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| This page is about ''passenger-owned'' electric vehicles (EVs): '''cars''', '''vans''', '''pickup trucks''', etc. For commercial semi trucks, see the page on [[electric trucks]]. For passenger buses, see [[electric buses]].
| | #REDIRECT [[Electric vehicles]] |
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| {{considerations}}
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| About 1% of today's cars are electric<sup>[USA, 2023]</sup> - the rest run on gasoline which causes [[climate change]].
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| ==Types==
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| * Battery electric vehicles (most common EVs today)
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| * [[Fuel cell vehicles]] (very few models on the market today)
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| ==Considerations==
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| ===Battery minerals===
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| {{sum|Currently a problem|bad}}
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| 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.
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| {{minor|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.}}
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| Scarcity is also an issue for [[hydrogen]] fuel cell vehicles (which depend on platinum-group metals).
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| 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}}
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| <!-- TALK: work this in somewhere? or put it in [[energy storage#types]] or [[the great battery challenge]] idk
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| * [[lithium iron phosphate]] (somewhat more scalable)
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| * [[lithium-sulfur]] (somewhat more scalable)
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| * [[sodium-sulfur]] (much more scalable & sustainable)
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| * [[sodium-ion]] (much more scalable & sustainable)
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| -->
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| ===Energy sources===
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| {{sum|Not green enough yet|bad}}
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| 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.
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| 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]].
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| <!-- TODO: make a map of where in the world are hydro & geothermal power available and not already at maxed-out capacity -->
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| ===Availability of charging===
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| {{sum|Ongoing progress}}
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| {{empty}}
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| ===Rare-earth magnets===
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| {{sum|Reasonable}}
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| Efficient electric motors need strong magnets, which can only be made with certain minerals known as ''rare-earth elements'' (REEs). Luckily, REEs aren't actually that scarce. Even if all vehicles were electric, we wouldn't even come close to running out of REEs.
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| {{minor|This is true even if all [[energy]] were to come from [[wind]] turbines, which also contain rare-earth magnets.}}
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| {{pn|TODO: Add the calculations & research that led to this statement.}}
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| ==See also==
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| * [[Hydrogen combustion vehicles]]
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| * [[Public transit]]
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| * [[Walkability]]
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