The Inherent Problems With EVs That No One Wants To Talk About

Without long term solutions, EVs could end up being a fad

Photo by dcbel on Unsplash

Electric vehicles (EVs) are all the rage right now. Between flashy TV ad campaigns and political rhetoric about the technology, everyone is being led to believe that EVs are a silver bullet for our climate problems. EVs are cool. EVs are fresh. EVs are modern. But EVs also have a slew of problems that few people are willing to talk about. The latest car ads don’t tell you about the massive lithium mines popping up in exploited areas of the world. The politicians don’t have answers about what to do with mountains of old car batteries. Tesla doesn’t want you to look up how much it is to replace the battery when it starts to fail. EVs are new and exciting, but they are also raw, and they have a host of issues with few good solutions.

I really want EVs to work but unless these problems are solved they are not going to be a viable solution for the future.

Constant Lithium Mining

Until battery technology changes, the backbone of the entire electric vehicle industry is lithium. Lithium is an unstable, nonrenewable resource that is mined out of the Earth. Lithium mining is dangerous and bad for the planet. Most of the lithium deposits are located in South America, Australia, and China. That means that not only are EVs driving a boom in lithium mining, but most of the lithium also has to then be shipped around the world on trains and ships which do not run on electricity.

Lithium is so important to the modern economy that some people are describing it as the next oil. Like oil, lithium mining is bad for the planet, and lithium is nonrenewable. Every single lithium ion battery produced must use processed lithium to make. A single Tesla battery can use up to 12kg of lithium. Tesla sold over 1 million units in 2022. That is a lot of lithium.

Battery Replacement Cycles

Another issue that is rapidly approaching is the battery replacement cycle. No lithium battery lasts forever. Every time you charge and deplete, and recharge a lithium battery, it loses efficiency. Most people are familiar with this process through their cell phones which slowly lose…