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Electric cars: Difference between revisions
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# | This page is about passenger-owned electric vehicles (cars, vans, pickup trucks, etc). For commercial semi trucks, see the page on [[electric trucks]]. For passenger buses, see [[electric buses]]. | ||
{{considerations}} | |||
About 1% of today's cars are electric<sup>[USA, 2023]</sup> - the rest run on gasoline which causes [[climate change]]. | |||
==Types== | |||
* Battery electric vehicles (most common today) | |||
* [[Fuel cell vehicles]] (very few models on the market today) | |||
==Considerations== | |||
===Battery minerals=== | |||
{{sum|Currently a problem|bad}} | |||
The vast majority of today's electric cars store their energy in [[lithium-ion batteries]], which contain too much cobalt to scale up. {{x|Cobalt mineral reserves would be depleted early-on, and the majority of cars would remain gasoline-based, even with desperate attempts at obtaining more cobalt such as strip-mining the ocean floor. See page on [[lithium-ion batteries]] for maths related to this.}} Lithium is also somewhat scarce and could be also be an issue. | |||
Every once and awhile there's some news article about some company researching / developing / investing in some battery type that will supposedly be as energy-dense as lithium-ion. But there's no guarantee it'll happen in the near future, and if it does, it'll probably be expensive. | |||
Scarcity may also be an issue for [[hydrogen]] fuel cell vehicles (which depend on platinum-group metals). | |||
If car buyers are willing to compromise (settle for [[short-range electric vehicles|less ''range'']]), electric cars could be made with other battery types{{x|such as [[sodium-ion]], or somewhat less ideally [[lithium iron phosphate]]}} that are more sustainable/scalable. The main selling point is that they would be cheaper. {{qn}} | |||
<!-- TALK: work this in somewhere? or put it in [[energy storage#types]] or [[the great battery challenge]] idk | |||
* [[lithium iron phosphate]] (somewhat more scalable) | |||
* [[lithium-sulfur]] (somewhat more scalable) | |||
* [[sodium-sulfur]] (much more scalable & sustainable) | |||
* [[sodium-ion]] (much more scalable & sustainable) | |||
--> | |||
===Energy sources=== | |||
{{sum|Not green enough yet}} | |||
If the electricity comes from [[fossil fuels]], electric cars are [[electric vehicles/fossil fuel powered|barely any better than gasoline cars]] when it comes to carbon emissions. | |||
In most parts of the world today, electricity is generated from [[fossil fuels]]. {{x|Consider that [[hydro]] and [[geothermal]] power are only available in a few geographic locations; [[conventional nuclear power]] is limited by scarcity of uranium-235; [[biomass waste]] energy is in extremely low supply. Whenever the local capacity of renewables is exceeded, fossil fuels make up the difference.}} For electric vehicles to save the environment, we're going to need a lot more [[solar]] and [[wind]] (which comes with other [[solar/challenge 1|challenges]]), or [[thorium|other kinds of nuclear]]. | |||
<!-- TODO: make a map of where in the world are hydro & geothermal power available and not already at maxed-out capacity --> | |||
===Availability of charging=== | |||
{{sum|Ongoing progress}} | |||
{{empty}} | |||
===Rare-earth magnets=== | |||
{{sum|Reasonable}} | |||
Efficient motors need strong magnets, which can only be made with a certain amount of rare-earth minerals. Luckily, it turns out that we ''wouldn't'' run out of rare-earth minerals ''even if'' all cars were electric and all energy came from [[wind]]. {{pn|TODO: Add the calculation/research that led to this statement.}} | |||
==See also== | |||
* [[Public transit]] - another approach | |||
* [[Walkability]] - another approach | |||