However you feel about electric vehicles, our government wants you to buy one..
Congress has made up some arbitrary fuel economy rules and the only way to achieve these are a shift to a platform that I don’t believe is sustainable.
First less look at the materials:
The copper needed to build future electric cars and switch to renewable energy as the U.S. and other countries are planning…would send global copper demand to 58 million tons in 2050: More copper than the world consumed from 1900 to 2021.o wonder those copper pennies no longer exist.
Other minerals needed: minerals. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, stand to be in tight supply, unless tech advances enable future batteries that need less of those scarce metals.
This shift kills the oil and refinery businesses. The gas stations, the repair shops, and mechanics. The scrap yards and the recyclers.
Then there is the potential strain on the electric grid. A large fleet of EVs would produce substantial new power demand, at a time when the grid’s reliability is already slipping. Plus, many state and local officials are pushing to switch from natural gas to electricity for home appliances and heating systems, while the grid is also becoming more reliant on intermittent renewable power like solar and wind.
Then where are the unrecyclable parts of the batteries going to go? I am suggesting we see how long it takes to fill the Grand Canyon with the dead batteries.