Electric Cars Might Outlast Gas-Powered Ones; Rethinking Recycling
And more about the human and environmental costs of renewable energy and digital technology —and how we can do better.
Electric Cars Might Outlast Gas-Powered Ones
Conventional wisdom says that the batteries in electric cars start to wear out after just a few years, which is why they typically come with only an eight year warranty. But a growing body of evidence suggest that those batteries might stay strong for much longer. “In fact, they could still be very usable even after 20 years,” reports Wired’s James Morris, “potentially giving full-electric cars a longer useful life than many fossil-fuel equivalents.”
One study of 7,000 EVs found that after 100,000 kilometers (a little over 62,000 miles) of driving, the cars’ batteries still had an average of 90 percent of their original capacity. In other words, the batteries could hold almost as much electricity as they could when they were new. Even after 300,000 kilometers/186,000 miles—which is more than the average American drives in a decade— the batteries still held 87 percent of their capacity. Another study found a similar rate of degradation. If that rate were to remain consistent, “a 10-year-old EV could be almost as good as new, and a 20-year-old one still very usable,” writes Morris. Data from automakers BMW and Tesla also point toward a similar conclusion.
That said, no one knows for sure how long a typical EV battery will last, because there are hardly any mainstream models that have been around for 10 years, let alone 20. And the batteries in the oldest ones, mostly Nissan Leafs, were much less advanced than those on the market today. But if modern batteries do indeed have that much staying power, it means that EVs in general may age better than their fossil-fuel powered cousins, especially since electric cars have far fewer moving parts to worry about.
All of which is good news not only for EV owners, but also for the planet. Of all the technologies of the Electro Digital Age, electric vehicles are the number one consumer of critical metals. The longer those vehicles last, the less virgin metal we need to mine to build new ones. Also, the fewer polluting battery factories we need to build, a development that would be welcomed by, among others, these women in Hungary who are fighting to keep a proposed Chinese factory out of their neighborhood.
It’s potentially bad news, though, for EV battery recycling companies. Some North American startups have sunk big dollars into building up huge facilities, but are unable to put them fully to work because at this point, there just aren’t enough batteries being junked. If EV batteries end up staying in use for years longer than originally expected, recyclers might starve for lack of feedstock.
Rethinking Recycling
All that said, recycling of critical metals from all sources is growing, and if we’re lucky, it could make a big dent in the amount of mining we require. “A successful scale-up of (critical metal) recycling can lower the need for new mining activity by 25‑40% by 2050,” says a recent report from the International Energy Agency. That would mean much less wear and tear on the Earth, plus fewer greenhouse gas emissions, since recycling is less energy-intensive than mining. It could also be lucrative: The IEA reckons the market for recycled copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel and other critical metals could reach $200 billion.
The same report bemoans the developing world’s extremely low recycling rates for electronic devices, which are chock-full of critical metals, from the lithium batteries in laptops to the copper power cords in toasters. But the IEA is missing something hugely important here. Their numbers consider only officially-licensed e-waste recyclers, whereas in most of the developing world, recycling is carried out mainly by unlicensed, untaxed, “informal” networks of scavengers. Those groups are often astonishingly efficient. I saw this for myself in Lagos, Nigeria, where I spent time with some of that city’s thousands of e-waste pickers. As I explain in this book excerpt published in Mother Jones, they’re an incredibly hard-working and ingenious bunch, and thanks to them, the e-waste recycling rate in Nigeria is estimated to be as high as 75%. That’s much higher than in the US, where fewer than 1 in 6 dead mobile phones is recycled.
Not that there aren’t people working to boost that number! Just in time for the holidays, tech refurbisher BackMarket has released a line of fashion accessories made from old phones and other digital cruft, including this nifty belt with an old flip-phone for a buckle. E-waste for your waist!
More News Worth Knowing:
🫸 China Tightens US Metal Embargo
👦🏿 Remember a few weeks when I was talking about all the children working in critical metal mines around the world? Add another place to the grim list. A powerful investigation by the AP found that children as young as six are working in Nigerian lithium mines.
🐟 In Chile, Rare Salt Flat Fish Are Imperiled by Copper and Lithium Mining
🛀 Can New Technologies Clean Up Copper Smelting?
🇬🇱 Mining Companies Are Slavering Over Greenland’s Trove of Critical Metals
Sorry this week’s newsletter is a day late! I was tied up in the San Francisco Bay Area, giving a couple of talks about Power Metal, the book. Many thanks to everyone who showed up, and especially to The Worker Agency for organizing the main one!
