One factor not mentioned is that once mined most elements are recyclable where as oil which has been responsible for major pollution when extracted transported and burned in our ice cars never to be used again.
Hi , greetings from Oxford. Making motor vehicles of any sort has environmental impact, the same is true for everything we humans enjoy, TV sets, tablets, smartphones, microwaves etc. BEVs have much less impact than combustion vehicles, particularly in respect to the current ‘hot’ topic, CO2 emissions. The pollution caused by the oil industry is vast, and conveniently ignored by many.
It always amazes me that some people are so worried about the "environmental impact" of EV's but turn a massive blind eye to burning fossil fuels 🤷♂ Also amazes me how so many people in the UK think that the grid is still mainly powered by gas/coal 🤦♂
Yes, very true. Saying the grid is powered by coal is certainly very out of date in the UK. There are still some places that use a lot of coal at the moment - but even in those countries, it is likely that EVs reduce CO2 emissions, just by a lot less than if they are powered by renewables
@@theelectrictransition Poland I believe is the worst in Europe. Grid average was just shy of 800g as they are mainly coal. Even then that's still 200g if an EV got 4mi/kWh from a Model 3, best petrol cars are about that so overall it's still better to have an EV out there. But, the grid will get greener and 5 years ago they were just over 900g/kWh so already moving in the right direction. USA as a whole is just over 400g so easily half the emission for driving an EV vs ICE and thats comparing small cars, not the larger stuff they have.
@steve_787 Yes, well said. A couple of people have quoted that Euro 6 requires all ICE cars to be less than 99g, which sounds better than an EV. However, as you know, there are two problems with this logic. Firstly, it isn't comparing apples to apples, as that's a tank to wheel figure. The second is that Euro 6 doesn't say that anyway - it requires a fleet average of less than that figure, if I recall.
@@theelectrictransition cherry picking the best numbers to back up their claims/beliefs as always 😅 I had someone claim their 3 series diesel was cleaner than driving an EV at only 120g/mi per mile vs 150-200g/mi for an EV. Got to that figure apparently because the bio-diesel they add to the fuel now is carbon neutral so brings down the manufactures claimed emissions. But then went on to say that grid emissions don't calculate for imports (most comes from France or Norway anyway) and that Drax emissions where much higher (even though it's less than 5% of all power). So by their logic, the bio-diesel was carbon neutral but biomass power wasn't 🤷♂ I pointed out that sites like Electricity Maps calculate for imports and lists all the CO2/e figures for each source, including biomass to get to the average 200g/kWh. But then they said that EV's didn't calculate for transmission losses or inversion losses and quoted some nonsense. I applied his figures of 7% transmission loss and 10% inversion loss and for a 4mi/kWh EV it went from 50g, up to 59g. Beggars belief the extent some will try to go to and still miss by a mile!
Agree, good presentation. There are no substantial resource issues with EVs. Recycling will kick off once significant numbers of EVs start to wear out. COGs of course will seek to induce moral panic by arguing otherwise.
Thanks. Yes, it all seems to be in hand - more than we might realise without the research. The research for the video after this one was a pleasant surprise - that talks more about end of life
Excellent video. I think it would be useful to produce a transcript of this so that I can quote these facts and figures to acquaintances who dismiss the idea that EV’s and sustainable energy is the future.
Tesla has announced that their next generation of permanent-magnet motors will have magnets containing NO rare earth element at all, but rather iron nitride magnets (probably).
Yes, absolutely. I thought about putting that in the video, but decided that it's a little bit early to talk about that as it hasn't been delivered yet
@@theelectrictransition I understand this point of view. The availability of resources for the energy transition has been studied in several academic papers, and the general conclusion is that known reserves are amply sufficient for ALL elements, except one, which is presently constrained: tellurium, which is used for photo-voltaic panel manufacturing, but not for anyone used in EV manufacturing... not even close (for example, the electrification of the entirety of the world's road fleet, cars and trucks together, will require only 7-8% of the world's known reserves of copper... very very far from the looming copper shortage that some "experts" are predicting! And THAT has to be extracted only once! Moreover, an important factor in the management of mineral resources is the fact that most, if not all materials, either because of a supply constraint, or because of costs, can be replaced , at least in some segments of the market, by other ones, possibly less performing for the task at hand, but abundant and cheap. For example: - Copper by aluminium (already the case for the electric harnesses of some models, like Tesla's Model Y) - Nickel, manganese and cobalt by iron and phosphate (already the case with LFP batteries) - Lithium by sodium (starting trend in some entry-level Chinese models) - Neodymium by rare-earth free permanent magnets (as you correctly said, not yet used in commercial production, but coming soon). This list is not exhaustive. Should an element availability be momentarily constraint, not by the size of its known reserves, but rather by a momentary gap in the extraction and refining capacities vs demand, its price will shoot up, and it will get replaced in some segments of the market... its demand will decrease... and a new economic equilibrium will establish itself. Having said this, in the last couple of years, the price of these have all been decreasing, despite rapidly growing demand! So, the story of insufficient mineral resources for the transport and energy transitions is pure FUD, obviously created by the parties who have HUGE interest in the status quo! The worst such example is the disinformation on EV batteries depending on cobalt extracted by "slave child labor". While it is true that around 10% of the world's cobalt is indeed extracted in uncontrolled artisanal mines in the DRC, none of it, not an ounce, finds its way into EV batteries, or other consumer products. These products' manufacturers have a huge PR interest at controlling tightly their supply chain on the matter! No, this "shady" cobalt is going into non-consumer products, such as the catalysts used in petrol refining, or plastic manufacturing (PET) or into special steel. No one media is discussing where the cobalt for these non-newsworthy applications is coming from!
BMW does NOT use permanent magnet in their motors. But therefore have some maintenance and little bit inefficiency as a drawback... But then it's up to what is worse?
China has been pumping out EVs like they are rushing to get ahead of others car makers to be a market leader. Sadly not all are created equal and some have been down right fraught with serious issues. Many legacy car makers are worried that these cars will decimate local production and yet forget they were the people who decimated other markets with their cars to kill off local production. Oh the irony. However, a trend towards EVs and home charging via Solar Panels is one way to begin to minimize effects we have created from the past. Not the best nor easy solution, but one in the right direction. I know many will say not everyone has the option of home charging, but this is where community solutions can help to ease the burden and concern.
Yes, the speed of change in China is quite extraordinary. They spotted the opportunities early, so the legacy car makers are indeed having to play catch up. Some of them are in a bit of trouble, I expect - they might have been too cautious
Excellent video. The scale of fossil fuel extraction is truly staggering, and you didn't even include the 3bn tonnes of natural gas! I've seen many estimates of the amount of material we need to extract in the next 30 years to build all the infrastructure to reach net zero, the highest I've seen is 6.5bn tonnes and we'd do that once. To put that into perspective, we extract the same amount of fossil fuel every 5 months. Regarding your opening anecdote, I've had the situation a couple of times where I've offered to give someone a lift home at the start of an evening rather than their partner come out for them, and during later animated discussion they've made all the usual comments about EVs, how they'd never get in one because the fire risk, etc, etc. It's so amusing to go out to the car and ask if they really want a lift in an EV or if they'd prefer the 10 mile walk up an unlit single track road!
Thanks. Yes, I did toy with the idea of adding natural gas to the table, but it didn't really seem an important part of this particular story. That might be for another video. My maths came up with a very similar figure - gas is listed by volume in the BGS report, rather than weight. In a way, that amount concerns me the most - for an element that's lighter than air, that seems like an awful lot! And methane has such a devastating warming potential if it leaks, that's a bit of a sobering amount. Hehehe, your story about giving lifts made me giggle. Has anyone voted for the long walk yet? My guess is that they ... haven't. Morals are morals - until there is shoe leather involved!
Thanks, I appreciate the comments. It is, indeed, somewhat misunderstood - and despite the Visual Capitalist infographics that show the extraordinary difference in scale of the mining, it took me researching the numbers to really get a handle on how much oil we use. It's such a huge difference when compared to the fossil fuels we extract
Simply, well balanced and informative content which is compelling enough 🤞for any open minded / clear thinking person to consider. Die hard fans of ICE vehicles included 👍
Funny how few people lambast the use of cobalt, for instance, in phones, laptops, battery power tools, oil refining for fuels etc. Or the amount of copper used in plumbing, central heating, the miles of wiring (home and vehicles etc)...and nickel used in wiring, stainless steel and other non-corrosive materials (propellor shafts, desalination plants etc), coins, nails, gas turbines, rocket engines etc etc. Glencore state that their cobalt extraction is a byproduct of nickel mining in the DRC. And yes, it's all recyclable. The hypocrisy knows no bounds. ;)
Just to expand on the points you raised; no currently "in production" battery maker makes use of cobalt in EV batteries. NMC chemistries have been phased out by all EV battery makers (BYD/CATL/Tesla and so on).
Thanks for the input. As I understand it, the situation is a bit more nuanced than that at the moment. All of those manufacturers offer LFP solutions, but they are used in a subset of models. Models with higher ranges exist from pretty much all manufacturers, and use NMC. Tesla, for example, use LPF for standard range Model 3 and Model Y, but long range and performance variants still use NMC at the moment, as far as I know. My guess is that Cybertruck and Semi both use NMC too - but I can't say that with absolute confidence, as they are not vehicles I know quite so well. They are US-only releases, at the moment.
@@theelectrictransition More than 60% of all Tesla's produced right now use LFP batteries. Also a pro: They last 3x longer, have 3x longer lifetime. And yes there are also downsides to LFP: Less faster charging, suboptimal performance in winter weather and not made for "performance" cars due to a low C rate. But for regular people it's perfect. I firmly believe NMC are not very good for the environment and NMC is a "luxury" battery for those with too much money and want performance.
Oh, interesting statistic, thank you. I hadn't realised that the standard range variants were such a large proportion of the Tesla sales. I, too, see LFP to be a great chemistry. The only potential downsides are weight and range. Weight doesn't necessarily cause a major problem, but at the moment, there are people without EVs who continue to think that range IS a problem. I largely disagree - the range concern is based upon a misunderstanding about real-world usage. However, manufacturers are left with the dilemma of delivering either what people need or what they want, which aren't quite the same
Just to add: Cobalt is also used to refine petrol (it helps remove sulphur). Mining is bad, but efforts can be made to clean it up. Minerals are a finite resource - but have the major advantage over fossil fuels in that once extracted you don't set fire to it and have to constantly replace it.
Thanks, that's absolutely true. I thought long and hard about including that in the video - and the same with lanthanum, a rare earth I'd never heard of that is also used in refinement. However, the quantities are lower than I expected. At the moment, only about 3% of cobalt is used in refinement. Cobalt is a catalyst - in other words, it is not used in the chemical reaction, but merely its presemce assists it. Therefore, the only additional usage is to replace old cobalt that is tainted or degraded by reaction with impurities. Cutting a script to make a video digestible is always hard, and in this case I cut your very valid point. I wanted to make it SO MUCH, but the longer the video, the less likely that people will watch or understand it. Hopefully I made the right call, but only time will tell!
@HermanWillems Thanks, yes I'd heard that figure, or close to it, before. It might not be quite what it sounds though, as I gather it's not electrical energy but heat energy. It's more energy that comes from the input oil, further reducing the efficiency of the overall refinement process, but it's not like they take much electricity from the grid. It all adds up though, for sure. The overall inefficiency of the fossil fuel processes that are in place are pretty mind blowing!
You kind of miss the point on the transition here. The question hasn't been should we transition for at least a decade but probably 2 decades now because the direct cost spread is no longer insane, it's just moderately large to the point that it is reasonable to say that maybe now or if not now then some point very soon the direct cost plus reasonable externalities costs will be lower with evs. The question is at what rate should we be transitioning and all the damages feed into that. That's why your two futures dichotomy you propose at the end is false. There isn't two futures, there's an infinite mix of futures we can spend time at on the transition to the eventual future of full transition. Also, if you are choosing the path of least damage then you aren't going to want to transition fully right away because you are going to cause far more damage on your massive infrastructure buildout with suboptimal technologies on the electric supply side vs going more slowly so we can drop the cost of electric storage another order of magnitude before we make that large investment to support solar/wind and/or design and start building much better nuclear fission/fusion plants to handle the demand resource side of the electric supply problem. Transitioning more slowly would also decrease damage in the fossil fuels side of the economy because a whole bunch of time is going to be needed to retool the processing supply chain to deal with the large fraction currently converted to transport fuel and make it into the myriad of other products we make out of fossil fuels instead. Doing the transition and ending up with a huge new investment in electric while having a fossil side that has to flare off a lot of waste product in order to provide the plastic, etc we would still vitally need is a large loser of a path.
the transition rate is a good point, it would make more sense to invest in the technology first rather than the production to reduce long run damage as you say. i believe the main issue on the recycling side is similarly related to the steadly changing battery technology, companies don't want to build exspensive plants that could be redundant in a decade.
Plus what people also ignoring when telling everyone that BEVs are bad, the pipelines that are built for all the fossil fuel everywhere, the trucks to move around fossil fuels, this all does not make much sense anymore compared to rechargeable BEVs that do not fall appart just like that after they reach a certain mileage and their batteries can be recycled what cannot be done with fossil fuel. So I stick with a BEV and will not go back to cars who burn fossil fuels.
EV'S ARE NOT CURRENTLY PRACTICAL - DUE TO A SIMPLE MISSING TECHNOLOGY !!! The biggest resistance to current EV sales is the time consuming problem of "Recharging" ! Why should we even need to keep stopping & recharging the vehicles battery ? Because for some strange reason EV manufacturers are NOT installing DYNAMO'S or ALTERNATORS, which could at the very least extend a EV's range to THOUSANDS OF MILES !! So whats the problem ? There can only be one logical answer. ALL Governments will have NO choice but to inflict a hefty TAX on Recharging, to replace the current tax of fuel sales, sooner rather than later. So there must already be some sort of restriction on EV producers from adding DYNAMO's or ALTERNATORS !!!!!
As @raypalmer7733 says, this isn't quite how things would work, unfortunately. An ICE car uses some of its fuel to recharge a very small battery; it's a trade off, but the energy use is small enough as to be of little concern. An EV's energy is in the battery - a very big battery in comparison - so you would be sacrificing energy from the battery to charge the battery. Because every system suffers losses, you'd recharge less than you extracted - it's a net loss. The good news is that, in a way, an EV DOES have an alternator, which it uses under limited circumstances. An EV is able to use its motor to convert its kinetic energy - its speed - back to electrical energy to recharge the battery when slowing down. That energy is recaptured in an EV, but lost as heat in the brakes of an ICE car. It is even possible to recharge an EV by using regenerative braking whilst towing. However, the energy has to come from somewhere, so it's not something that will happen much. Having said that, there is a thing called the infinity train that makes use of this technique to never need recharging. It is used to transport a huge weight of iron ore down from a mine that is higher than the destination. It converts the potential energy of the mined minerals to electrical energy on the way down to the port, capturing sufficient energy to power the empty train back up to the mine again for the return trip. It has very limited applications, but it's a fun implementation that is somewhat similar to what you suggested. www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a39372219/self-charging-infinity-train/
It's a fair point. They contain all of these elements as well. Whilst they are MUCH smaller, there are a MASSIVE number of them, including all of those sitting in people's junk drawers
I think you missed Copper by weight the biggest factor. 80 kg per car 4x that of ICE. However the larger challenge is the Copper needed for interconnect and hooking up chargers which can easily double that 80kg total. We are running out of high concentration of copper oxide source so we need to move 100x the amount of other stuff to get to those poor concentrations?
How do you arrive at "doubling that to hook up chargers"? The majority of the grid connection to rapid chargers is aluminium, and of course we don't need anything like as many rapid chargers as EVs, the UK currently has a ratio of about 1:80, I can't see why it would need to be more than 1:50. Domestic chargers will be closer to 1:1 but there's no more than 5kg of copper between my consumer unit and car.
Copper like most metals is recyclable and has been recycled for many years, unlike oil which is not. Copper is a common element which is why it has been and is used in plumbing as well as electrical cable for many decades. There will never be a shortage of copper. 22 million tonnes of copper was mined last year and 8 million tonnes of copper was recycled. 30 million tonnes or 30 billion Kg. So that would be enough for 375 million new EVs each year if they each use 80kg. In 5 years without increasing copper production we could replace all the ICE cars. Realistically 20 years should be no problem
@johndinsdale1707 Thanks for the suggestion. It's true, it is not an element I covered, and it's one we obviously use a lot for electrical systems. I haven't heard much consensus concern about copper, to date. This could be a significant problem - but it could also be another scare story. These things do happen - indeed the video was prompted but just such a thing, just about other elements. I see that S&P Global have a report on this topic, so I might start by having a read of that.
batteries and fuel are not equivalent things, one is a store of energy and the other is a source. for a true comparison you need to include the 'impact' of the ore refining processes, the electricity production and distribution (which will have to expand in order to achieve the so called energy transition).
True. I am trying to cover all of that, yes , but it needs to be done in bite-sized pieces. There's an early video on the channel about emissions that might suit you better
@@HermanWillems I’m in full support of zero emission alternatives, batteries are not the solution. I’m sure the residents of Kilwinning or the crew of felicity ace would agree. Meanwhile, the virtue signalling EVangelists blindly preach their BS
@mikeolly67 it sounds to me like you are NOT in support of zero emission alternatives, as you want to dismiss the only zero emission alternative that actually exists at any scale, based upon misinformation. ruclips.net/video/WDP1XAsoR_0/видео.html
One factor not mentioned is that once mined most elements are recyclable where as oil which has been responsible for major pollution when extracted transported and burned in our ice cars never to be used again.
Yes, absolutely right. I got there in the end, but you were keen I said it sooner!
Misdirection is the perfect term for this engineered controversy about battery minerals.
Yes, it certainly seems to fit quite well!
You are quickly becoming one of my favorite channels. Excellent presentation, logical, well researched, no nonsense! Thanks for posting.
Wow, thank you!
Hi , greetings from Oxford. Making motor vehicles of any sort has environmental impact, the same is true for everything we humans enjoy, TV sets, tablets, smartphones, microwaves etc. BEVs have much less impact than combustion vehicles, particularly in respect to the current ‘hot’ topic, CO2 emissions. The pollution caused by the oil industry is vast, and conveniently ignored by many.
Very true 👍
It always amazes me that some people are so worried about the "environmental impact" of EV's but turn a massive blind eye to burning fossil fuels 🤷♂ Also amazes me how so many people in the UK think that the grid is still mainly powered by gas/coal 🤦♂
Yes, very true. Saying the grid is powered by coal is certainly very out of date in the UK. There are still some places that use a lot of coal at the moment - but even in those countries, it is likely that EVs reduce CO2 emissions, just by a lot less than if they are powered by renewables
@@theelectrictransition Poland I believe is the worst in Europe. Grid average was just shy of 800g as they are mainly coal. Even then that's still 200g if an EV got 4mi/kWh from a Model 3, best petrol cars are about that so overall it's still better to have an EV out there. But, the grid will get greener and 5 years ago they were just over 900g/kWh so already moving in the right direction.
USA as a whole is just over 400g so easily half the emission for driving an EV vs ICE and thats comparing small cars, not the larger stuff they have.
@steve_787 Yes, well said. A couple of people have quoted that Euro 6 requires all ICE cars to be less than 99g, which sounds better than an EV. However, as you know, there are two problems with this logic. Firstly, it isn't comparing apples to apples, as that's a tank to wheel figure. The second is that Euro 6 doesn't say that anyway - it requires a fleet average of less than that figure, if I recall.
@@theelectrictransition cherry picking the best numbers to back up their claims/beliefs as always 😅
I had someone claim their 3 series diesel was cleaner than driving an EV at only 120g/mi per mile vs 150-200g/mi for an EV. Got to that figure apparently because the bio-diesel they add to the fuel now is carbon neutral so brings down the manufactures claimed emissions. But then went on to say that grid emissions don't calculate for imports (most comes from France or Norway anyway) and that Drax emissions where much higher (even though it's less than 5% of all power). So by their logic, the bio-diesel was carbon neutral but biomass power wasn't 🤷♂
I pointed out that sites like Electricity Maps calculate for imports and lists all the CO2/e figures for each source, including biomass to get to the average 200g/kWh. But then they said that EV's didn't calculate for transmission losses or inversion losses and quoted some nonsense. I applied his figures of 7% transmission loss and 10% inversion loss and for a 4mi/kWh EV it went from 50g, up to 59g. Beggars belief the extent some will try to go to and still miss by a mile!
Agree, good presentation.
There are no substantial resource issues with EVs. Recycling will kick off once significant numbers of EVs start to wear out.
COGs of course will seek to induce moral panic by arguing otherwise.
Thanks. Yes, it all seems to be in hand - more than we might realise without the research. The research for the video after this one was a pleasant surprise - that talks more about end of life
Excellent video. I think it would be useful to produce a transcript of this so that I can quote these facts and figures to acquaintances who dismiss the idea that EV’s and sustainable energy is the future.
Tesla has announced that their next generation of permanent-magnet motors will have magnets containing NO rare earth element at all, but rather iron nitride magnets (probably).
Yes, absolutely. I thought about putting that in the video, but decided that it's a little bit early to talk about that as it hasn't been delivered yet
@@theelectrictransition I understand this point of view.
The availability of resources for the energy transition has been studied in several academic papers, and the general conclusion is that known reserves are amply sufficient for ALL elements, except one, which is presently constrained: tellurium, which is used for photo-voltaic panel manufacturing, but not for anyone used in EV manufacturing... not even close (for example, the electrification of the entirety of the world's road fleet, cars and trucks together, will require only 7-8% of the world's known reserves of copper... very very far from the looming copper shortage that some "experts" are predicting! And THAT has to be extracted only once!
Moreover, an important factor in the management of mineral resources is the fact that most, if not all materials, either because of a supply constraint, or because of costs, can be replaced , at least in some segments of the market, by other ones, possibly less performing for the task at hand, but abundant and cheap. For example:
- Copper by aluminium (already the case for the electric harnesses of some models, like Tesla's Model Y)
- Nickel, manganese and cobalt by iron and phosphate (already the case with LFP batteries)
- Lithium by sodium (starting trend in some entry-level Chinese models)
- Neodymium by rare-earth free permanent magnets (as you correctly said, not yet used in commercial production, but coming soon).
This list is not exhaustive.
Should an element availability be momentarily constraint, not by the size of its known reserves, but rather by a momentary gap in the extraction and refining capacities vs demand, its price will shoot up, and it will get replaced in some segments of the market... its demand will decrease... and a new economic equilibrium will establish itself. Having said this, in the last couple of years, the price of these have all been decreasing, despite rapidly growing demand!
So, the story of insufficient mineral resources for the transport and energy transitions is pure FUD, obviously created by the parties who have HUGE interest in the status quo! The worst such example is the disinformation on EV batteries depending on cobalt extracted by "slave child labor". While it is true that around 10% of the world's cobalt is indeed extracted in uncontrolled artisanal mines in the DRC, none of it, not an ounce, finds its way into EV batteries, or other consumer products. These products' manufacturers have a huge PR interest at controlling tightly their supply chain on the matter! No, this "shady" cobalt is going into non-consumer products, such as the catalysts used in petrol refining, or plastic manufacturing (PET) or into special steel. No one media is discussing where the cobalt for these non-newsworthy applications is coming from!
Thank you for a Very informative video.
Thanks
BMW does NOT use permanent magnet in their motors. But therefore have some maintenance and little bit inefficiency as a drawback... But then it's up to what is worse?
Thanks. There is some variation in what motors are used for sure. I haven't been keeping abreast of what BMW have been doing so far.
China has been pumping out EVs like they are rushing to get ahead of others car makers to be a market leader. Sadly not all are created equal and some have been down right fraught with serious issues. Many legacy car makers are worried that these cars will decimate local production and yet forget they were the people who decimated other markets with their cars to kill off local production. Oh the irony.
However, a trend towards EVs and home charging via Solar Panels is one way to begin to minimize effects we have created from the past. Not the best nor easy solution, but one in the right direction.
I know many will say not everyone has the option of home charging, but this is where community solutions can help to ease the burden and concern.
Yes, the speed of change in China is quite extraordinary. They spotted the opportunities early, so the legacy car makers are indeed having to play catch up. Some of them are in a bit of trouble, I expect - they might have been too cautious
Excellent video. The scale of fossil fuel extraction is truly staggering, and you didn't even include the 3bn tonnes of natural gas! I've seen many estimates of the amount of material we need to extract in the next 30 years to build all the infrastructure to reach net zero, the highest I've seen is 6.5bn tonnes and we'd do that once. To put that into perspective, we extract the same amount of fossil fuel every 5 months.
Regarding your opening anecdote, I've had the situation a couple of times where I've offered to give someone a lift home at the start of an evening rather than their partner come out for them, and during later animated discussion they've made all the usual comments about EVs, how they'd never get in one because the fire risk, etc, etc. It's so amusing to go out to the car and ask if they really want a lift in an EV or if they'd prefer the 10 mile walk up an unlit single track road!
Thanks. Yes, I did toy with the idea of adding natural gas to the table, but it didn't really seem an important part of this particular story. That might be for another video.
My maths came up with a very similar figure - gas is listed by volume in the BGS report, rather than weight. In a way, that amount concerns me the most - for an element that's lighter than air, that seems like an awful lot! And methane has such a devastating warming potential if it leaks, that's a bit of a sobering amount.
Hehehe, your story about giving lifts made me giggle. Has anyone voted for the long walk yet? My guess is that they ... haven't. Morals are morals - until there is shoe leather involved!
Sorry I should have waited till the end of the video. Thank you for a well balanced review of a much misunderstood topic
Thanks, I appreciate the comments. It is, indeed, somewhat misunderstood - and despite the Visual Capitalist infographics that show the extraordinary difference in scale of the mining, it took me researching the numbers to really get a handle on how much oil we use. It's such a huge difference when compared to the fossil fuels we extract
Simply, well balanced and informative content which is compelling enough 🤞for any open minded / clear thinking person to consider. Die hard fans of ICE vehicles included 👍
Thank you, much appreciated. Let's hope that some diehard ICE fans are open to listening to the data.
Funny how few people lambast the use of cobalt, for instance, in phones, laptops, battery power tools, oil refining for fuels etc.
Or the amount of copper used in plumbing, central heating, the miles of wiring (home and vehicles etc)...and nickel used in wiring, stainless steel and other non-corrosive materials (propellor shafts, desalination plants etc), coins, nails, gas turbines, rocket engines etc etc.
Glencore state that their cobalt extraction is a byproduct of nickel mining in the DRC.
And yes, it's all recyclable.
The hypocrisy knows no bounds. ;)
So true. It definitely seems like double standards
Just to expand on the points you raised; no currently "in production" battery maker makes use of cobalt in EV batteries. NMC chemistries have been phased out by all EV battery makers (BYD/CATL/Tesla and so on).
Thanks for the input. As I understand it, the situation is a bit more nuanced than that at the moment. All of those manufacturers offer LFP solutions, but they are used in a subset of models. Models with higher ranges exist from pretty much all manufacturers, and use NMC.
Tesla, for example, use LPF for standard range Model 3 and Model Y, but long range and performance variants still use NMC at the moment, as far as I know.
My guess is that Cybertruck and Semi both use NMC too - but I can't say that with absolute confidence, as they are not vehicles I know quite so well. They are US-only releases, at the moment.
@@theelectrictransition More than 60% of all Tesla's produced right now use LFP batteries. Also a pro: They last 3x longer, have 3x longer lifetime. And yes there are also downsides to LFP: Less faster charging, suboptimal performance in winter weather and not made for "performance" cars due to a low C rate. But for regular people it's perfect. I firmly believe NMC are not very good for the environment and NMC is a "luxury" battery for those with too much money and want performance.
Oh, interesting statistic, thank you. I hadn't realised that the standard range variants were such a large proportion of the Tesla sales.
I, too, see LFP to be a great chemistry. The only potential downsides are weight and range. Weight doesn't necessarily cause a major problem, but at the moment, there are people without EVs who continue to think that range IS a problem. I largely disagree - the range concern is based upon a misunderstanding about real-world usage. However, manufacturers are left with the dilemma of delivering either what people need or what they want, which aren't quite the same
Just to add: Cobalt is also used to refine petrol (it helps remove sulphur). Mining is bad, but efforts can be made to clean it up. Minerals are a finite resource - but have the major advantage over fossil fuels in that once extracted you don't set fire to it and have to constantly replace it.
Thanks, that's absolutely true. I thought long and hard about including that in the video - and the same with lanthanum, a rare earth I'd never heard of that is also used in refinement. However, the quantities are lower than I expected.
At the moment, only about 3% of cobalt is used in refinement. Cobalt is a catalyst - in other words, it is not used in the chemical reaction, but merely its presemce assists it. Therefore, the only additional usage is to replace old cobalt that is tainted or degraded by reaction with impurities.
Cutting a script to make a video digestible is always hard, and in this case I cut your very valid point. I wanted to make it SO MUCH, but the longer the video, the less likely that people will watch or understand it. Hopefully I made the right call, but only time will tell!
making a Gallon of Gasoline cost 5kWh of energy. Which could also be used for EV's.
@HermanWillems Thanks, yes I'd heard that figure, or close to it, before. It might not be quite what it sounds though, as I gather it's not electrical energy but heat energy. It's more energy that comes from the input oil, further reducing the efficiency of the overall refinement process, but it's not like they take much electricity from the grid.
It all adds up though, for sure. The overall inefficiency of the fossil fuel processes that are in place are pretty mind blowing!
You kind of miss the point on the transition here. The question hasn't been should we transition for at least a decade but probably 2 decades now because the direct cost spread is no longer insane, it's just moderately large to the point that it is reasonable to say that maybe now or if not now then some point very soon the direct cost plus reasonable externalities costs will be lower with evs. The question is at what rate should we be transitioning and all the damages feed into that. That's why your two futures dichotomy you propose at the end is false. There isn't two futures, there's an infinite mix of futures we can spend time at on the transition to the eventual future of full transition. Also, if you are choosing the path of least damage then you aren't going to want to transition fully right away because you are going to cause far more damage on your massive infrastructure buildout with suboptimal technologies on the electric supply side vs going more slowly so we can drop the cost of electric storage another order of magnitude before we make that large investment to support solar/wind and/or design and start building much better nuclear fission/fusion plants to handle the demand resource side of the electric supply problem. Transitioning more slowly would also decrease damage in the fossil fuels side of the economy because a whole bunch of time is going to be needed to retool the processing supply chain to deal with the large fraction currently converted to transport fuel and make it into the myriad of other products we make out of fossil fuels instead. Doing the transition and ending up with a huge new investment in electric while having a fossil side that has to flare off a lot of waste product in order to provide the plastic, etc we would still vitally need is a large loser of a path.
the transition rate is a good point, it would make more sense to invest in the technology first rather than the production to reduce long run damage as you say. i believe the main issue on the recycling side is similarly related to the steadly changing battery technology, companies don't want to build exspensive plants that could be redundant in a decade.
Plus what people also ignoring when telling everyone that BEVs are bad, the pipelines that are built for all the fossil fuel everywhere, the trucks to move around fossil fuels, this all does not make much sense anymore compared to rechargeable BEVs that do not fall appart just like that after they reach a certain mileage and their batteries can be recycled what cannot be done with fossil fuel. So I stick with a BEV and will not go back to cars who burn fossil fuels.
Yes, absolutely. It's amazing how much infrastructure has been built for fossil fuels that we don't necessarily appreciate is there
EV'S ARE NOT CURRENTLY PRACTICAL - DUE TO A SIMPLE MISSING TECHNOLOGY !!!
The biggest resistance to current EV sales is the time consuming problem of "Recharging" ! Why should we even need to keep stopping & recharging the vehicles battery ? Because for some strange reason EV manufacturers are NOT installing DYNAMO'S or ALTERNATORS, which could at the very least extend a EV's range to THOUSANDS OF MILES !! So whats the problem ?
There can only be one logical answer. ALL Governments will have NO choice but to inflict a hefty TAX on Recharging, to replace the current tax of fuel sales, sooner rather than later. So there must already be some sort of restriction on EV producers from adding DYNAMO's or ALTERNATORS !!!!!
Sounds like a good idea, but in practice it is not feasible as the energy returns are far less than what is consumed.
As @raypalmer7733 says, this isn't quite how things would work, unfortunately. An ICE car uses some of its fuel to recharge a very small battery; it's a trade off, but the energy use is small enough as to be of little concern. An EV's energy is in the battery - a very big battery in comparison - so you would be sacrificing energy from the battery to charge the battery. Because every system suffers losses, you'd recharge less than you extracted - it's a net loss.
The good news is that, in a way, an EV DOES have an alternator, which it uses under limited circumstances. An EV is able to use its motor to convert its kinetic energy - its speed - back to electrical energy to recharge the battery when slowing down. That energy is recaptured in an EV, but lost as heat in the brakes of an ICE car.
It is even possible to recharge an EV by using regenerative braking whilst towing. However, the energy has to come from somewhere, so it's not something that will happen much. Having said that, there is a thing called the infinity train that makes use of this technique to never need recharging. It is used to transport a huge weight of iron ore down from a mine that is higher than the destination. It converts the potential energy of the mined minerals to electrical energy on the way down to the port, capturing sufficient energy to power the empty train back up to the mine again for the return trip. It has very limited applications, but it's a fun implementation that is somewhat similar to what you suggested.
www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a39372219/self-charging-infinity-train/
Are phones ethical?
It's a fair point. They contain all of these elements as well. Whilst they are MUCH smaller, there are a MASSIVE number of them, including all of those sitting in people's junk drawers
I think you missed Copper by weight the biggest factor. 80 kg per car 4x that of ICE. However the larger challenge is the Copper needed for interconnect and hooking up chargers which can easily double that 80kg total. We are running out of high concentration of copper oxide source so we need to move 100x the amount of other stuff to get to those poor concentrations?
How do you arrive at "doubling that to hook up chargers"? The majority of the grid connection to rapid chargers is aluminium, and of course we don't need anything like as many rapid chargers as EVs, the UK currently has a ratio of about 1:80, I can't see why it would need to be more than 1:50. Domestic chargers will be closer to 1:1 but there's no more than 5kg of copper between my consumer unit and car.
Copper like most metals is recyclable and has been recycled for many years, unlike oil which is not. Copper is a common element which is why it has been and is used in plumbing as well as electrical cable for many decades. There will never be a shortage of copper. 22 million tonnes of copper was mined last year and 8 million tonnes of copper was recycled. 30 million tonnes or 30 billion Kg. So that would be enough for 375 million new EVs each year if they each use 80kg. In 5 years without increasing copper production we could replace all the ICE cars. Realistically 20 years should be no problem
@johndinsdale1707 Thanks for the suggestion. It's true, it is not an element I covered, and it's one we obviously use a lot for electrical systems.
I haven't heard much consensus concern about copper, to date. This could be a significant problem - but it could also be another scare story. These things do happen - indeed the video was prompted but just such a thing, just about other elements.
I see that S&P Global have a report on this topic, so I might start by having a read of that.
batteries and fuel are not equivalent things, one is a store of energy and the other is a source. for a true comparison you need to include the 'impact' of the ore refining processes, the electricity production and distribution (which will have to expand in order to achieve the so called energy transition).
True. I am trying to cover all of that, yes , but it needs to be done in bite-sized pieces. There's an early video on the channel about emissions that might suit you better
Great narrative shifting.
There’s a lot bigger picture to why EVs are not environmentally friendly, but let’s not mention those .
But there are also a lot of SOLUTIONS to those problems which weirdly people hate???
@@HermanWillems I’m in full support of zero emission alternatives, batteries are not the solution. I’m sure the residents of Kilwinning or the crew of felicity ace would agree.
Meanwhile, the virtue signalling EVangelists blindly preach their BS
@mikeolly67 it sounds to me like you are NOT in support of zero emission alternatives, as you want to dismiss the only zero emission alternative that actually exists at any scale, based upon misinformation.
ruclips.net/video/WDP1XAsoR_0/видео.html
@@theelectrictransitionI’m all for supporting zero emissions alternatives, do you know of any?
Haha, well played, sir. That's entirely fair.
Indeed, no. But I do know of one that can continue to reduce its emissions even after it was built.
You?