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Li-Ion Batteries Get Green Seal of Approval
thecarchik writes "It is not an easy task to compare the environmental effects of battery powered cars to those caused by conventionally fueled automobiles. The degree to which manufacture, usage and disposal of the batteries used to store the necessary electrical energy are detrimental to the environment is not exactly known. Now, for the first time, a team of Empa scientists have made a detailed life cycle assessment (LCA) or ecobalance of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, in particular the chemically improved (i.e. more environmentally friendly) version of the ones most frequently used in electric vehicles. Researchers decided to find out for sure. They calculated the ecological footprints of electric cars fitted with Li-ion batteries, taking into account all possible relevant factors, from those associated with the production of individual parts all the way through to the scrapping of the vehicle and the disposal of the remains, including the operation of the vehicle during its lifetime."
Rrrrraaaaarrrr!
It's a research group focused on bringing academic lab work to the commercial world, I can't imagine that they would possibly have any bias for new technologies =) I'm not saying their methods are flawed, but since there's no actual paper available just a press release I'll take it with a grain of NaCl until I can read their actual work. I've seen too many vendor TCO claims to be swayed without the detailed disclosure.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Li-Ion batteries are in fact very bad for the environment: by reducing reliance upon fossil fuels, demand for fossil fuels drops, which reduces prices, which encourages future use, which reduces pressure to research green alternative energy sources, which ultimately means more pollution. Conclusion: drive a Hummer, it's the new green.
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This study takes in to account all those factors and says you're wrong.
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Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
When we hit the lithium peak, how will we make more Li-ion batteries?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Not trolling, but due to the mining, production, added weight to vehicles and disposal of the lithium makes an old muscle car's carbon emissions look appealing versus a hybrid.
From TFA:
If some of the most vocal anti-EV spokespersons are to be believed, mining the minerals and metals used in electric car batteries are much more damaging to the planet than any gasoline car.
Thankfully, it turns out they are wrong. Making an electric car really doesn’t take up as many of the earth’s resources as previously thought.
You can read the rest of TFA from the link in TFS....
i don't know who to believe!!!!
maybe i should just read the study itself
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/31/battery_cars_destroy_the_world/
One thing that bothers me about seeing Li-Ion battery-powered devices everywhere these days is the way so many people view them as disposable, when in reality the battery is good for hundreds of charge/discharge cycles, and the device for many times that number.
Take for example the laptop I just bought secondhand today. It's a 2001 Gateway with a pentium 3 and the original li-ion battery. The battery is still capable of FOUR HOURS of constant web browsing and disk thrashing on a single charge. I paid $40 for this thing, and it performs just as well as any "netbook" for about 13% the price. My purchase was environment-agnostic, but if you don't want li-ion batteries going into landfills, finding ways to re-use them like I did is a good way to start.
You clearly don't live within walking distance of the dead zone surrounding a plant that refines lithium. The study is greenwashing.
The game.
On the other hand most of us do live right next to the oil refining plants. Walking distance even.
The assumption is made that I would really care if I am driving a so called "green car" when in reality I don't.
Got Code?
I dunno if it's actually cost effective (it might be cheaper to mine/extract 'new' lithium), but if need be, shouldn't the lithium in the battery be recylable? Batteries go bad, but it's not like the elemental lithium in the battery is destroyed through use (well, I'm not sure what the half-life of Lithium is, but since it doesn't seem to be a radiation hazard, I'm going to guess it has a nice long, stable half-life, so that means that it's not decaying into some other element in any time period we care about [dunno if it would ever decay into something else - Wikipedia article for isotopes of Lithium just says that Lithiumm-7 is 'stable'; not sure if that means it takes billions of years to decay, or simply never will decay]).
Anyhow, it seems like, logically, all those automotive, cell-phone, laptop, etc batteries could be recycled into new batteries when they start to lose the ability to hold a charge. But again, it might just be too expensive to recycle when lots of fairly cheap 'virgin' lithium may be available?
Other materials, such as aluminium, are much more harmful. Aluminium of course is used heavily in all cars. From the article:
Or you know, it could be this well researched study is more credible than your unsupported assertion on slashdot. Just saying.
I am happy, now I just have to wait for the prices to go down and the charging stations to be built before getting one.
I agree that electric-based transportation is a great deal more "green" than traditional ICE vehicles. However, I don't expect as great a movement toward the former whilst fuel prices remain so low. This is one of the key elements holding back the proliferation of electric vehicles: they cost more. Not only do they cost more upfront, but replacing a vehicle-sized battery pack is also quite expensive.
Another factor I would like to argue for is this: it saves more money, and is better to the environment, to upgrade your 10mpg gas guzzler to a modest 20mpg vehicle than to go from a 20mpg vehicle to a 33mpg fuel-sipper. I'd like to prove this mathematically:
Let the three aforementioned cars be Car A (10mpg), Car B (20mpg), and Car C (33mpg). Drive 100 miles in each. What is your fuel consumption? Answer: 10 gal for A, 5 for B, and 3 for C. By changing cars from A to B, you use half the fuel you did before, while "upgrading" from B to C only saves you 40%. The absolute changes also matter: a 5 gallon difference instead of a 2 gallon difference. An easier and more practical benefit (given the current state of affairs) to both the checkbook and the environment would be to first eliminate the extreme gas-guzzlers in favor of [simply] more efficient vehicles. (On top of that, driving habits affect milage. Simply not gunning it from the stoplight will save you a few mpg, as will coasting up to a red light instead of mashing the brakes a hundred feet in front of it.)
I will admit that the 33mpg cars do use less gas (duh!), and for those of you who are willing to pay the extra money to help the environment that much more, I applaud you; you are a more generous person than I. I doubt I've convinced many people to change anything, and I expect a few instances of "Over my dead body will I give up my Hummer H2. I'll run you over with it and go to jail first!" Well, that's okay. You have the freedom to do that. I can at least point out the difference and hope some positive effect will come from it.
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