Industry insiders will tell you that while batteries can be (and are) currently recycled, not one company in existence today has yet to recycle batteries at a profit. The companies doing it are all taking a loss because it's still cheaper to mine virgin material. Now, the biggest issue is scale, since mining is currently at a much larger scale than battery recycling to date, but battery recycling will eventually get there. But anyone who points to that as a benefit of EVs today doesn't understand the economics of the auto industry.

And brakes. Stopping more mass--even with regenerative braking--means using more brake pads and more wear on the rotors. People often overlook the higher consumption rate of the consumables like brakes and tires.

There's an economic break-even point for the consumer, and a carbon break-even point for when an EV is more 'green' than an ICE vehicle. That breakeven point varies by country, based on what the carbon footprint is for electricity generation. In 2022 in the USA, for the average EV you need to drive it 19,000 miles total before it becomes carbon neutral. In China, that same vehicle needs to be driven 78,000 miles before it becomes carbon neutral.

One statistic often overlooked is that globally, the light car and truck market consumes about 17% of the total fossil fuel used for modern-day transportation. That means even if we made every single car and light truck on the planet an EV, we'd still be using 83% of our current fossil fuel consumption annually, and those vehicles using that 83% fuel are some of the worst polluters on the planet (jet engines, diesel cargo ships, etc). And if you don't think there are that many, here's a reality-check screen shot I just grabbed from VesselFinder, showing all the current commercial cargo ships and their positions around the globe:

The modern day ICE car has such a small footprint, relatively speaking, that the EV push--no matter how successful--really won't make that much of an environmental impact the way most consumers assume it will.

And finally, people need to educate themselves about e-fuels/synthetic fuels. Go look at the work Porsche is doing with it. Right now, the only real drawback is cost, which is driven by scale. If we have a fuel that exists today that allows current ICE vehicles to be a ZEV, shouldn't that be enough to let ICE vehicles continue to be produced and let only market forces decide which technology wins out? If you answer yes, then ask yourself what the real agenda is and who is driving it.

 

I think the real point is that we are going to do a whole bunch of things that will cost a lot of money, cause all sorts of problems, and not really address the real issues. I won't even get into the fact that we can't control what the rest of the world does.

That's why I said we need to change focus:
- Use EV's where it makes sense: commercial vehicles and trucks, landscaping equipment, and so on (and some consumer uses).
- Significant increase in actual clean, efficient energy (ie Nuclear), and eliminating others (like coal).
- Synthetic cleaner burning fuels since chemical energy storage is still way more efficient than any battery (and we are not close to Mr. Fusion yet).
- Research into atmospheric management (extracting CO2 and other gases from the atmosphere and, ideally, recycling it into fuels and other things).

Remember, in the end, people generate CO2, so at some point, you are going to have to get rid of the people if you only plan is to eliminate generating CO2.