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Europe to boost battery production as electric shift accelerates

11 Comments
By Taimaz SZIRNIKS

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11 Comments
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That is current state. But what if it was better? What if more money was invested in public transport could it be better?

Public transport isn't going to let us do our bi-weekly shopping. We fill the back of a van. Having to always use public transit in Shanghai was one of the things I hated most. We would have to hire a taxi to shop at Metro Cash and Carry (German equivalent to Costco). Expensive and a PITA. Cross the parking lot, hail a taxi on the street, get the taxi into the parking lot by the store to load it up, then drive home. No thanks. And a 150 km taxi ride it out of the question expensive.

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Desert Tortoise

Our region has two daily buses that only run three days a week.

That is current state. But what if it was better? What if more money was invested in public transport could it be better?

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People often talk about the pollution created while extracting materials needed for batteries as being worse than oil extraction. That is correct in the short term in some instances, but not necessarily the long term. Most mining vehicles are still going to require diesel, but that is changing. They already have electric haulers in use. It will take a while, but that transition will happen eventually. The second factor, is that batteries are totally recyclable. No lithium is lost over the lifetime of a battery. It's internal structure just changes if it forms dendrites or has corrosion, etc... The lithium can be extracted and used over and over again effectively forever. Oil products are one time use. You have to keep going back for more and the output of burning fuel becomes a part of our environment.

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Or, how about transitioning away from the independent motor vehicle altogether? Introduce cheap readily available public transport that runs on time, and is purposed to provide a quality service rather than to make a profit? For those times when a private vehicle is necessary, people could hire those electric cars as needed. 

This is the thinking of someone who lives in a big city. For those of us in more remote areas where the nearest large city is an hour and a half away these ideas are laughable. Our region has two daily buses that only run three days a week. Getting anywhere on those buses takes 50% - 100% longer than driving and require multiple connections. And, oh yeah, how does one do the bi-weekly Costco run (bi-weekly because the store is 135 km away) on a bus? We fill the back of a van on these trips. We make multiple stops while down in the big city to satisfy our shopping and medical appointment needs. Then some chirpy city dweller tells us we need to use public transportation. Sorry but your ideas don't fly for a lot of people in the world.

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This whole thing about electric cars reminds me of people buying meat at the supermarket and feeling fine about themselves because they are detaching themselves from the reality of the overall supply chain.

I think you're not better than them omitting a lot of arguments in favor of electric cars.

Like :

no more / less fuel transportation = less polluting tankers, less oil spill risks, less seabed destruction

greater life expectancy = talking about 150k miles currently, car renewal frequency reduced

less maintenance = less parts to change, less pollution

less brake system particles pollution

mature technology but still great improvements to be expected

...
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The new GOLD: Lithium, but way more Neodymium. Get your handheld XRF REE detectors out folks (circa $18K to $50K) and start hiking around improbable locations cuz there's a new GOLD in town...and any new battery technology advances will be mitigated by a lack of Neodymium for the magnets which will propel whatever the future gives us as electric vehicles...and guess who now owns MOST of the known supply...

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I'm buying as much stock as I can in battery production because the price will go only up when the demand kicks in. Buying low holding and selling high later!!!

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purposed to provide a quality service rather than to make a profit?

Huh? Providing a quality service is why people are rewarded with a profit in the free enterprise system.

If there is no profit motive then I don’t know how anyone would be incentivized to provide a quality service for others.

Adam Smith said something about this when he talked of butchers and bakers producing stuff for others not out of benevolence but out of regard for his/her own self-interest.

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Raw materials are essential of course to manufacture batteries.

Mining all the extra volume of materials to produce these batteries isn’t going to cause more climate change now, is it?

This whole thing about electric cars reminds me of people buying meat at the supermarket and feeling fine about themselves because they are detaching themselves from the reality of the overall supply chain.

Not convinced at all that the governments have a clue about what they are doing in this space, but we’ll see in a couple of decades from now.

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Or, how about transitioning away from the independent motor vehicle altogether? Introduce cheap readily available public transport that runs on time, and is purposed to provide a quality service rather than to make a profit? For those times when a private vehicle is necessary, people could hire those electric cars as needed. Otherwise whilst electric cars will no doubt lower CO2 emissions, they will also continue the destruction of the planet by the extraction of resources like lithium and the vast amounts of waste caused when they reach the end of their use.

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Buy copper and silver.

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