r/cars • u/oneonus • Sep 10 '23
Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/lithium-discovery-in-us-volcano-could-be-biggest-deposit-ever-found/4018032.articleIf true, game changer for Electric Revolution, USA could easily meet demand domestically while exporting Lithium and leading to more Electric Cars manufactured in the States.
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u/Walternotwalter Sep 10 '23
There is a giant deposit in New England as well.
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Sep 10 '23
That lithium in Maine will likely never be mined. Related on the clean energy front, the president just created a new national monument that encompasses a massive deposit of uranium in Arizona.
Conservationists fight clean energy projects just as vehemently as they fight oil and gas.
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Sep 10 '23
It’s all clean energy until you have to mine it in your back yard
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u/HegemonNYC Sep 10 '23
I think it just shows us that there is no such thing as clean energy. Just less dirty energy.
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u/CreativeSoil Sep 10 '23
Windmills and small scale hydro isn't particularly dirty
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u/roadrussian Sep 10 '23
that's exactly his point. less dirty != clean
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u/CreativeSoil Sep 10 '23
But it's so much less dirty that it's essentially clean, we know we're going to need electricity in the future, those are among our cleanest options and are so clean that if every power generating source were as clean as them then global warming would be a non issue and environmental damage around the world would be lower.
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u/lowstrife Sep 10 '23
The concrete used to create those structures isn't clean. Nor are the blast furnaces needed to make the steel. Nor do the diesel trucks the worker Johnny's use to get to the construction sites, nor is the heavy construction equipment.
The carbon footprint exists endlessly up the chain. And when you drill down into it, energy is carbon, but since everything needs energy - all capital expenditure is carbon. Either directly or by opportunity cost. This gets shifted over time, slowly, as carbon is removed from the economy. Usually by projects just like that wind or hydro. But there is no such thing as "zero carbon". Not yet.
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u/CreativeSoil Sep 10 '23
Absolute cleanliness doesn't exist anywhere, when you call things clean they're clean compared to stuff, if you compare Delhi, NYC and Singapore, a guy from Delhi might call NYC clean while a guy from Singapore and probably the guy from NYC is going to call it dirty, everyone is going to call Singapore clean, but it isn't fully clean, there are still people not picking up after theirs dogs and people throwing plastic wrappers on the street, they're just much rarer, same for clean rooms in a CPU factory vs a pharmaceutical factory, they're both going to be clean by most people's standard but if the CPU factory suddenly became as dirty as the limits for a pharmaceutical factory that might be dirty enough to cause issues with their output. For all intents and purposes, when something is the cleanest alternative it is clean.
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u/pblood40 Sep 11 '23
every hydro project fucks over some newt, fish stocks, or important salmonid run. Every windmill is full of non so ethically mined rare earth metals and tons of plastics and other items that belch trash into the atmosphere
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u/velociraptorfarmer 24 Frontier Pro-4X, 22 Encore GX Essence Sep 11 '23
Eh, even windmills can get iffy. End of life for them basically involves tearing them down, crushing all of the fiberglass components into small pieces, digging a big hole, dumping it all in, and burying it.
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u/Additional-Help7920 Sep 11 '23
Unless things have changed recently, they just dig long trenches to bury the blades, but maybe shredding them is finally a thing to make disposal easier.
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u/R_V_Z LC 500 Sep 10 '23
Except you have to obtain and process the raw materials to create those things. That's what the OP above you is saying.
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u/Shoddy_Stick_7249 Sep 11 '23
Renewables have much more complex metals supply chains, which surprise, have to come from mines somewhere in the world.
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u/Dartht33bagger 1991 Z28 Camaro && 1998 Ford Escort LX Sep 11 '23
Land windmills are ugly and kill a lot of birds. Offshore windmills also kill birds and whales with the sound they transmit into the water.
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u/PubliusDeLaMancha '93 Toyota MR2 2GR V6 Sep 11 '23
Never understood the "windmills are ugly" argument
As if power plants aren't?
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u/titans3775 '19 Audi Q8, '22 BMW X7 Sep 11 '23
Traditional plants are concentrated ugly in one place. Wind and Solar spread the ugly out over so much land and are far more in your face.
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u/Drzhivago138 2018 F-150 XLT SuperCab/8' HDPP 5.0, 2009 Forester 5MT Sep 11 '23
Living in windmill central (southern MN where the wind always blows), I like the looks.
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u/Dartht33bagger 1991 Z28 Camaro && 1998 Ford Escort LX Sep 11 '23
Powerplants require less space and don't need to be located in a specific area. Windmills must be in windy locations, which always seem to happen to be very picture friendly locations.
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u/Pandagames '23 Tesla M3, '22 Ford Maverick Sep 12 '23
kill a lot of birds
Regular nonmoving buildings kill more birds.
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u/Disastrous-Foot-620 Sep 10 '23
if you look at the restrictions on coal energy, it becomes a lot less dirty than they would have you believe
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u/Shoddy_Stick_7249 Sep 11 '23
"As long as brown people far out of sight are the ones mining it with fewer environmental, safety, and human rights rules, I can sleep peacefully at night" - Sierra Club
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u/MrThunderMakeR 09 Mazda RX-8 R3, 91 Jeep Wrangler Sep 10 '23
You forgot to mention that the new monument is part of the Grand Canyon area and protects tribal lands. Arizonan here, we have plenty of mines already
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Sep 10 '23
I didn't forget to mention it. Every potential new mine is close to something and someone. There are a lot more environmentally fragile places to mine than the Arizona desert. Tradeoffs will always exist.
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u/Shoddy_Stick_7249 Sep 11 '23
It doesn't matter if it's 100 miles out in the desert; someone, somewhere will claim it affects lands they don't even own, or complain when they don't even live within 1000 miles of the state in which the project would be built. Pebble comes to mind.
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u/ImAnIdeaMan '22 Colorado ZR2 | '06 Evo IX Sep 10 '23
Are we short on uranium?
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Sep 10 '23
At its current use rate, no. But like lithium for EVs, we need a lot more nuclear energy and that means a lot more uranium.
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u/ypk_jpk '03 Miata LS Sep 10 '23
If the National Ignition Lab can keep producing net gains in fusion we could see a drop in need for uranium and other fission materials.
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u/ImAnIdeaMan '22 Colorado ZR2 | '06 Evo IX Sep 11 '23
Well then how about we hold off on destroying the environment until we need to.
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Sep 11 '23
Because you can't open a mine like flipping a light switch. They take 10+ years to develop. If we know global demand for uranium is going to be much higher 20 years from now, we have to start approving new mines now.
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u/DiplomaticGoose 98 Grand Marquis Sep 10 '23
We are not at a shortage of lithium. It is a very common element. Refining it, on the other hand, is a dirty process that has to be tailored directly to how the raw lithium is found.
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u/Manacit 2021 Volvo XC40 Sep 10 '23
Eh, politics can change. I don’t think they will, but less than 100 years ago the sky in Pittsburgh looked like nighttime.
I think you’re probably right, but I have hope
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u/TywinShitsGold 2017 Golf Alltrack Sep 10 '23
Lithium is abundant in the earth.
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u/SAIUN666 Mini Cooper Sep 10 '23
Yeah, getting it out of the ground cheaply is the problem.
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u/natesully33 F150 Lightning (EV), Wrangler 4xE Sep 10 '23
Same with oil, when the price goes up suddenly there is more of it as unconventional extraction becomes more lucrative. You can watch the fracking rigs around here (Colorado) start and stop again as the price of oil fluctuates.
From everything I've read, running out of lithium (and other metals) is highly unlikely, the reason some companies struggle to build EVs profitably is because they don't have contracts set up for materials, or for finished batteries if they aren't vertically integrated. There are bottlenecks all up and down the EV supply chain.
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u/Poncho_Sanchez '16 Audi Q5 , '06 Aston Martin DB9, 07' Lotus Elise S Sep 10 '23
This, this, this - soon people will find out, no American will sweat to bring it out. Electric vehicels can be made only by those sweet little African children hands.
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u/faizimam Sep 10 '23
Your mixing up your oil industry propaganda.
African child labour is implicated in the mining of cobalt.
Which btw is used in many Many industries other than battery production for decades, funny how suddenly now we care about the abuses.
And in any case, most cutting edge battery chemistry uses much less, and some no cobalt at all.
Not that you care about that detail much I imagine.
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u/Extension_One_ Sep 10 '23
Yeah American companies are very clever at outsourcing their dirty work to make things as cheaply as possible while keeping their hands clean. Just look at Apple and how they use plausible deniability
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Sep 10 '23
American companies aren't the ones blocking new mines in America. They'll happily use American lithium if they could get it.
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u/Extension_One_ Sep 10 '23
I'm talking about using cheap labour lol. Doesn't matter where the lithium is coming from, it will be bought from the vendor who can supply it cheapest and the cheapest way to make something is by underpaying 3rd world people. Same reason Nike, Jordan etc make clothes in sweatshops in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka while Apple etc makes their phones in China and India.
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Sep 10 '23
New Balance has a Made in America collection for 2-3x the price. Be the change you want to see in the world.
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u/Extension_One_ Sep 10 '23
I live in said 3rd world country where above mentioned crap is made, genius.
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Sep 10 '23
Were living standards higher before the factories arrived? Has Nike made its workers poorer than their parents?
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u/Extension_One_ Sep 10 '23
The living standards of the overlords controlling the whole thing and the politicians they pay off has definitely improved. The workers get legal bindings that might as well be slavery.
But hey, with all the money these companies save by not paying a living wage, they can afford to now spend some of it on astroturfing on social media and parading around diversity hires back in the West like they are a paragon of virtue and freedom so they can distance their image from exploiting people in 3rd world countries.
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u/the_lamou '23 RS e-tron GT; '14 FJ Cruiser TTUE Sep 10 '23
Have you considered forming a union or lobbying the government to create more worker protections?
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u/Extension_One_ Sep 10 '23
You think we have more money than billionaires coorporate entities?
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u/simon2517 EV6 AWD Sep 10 '23
Indeed, it's just that we never bothered mining it very much up until now.
Lead is less common but until very recently we mined 100x more of it.
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u/daviddatesburner Sep 10 '23
Lithium is actually one of the scarcer elements on the Earth’s crust, but because it is all close to the surface we may never run out
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Sep 11 '23
Bold of you to assume the immigrants who will be working in the mines will be paid well s/
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u/EDRN18 Sep 10 '23
Lithium Americas will be mining this location and American Battery Technology Company will be mining an area in Tonopah, NV. These will be a massive boon for the US in sourcing their own lithium and reducing dependence on foreign countries like China.
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u/the_lamou '23 RS e-tron GT; '14 FJ Cruiser TTUE Sep 10 '23
This also doesn't count the Maine deposit, which could be among the largest in the world but cannot be mined because it's in a nature reserve and Maine has some weird laws on mining or any removal of minerals. That one is going through the courts right now, IIRC.
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u/Teledildonic ND1 MX-5, KIA POS Sep 10 '23
I mean if we have other sources, maybe we can wait before ripping up nature preserves.
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u/the_lamou '23 RS e-tron GT; '14 FJ Cruiser TTUE Sep 10 '23
Sure, except that a lot of the Maine deposit isn't a real nature preserve. It's mostly barren, has little natural value, and largely exists on the sites of old mines. And then really zany part of it is that the deposit is so favorable that you can literally just pick rocks up and they contain lithium, but they're not even being allowed to take a single rock out for testing.
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Sep 11 '23
kind of pains me to hear that it's going through the courts. It's not like there's a shortage and plenty more are continuously discovered. Considering how environmentally this can be, in a nature reserve are you would hope it's cut and dry.
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u/the_lamou '23 RS e-tron GT; '14 FJ Cruiser TTUE Sep 11 '23
It's more complicated than it being in an environmental preserve, because it kind of is and kind of isn't. From what I understand, Maine basically considers everything a nature preserve unless affirmatively declared otherwise, or something equally not standard.
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Sep 11 '23
ahh, I see. Oh well, I hope all avenues are considered and the proper decision is reached.
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u/Simoxs7 2005 Audi TT 1.8T Sep 10 '23
Well here in Germany we found one of the biggest lithium deposits but people don’t want it to be mined because „iT rUiNs ThE lAnDsCaPe“ same reason they don’t want wind or solar energy…
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u/oneonus Sep 10 '23
Brutal, what is wrong with the German people.
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u/Hustletron 17 Audi A4 Allroad / 22 VW Tiguan Sep 11 '23
Sucks that they are letting Chinese cars kill their local automotive manufacturing economy, too.
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u/snapbackG Sep 11 '23
that is actually not true. they even found a co2-positive way of extracting it and will produce the first thousands of tons 2025. Source in German.
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u/Simoxs7 2005 Audi TT 1.8T Sep 12 '23
TBH the last I heard of it was people protesting against mining it… but thats great news.
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Sep 11 '23
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u/53bvo '22 e-208 | '06 MX-5 (1.8L) Sep 11 '23
But displacing entire towns so coal mines can grow is no problem ?
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u/Simoxs7 2005 Audi TT 1.8T Sep 11 '23
Apparently… I guess that why people are so allergic to having mining near where they live. But the lithium is in the Water so it wouldn’t be very intrusive or damage much of the surrounding environment.
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u/einTier something borrowed, something new Sep 11 '23
The US really lucked into the cheat codes for natural resources.
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u/Drzhivago138 2018 F-150 XLT SuperCab/8' HDPP 5.0, 2009 Forester 5MT Sep 11 '23
It helps when you're the 3rd (or maybe 4th, it's complicated) largest country by area.
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Sep 11 '23 edited Feb 03 '25
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u/Shoddy_Stick_7249 Sep 11 '23
The lithium is hosted in caldera lake sediments. The caldera was last active 16mya and is long since extinct. Most industrial metals are mined from extinct volcanic centers.
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u/275MPHFordGT40 2018 Toyota Camry SE Sep 11 '23
Ah yes, the United States and its overpowered mineral deposits
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Sep 11 '23
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u/Mtthom06 Sep 11 '23
What could go wrong digging in a volcano for lithium? This sounds like a Sci fi movie plot
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u/Trauma-Dolll Replace this text with year, make, model Sep 11 '23
This couldn't possibly have any negative consequences.
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Sep 10 '23
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Sep 10 '23
This is just a picture of a big hole, doesn't really speak to how destructive lithium mining is, unless you just mean "destructive to the ground"
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u/tarheel343 Sep 10 '23
As long as the site is cleaned up properly after use, I’d say it’s less harmful to the environment than a shopping center. They typically just become lakes.
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u/its-not-that-bad Sep 10 '23
It’s a shame this will never get mined. Now of it we’re in Africa with tons of cheap labor and no environmental laws this would be a boon to industry!
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u/NotsoNewtoGermany Sep 10 '23
Very few of the world's lithium comes from Africa. Over 50% of it comes from the single country of Australia.
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Sep 10 '23
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u/Drzhivago138 2018 F-150 XLT SuperCab/8' HDPP 5.0, 2009 Forester 5MT Sep 11 '23
We live in a planet, nothing we can do to change the climate.
We live on a planet, and what we've been doing for the past 150+ years has been changing its climate.
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Sep 11 '23
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Sep 17 '23
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Sep 17 '23
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u/Smitty_Oom I run on dreams and gasoline, that old highway holds the key Sep 21 '23
Civility is required
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u/Trash2030s Sep 10 '23
So everyone talking about how green electric cars are but no one talking about how toxic lithium is to dispose of when the batteries die?
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u/HatRemov3r Sep 10 '23
Which is why a good system of battery recycling is going to be vital
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u/Trash2030s Sep 10 '23
Sure lol
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u/Sssteve94 Sep 10 '23
Boy, somebody is completely unaware of I dustry developments. You keep pushing that propaganda though. Seems to be what you people do.
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Sep 10 '23
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u/Trash2030s Sep 10 '23
And what about the electric cars blowing up ha? Is that green?
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u/Selethorme 2021 Mazda CX-5 Sep 10 '23
Oh, so you just weren’t here in good faith. ICE vehicles catch fire at more than 4x the rate of EVs.
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u/Trash2030s Sep 10 '23
Two things: -there is no such thing as battery recycling, only battery disposal -when youre driving in an electric car, youre getting bombarded with dangerous EMF
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u/Selethorme 2021 Mazda CX-5 Sep 10 '23
Oh boy, so you didn’t pass eighth grade physical science. 1) that’s just a demonstrably false claim:
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a44022888/electric-car-battery-recycling/
2) that’s not how EMF works, nor is it even true
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u/biggsteve81 '20 Tacoma; '16 Legacy Sep 10 '23
Light bulbs also give off "dangerous EMF" - do you live in the dark?
Unless the car is giving off UV, X-rays or Gamma radiation (which it isn't) it is perfectly safe.
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u/donaldsw2ls Sep 10 '23
There's a new method of disposing of any sized lithium battery including for cars. It's 95% recyclable. Basically put the batteries in a fluid that neutralizes the battery. Grinds them up. Metals sink the the bottom, plastics float on the top, and the lithium is extracted and ready to be reused all over again. It's already a thing happening right now. Very very good news.
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u/Trash2030s Sep 10 '23
Thats smart...
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u/donaldsw2ls Sep 10 '23
It is! I know the problem was disassembling EV batteries, especially Teslas is why they didn't recycle as much. The glue in Tesla batteries are so strong it's way too hard to disassemble them. So this new process is awesome. Just grind em up!
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Sep 10 '23
People literally are talking about that. It just makes your made up talking point easier in your head to say that no one is.
All things considered, it's still better than ICE vehicles in terms of total environmental impact.
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Sep 11 '23
We can argue about the good or bad surrounding EVs are all day. That doesn't change the fact that we are running out of oil, and need to find different ways to power vehicles before all of the oil is gone.
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u/Inkdaddy55 Replace this text with year, make, model Sep 10 '23
Oh boy! Time for the corps to rape the world of more resources for the glory of capitalism!
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u/sirmanleypower Sep 10 '23
I'm sorry, where do you think we'd be getting the resources to electrify everything? Would they just magically appear?
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u/rangerm2 Sep 10 '23
Too bad it's in the US. Can't mine or drill here.
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Sep 10 '23
“The US didn’t allow destructive oil drilling in a national park once, so clearly it’s a broken state”
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u/Harsewak '19 F87 M2 Competition Sep 10 '23
The US is at an all time high domestic oil production rate but ok
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u/Lordofwar13799731 21 Model 3 LR acc boost, 00 Silverado 1500, 14 camaro ss, 20 WRX Sep 10 '23
It's all supposed to come from the US for the stricter ev tax relief shit, so that makes no sense.
Also, a mining company already bought it, there's no way the mining company isn't going to mine it somehow.
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u/Shoddy_Stick_7249 Sep 11 '23
You would be surprised at how frequently mineral rights are blocked for a plethora of reasons. Mines are 95% immobile assets, so they are vulnerable to rent-seeking and grifts from a variety of NGOs. The US is not even a particularly good jurisdiction for mineral development because each state has its' own policy, and the federal government is some combination of byzantine and incredibly unpredictable. There's no such thing as a checklist to guarantee a permit will be approved.
Imagine having to spend 20% of the cost of your house, upfront, and wait years before you can get a final determination as to whether you will be allowed to build a house on your own land. That's pretty much how mines are built.
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u/MSTmatt 23 Hyundai Elantra N, 12 VW GTI Sep 10 '23
"Paradise? I'd rather them put up a parking lot!" - RangerM2
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Sep 10 '23
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u/TortoiseHawk Sep 10 '23
Elmo is going to love this