4 ms·

How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated. I've seen only some very dishonest ones like "

by acqq 10y ago

How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated. I've seen only some very dishonest ones like "once the batteries are not usable in cars we'll sell them" where the worth of the used batteries was immensely overblown. That wasn't honest at all. I also can't take Musk's claims for even being close to honest. The environmental effects of producing such small devices as cellphones is known to be significant. With the cars it's completely new orders of magnitude, which can result in non-linear responses, even if we know the good estimates for the smaller batteries. Do we?

bullen 10y ago
Something probably produces a similar amount of CO2 indirectly if the same mass is produced/moved. The only benefit of electric is the 80% efficiency of the motor. Wind and solar is not producing more energy than it requires to be built. If you sum up all the energy required to build and power a tesla, from the fuel of the mining equipment for lithium, aluminium and steel etc, to the person driving the drills cats food, everything is net negative. The only energy added to the planet is sun rays, the only way this energy is stored is through photosynthesis, we have consumed millions of years of sunshine in 200 years. At the current rate we only have 50 years of fission material left. The only viable solution is to lower your standard of living willingly, before you are forced to. In this case that means buying a bike (non-electric if you live in the city) and working from home. Both of these are actually improvements of standards, but you could also live smaller and eat less.
icc97 10y ago
Not sure if you mean the CO2 claim or the battery recycling claim. CO2 claim is open to argument I guess, but the battery recycling is pretty certain. They will definitely have battery recycling at the Gigafactory and it makes perfect sense to be able to recycle their own batteries better. They've got all the schematics of how they were built and so can more easily pull them apart.
hwillis 10y ago
>How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated. Very easily. Batteries are very simple and have about a dozen input materials, usually from single sources. They are some of the most easily analyzed products in the world. There's a steel jacket with a plastic gasket, a cathode material (in Teslas this comprises lithium, nickel, cobalt and aluminum), an electrolyte mixture (common, safe liquids like ethylene carbonate or dimethyl carbonate), a separator (one of many common plastics), and an anode mixture (around 55%/45% natural and synthetic graphite, possibly with a few percent silicon). Every one of those materials is extremely common, readily available, and highly recycled or recyclable. Almost all steel and aluminum is recycled, and plastic can easily be recycled. The electrolytes are just small carbonates, used in a ton of industries. Nickel is the biggest threat by far- per pound cobalt is slightly worse, but there is 5.3x[1] as much nickel in a battery. If we switched to 100% electric cars using Tesla sized batteries, they still wouldn't use as much nickel as the stainless steel industry does. There is no comparing the byproduct during manufacture. Lithium battery production is just great. For recycling the worry is solely that the nickel and cobalt will leech from broken batteries into the water supply. This doesn't happen with stainless steel because well, it's stainless. Luckily nickel and cobalt are also the most valuable part of the battery, and are quite valuable to recover through shredding and incineration. The scrap value of nickel alone in the battery is more than the scrap value of steel in the car, so recycling is virtually guaranteed. >I've seen only some very dishonest ones like "once the batteries are not usable in cars we'll sell them" where the worth of the used batteries was immensely overblown. Are you sure you have your facts right? A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. It continues working long after and can even degrade slower. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more, for well kept batteries- recycling wouldn't even be an issue in that case. At that price buying used batteries would be almost as cheap as buying gasoline for generators. [1]: http://neicorporation.com/specs/NANOMYTE_BE-45_NCA_Spec_Sheet.pdf http://neicorporation.com/specs/NANOMYTE_BE-45_NCA_Spec_Shee...
- acqq 10y ago
  > A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase. That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects. Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced. And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries? Also in 2013 Musk's company claimed the Model S makes 176g CO2 per mile, controlling their claim gives "346g per mile - more than the 312g per mile the EPA says the Toyota Highlander emits." https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesla-model-s-is-a-dirty-car https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesl... My main argument stays -- there's no reason to believe Musk, and every for an independent careful control of his claims.

by acqq 10y ago

bullen 10y ago

Something probably produces a similar amount of CO2 indirectly if the same mass is produced/moved. The only benefit of electric is the 80% efficiency of the motor. Wind and solar is not producing more energy than it requires to be built. If you sum up all the energy required to build and power a tesla, from the fuel of the mining equipment for lithium, aluminium and steel etc, to the person driving the drills cats food, everything is net negative. The only energy added to the planet is sun rays, the only way this energy is stored is through photosynthesis, we have consumed millions of years of sunshine in 200 years. At the current rate we only have 50 years of fission material left. The only viable solution is to lower your standard of living willingly, before you are forced to. In this case that means buying a bike (non-electric if you live in the city) and working from home. Both of these are actually improvements of standards, but you could also live smaller and eat less.

icc97 10y ago

Not sure if you mean the CO2 claim or the battery recycling claim. CO2 claim is open to argument I guess, but the battery recycling is pretty certain. They will definitely have battery recycling at the Gigafactory and it makes perfect sense to be able to recycle their own batteries better. They've got all the schematics of how they were built and so can more easily pull them apart.

hwillis 10y ago

>How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated. Very easily. Batteries are very simple and have about a dozen input materials, usually from single sources. They are some of the most easily analyzed products in the world. There's a steel jacket with a plastic gasket, a cathode material (in Teslas this comprises lithium, nickel, cobalt and aluminum), an electrolyte mixture (common, safe liquids like ethylene carbonate or dimethyl carbonate), a separator (one of many common plastics), and an anode mixture (around 55%/45% natural and synthetic graphite, possibly with a few percent silicon). Every one of those materials is extremely common, readily available, and highly recycled or recyclable. Almost all steel and aluminum is recycled, and plastic can easily be recycled. The electrolytes are just small carbonates, used in a ton of industries. Nickel is the biggest threat by far- per pound cobalt is slightly worse, but there is 5.3x[1] as much nickel in a battery. If we switched to 100% electric cars using Tesla sized batteries, they still wouldn't use as much nickel as the stainless steel industry does. There is no comparing the byproduct during manufacture. Lithium battery production is just great. For recycling the worry is solely that the nickel and cobalt will leech from broken batteries into the water supply. This doesn't happen with stainless steel because well, it's stainless. Luckily nickel and cobalt are also the most valuable part of the battery, and are quite valuable to recover through shredding and incineration. The scrap value of nickel alone in the battery is more than the scrap value of steel in the car, so recycling is virtually guaranteed. >I've seen only some very dishonest ones like "once the batteries are not usable in cars we'll sell them" where the worth of the used batteries was immensely overblown. Are you sure you have your facts right? A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. It continues working long after and can even degrade slower. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more, for well kept batteries- recycling wouldn't even be an issue in that case. At that price buying used batteries would be almost as cheap as buying gasoline for generators. [1]: http://neicorporation.com/specs/NANOMYTE_BE-45_NCA_Spec_Sheet.pdf http://neicorporation.com/specs/NANOMYTE_BE-45_NCA_Spec_Shee...

acqq 10y ago
> A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase. That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects. Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced. And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries? Also in 2013 Musk's company claimed the Model S makes 176g CO2 per mile, controlling their claim gives "346g per mile - more than the 312g per mile the EPA says the Toyota Highlander emits." https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesla-model-s-is-a-dirty-car https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesl... My main argument stays -- there's no reason to believe Musk, and every for an independent careful control of his claims.