The debate has been open for years. There are many who are engaged in justify the purchase of electric cars on the grounds that They do not pollute and yet that is a lie. An electric vehicle does not have direct polluting emissions, but it does generate a huge amount of indirect pollution. From the entire battery production process to, in many cases, the production of the electricity itself from which they are fed. One of the biggest problems today is in mining involved in the development of lithium batteries.
If we focus on the production processin an electric car the twice as many emissions than in an equivalent thermal car. To give you an idea, only in the battery manufacturing for an electric car now it gets so polluted as in the entire production process of a gasoline car. This basically means that when it is in the dealership and before you can buy it, an electric car is already has polluted at least twice as much than a comparable gasoline car. And this is not the only worrying thing, but also that the NMC batterieswhich are the most common today in electric cars, require several kilos of heavy materials. Of these, cobalt is extracted mainly from the Congo, in Africa, in mining operations with strong Chinese investments. no strict regulation; and the graphite or the nickelother key materials in batteries, are also harmful to the environment to varying degrees.
Of course, electric cars pollute, although they are ‘selling you the opposite’, but…
Data from the year 2010, from the Chinese mining industry, indicate that due to tonne of rare earths also occur 75 tons of acid waste y a ton of radioactive waste. In these batteries, as you surely know, also lithium it is a critical component. Well, to extract lithium from hard rock, they emit 15 tons of CO2 for each ton. But as you will surely have been able to observe, a good part of the data that is available in relation to the pollution produced by electric cars in the production process are prior to the year 2015.
In those years, environmental regulations they weren’t that strict like today or even there was no regulation in this regard. Today the industry is already facing the bad mining practices of cobalt with all kinds of measurements and, in fact, the cobalt free batteries as is the case of the Tesla’s LFP. Another key point is that we are already approaching a recovery of 95% of materials of the batteries during recycling and this effectively means that less mining is needed and therefore the pollution derived from it is progressively reduced.
One of the main problems that the mining linked to the electric car is that absolutely all the machinery that is used has internal combustion engines powered by diesel and low quality oils. Fossil fuels represent more than half of mining activity operations and this means that half the carbon footprint of batteries It is due to mining processes. In short, a large part of the pollution that occurs during the production of an electric car battery has to do with the use of diesel machines in the mines.
Year by year, the situation is getting better and is becoming less polluting build an electric car There is a part of polluting emissions that will never be completely eliminated, but it is true that there is a clear downward trend. And indeed, since the beginning of the electric car it has been easy to observe that, even though producing one of these vehicles was very polluting, with the use heat engines begin to stand out in an almost unlimited way and end up being much more damaging throughout its useful life.
In conclusion, yes, electric cars of course pollute and they are trying to tell you that they are ‘zero pollutants’. This is completely a lie, an electric car does not produce emissions during use, but it has already been quite polluting throughout its production. Despite this, it will never become as polluting as a gasoline or diesel car throughout its useful life. And yes, with each passing year it is less polluting to produce electric vehicles. So, although at some point it may have seemed not, we are on the right line pointing towards one hundred percent electric mobility.