News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
One of the challenges is, ironically, there aren't enough dead batteries to economically support multiple large domestic battery recyclers. Batteries aren't failing enough.
The problem with that model is that when they all start failing it will be a crisis without the infrastructure to solve for it.
What crisis are you foreseeing? It is unlikely its going to be an avalanche of millions of batteries failing at once needing processing. Wear and tear will spread final failure over a long time horizon.
Piles of spent batteries stacking up leaking heavy metals into the envirionment without a large scale plan to deal with them.
A single EV uses a 1,000 pound battery pack (on average):
https://blog.evbox.com/ev-battery-weight
That's a LOT to properly dispose of. x 3.3 million EVs in use in the US?
https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/how-many-electric-cars-in-us.html
3.3 BILLION pounds of future battery waste. We need to plan for proper recycling now.
So again, you're describing an avalanche type event where all this need for recycling appears overnight, and that without it we'll have massive environmental damage. Neither of those is likely to occur like that.
Small numbers of batteries will outright fail or be destroyed in crashes becoming useless immediately. This will increase in a fairly predictable way giving lots of indications about needed recycling infrastructure (of which some exists today). Further, the time horizon for larger numbers of batteries to become unusable is likely decades away. Batteries that degrade from use don't stop working, but rather become uneconomical to continue to use them in cars and they be come stationary energy storage, like this:
Old Nissan LEAF Batteries Being Used For Grid-Scale Storage In California
Your source links don't support your argument well. The first just talks about how much a car battery weighs with no mention of recycling, life span, or disposal, and you even posted an inaccurate number from your article on the weight impact of the battery materials. You said:
...but your source says this: "On average, about 60 to 75 percent of a battery’s total weight comes from the cells and the materials they contain, while the remaining 25 to 40 percent is made up of the battery’s metal casing, cables, and thermal and battery management systems (TMS and BMS). "
So the weight of the material you're citing as dangerous is only 600 lbs to 750 lbs, not the 1000lbs you mention.
Your second link also doesn't contain any info on battery usage, degradation, recycling, or disposal, and is just an article talking about the number of cars on the road. It looks like you just took the first sentence from that link which was:
"According to an Experian Automotive Market Trends report from the fourth quarter of 2023, there were about 3.3 million electric cars on the road in the U.S. "
...which you then multiplied by the incorrectly heavy metal battery number from your prior article
...to arrive at your statement....
That's an unnecessary and inaccurate scare tactic.
Yes we will need more capacity for disposing of batteries properly, but the problem at scale is decades away, not tomorrow. Further, the materials themselves are valuable long after any energy storage capacity is exhausted. They are too valuable to throw away. Legislation already passed is working to create a market for this by offering tax incentives in the USA for batteries built from recycled battery material in the USA. This is in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Here's an actual source that talks about EV battery degradation, lifespan, and recycling. source
"Then there’s the Inflation Reduction Act, also passed in 2022, which grants US taxpayers a federal tax credit on the purchase of a new EV. The act stipulates that a certain percentage of the materials used to create those vehicles must be mined or processed in the United States. This puts pressure on EV manufacturers to step up domestic EV battery recycling."
So again, I'm not seeing the crisis you are.
It's basic math, 1,000 pound battery packs x 3.3 million current vehicles.
We do have some local recycling, but nothing at that scale and the batteries have a 15 to 20 year lifespan.
Tesla was around 2008 so by 2028 we need to have a plan for mass recycling. Maybe sooner because I'm sure those 2008 batteries are pushing it by now.
Its basic math with incorrect inputs. According to your own source only 600 lbs to 750 lbs of that requires "battery recycling" that needs special battery recycling facilities. You're welcome to hang your hat on that if you want, I suppose, but it makes me question your other assertions.
I agree, but that also means its not an imminent problem. All of your language here is suggesting it is, unless I'm hearing you wrong.
This is what I'm talking about when doubting your arguments and urgency. In 2008 the SUM TOTAL of Tesla cars sold was less than 100. How about 2009? About 900 cars. 2010? Only about 400 cars. source
In TOTAL there were only 2,450 Tesla Roadsters ( the first Tesla) made over 4 years and sold in 30 different countries.
So if 100% of all the Tesla roadsters batteries died and were completely unusable in 2028 we'd need the recycling capacity of 100 batteries, and thats four years from now.