The Reality of EV

Elon Musk's presentation this week on his company’s ‘Master Plan,’ outlining plans for a ‘fully sustainable earth.’ had one interesting statement to me that “a sustainable energy economy involves less mineral extraction.”

I was a bit surprised, considering how obviously false the statement was to anyone who thinks about where all the base materials come from to build the so-called, fully sustainable model. 

Let’s dig into why this statement is so wrong (pun intended).

• 25,000 pounds of lithium brines are required to produce the 25 pounds of pure lithium needed for a single electricity vehicle (EV) battery;
• 30,000 pounds of cobalt ore are required for a single EV battery;
• 6,000 pounds of nickel ore are needed to produce enough nickel;
• 1,000 pounds of graphite ore per battery; and
• 25,000 pounds of copper ore.

So, in total, it takes about 90,000 pounds of ore to produce one EV battery for a single car.

But that is not the bad news, it gets worse.

In order to get to all that ore, somewhere between 3 and 20 tons of earth need to be removed to access an ore deposit. Above is a picture of what that looks like:

This top ground is called overburden because it is made up of trees, grass, rocks, and the natural living habitat that must be removed from the surface of the Earth before the mineral extraction can even begin.

And in order to extract 90,000 pounds of ore, somewhere between 200,000 and 1,500,000 pounds of earth needs to be removed…

for a single electric vehicle.

For all the people who believe that EV is the savior of our future world, they are being hypocrites. Imagine the environmental impact of 100 million EVs or 500 million EVs!

Then on top of that are the massive earth-moving and mining equipment, haulers, drills, etc., that all run on petroleum-based fuels.

And almost all of the energy that is used to make and recharge EV batteries are produced and manufactured using electricity that is generated by fossil fuels, primarily coal.

Then layer on top of that is the abusive labor practices of the ore mining industry.

It is believed that there are over one million children working in mines around the world. In just the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has some of the world’s most valuable minerals, such as copper, gold, coltan, cobalt, and diamonds, and has the earth's second-largest forest after the Amazon, more than 40,000 children work in the mines. China is even worse.

So, the question truly is whether the short and long-term effects of the EV industry and any "self-sustaining energy" model are better for the world than the path we are on today?!

Let us all know your thought through the comments.

Have a great day,

Gordon