreciate that.