@turbineman40 Not really. Certainly no more toxic than the same mass of lead acid car batteries. The challenge with the most commonly used battery, lithium ion, is avoiding fires during disassembly and separation of the component materials. The environmental problem is simply solved by not dumping the batteries. Just treat them as raw material for new batteries. After all they have a much higher concentration of valuable metals than any ore. One of Tesla's high ups left to create a battery recycling company and in Norway we already have compulsory recycling of batteries funded by a combination of a fee that is paid into a fund whenever a battery is sold and the income generated by the sale of the collected materials. One of the universities has a pilot project using an industrial robot to disassemble EV batteries (https://forskning.no/energi-kunstig-intelligens-partner/forskere-lar-roboter-demontere-el-bilbatterier-for-gjenbruk/1791341). Norsk Hydro has started a company, Hydro Volt, to recover material from batteries.
Hydrovolt was established by Northvolt and Hydro to deliver sustainable battery recycling in Europe and ensure that no battery is ever wasted.
@turbineman40 Thank you. Going to be hot in the UK. Apparently 40⁰C expected somewhere in the east. Luckily for me I'm on the South Wales where it's expected to only get to 24⁰C. I wonder if I can find a secluded bit of beach to sunbathe on for a few minutes?
@turbineman40 I can but not today, nearly midnight now. Tomorrow I intend to walk around the city. Monday I'm not sure about yet and Tuesday I leave Bristol but I don't know where I'll go yet. Have to research that tomorrow. Plenty of beaches within an hours drive from here and even more if I continue south west.
@turbineman40 To get to another beach? I charged it on the way back from today's trip. Anyway the nearest beach is only 50 km/30 miles away and there is a Tesla Supercharger on the way less than ten miles away so even if I hadn't charged it already I would have just needed a 20 minute charge to add enough range to get there and back with enough left over to get around town and back to the charger again.
I am not an electric minded man at all. Here we run on 120v on 15 amp switch breakers in our homes. I winder how that would relate to an EV car. I know a person has to install a charging station in their home which is 220 Volts I don't know the amp needs
@turbineman40 But a US home typically has a split phase circuit giving 120 V for ordinary items and 240 V for high power items like washing machines, cookers, tumble dryers. An EV would be connected to the 240 V circuit giving essentially the same capacity as a European 230 V circuit.
A lot - possibly as many as half - of UK motorists cannot charge such cars at home simply because they have no parking space available there. Their problem will be the availability or not of fully-working public charging-points in busy locations at busy times.
Those who can do so though, may use either a low-rate charger that runs off the ordinary 230V/13A socket; or have a dedicated higher-rate charger installed (still on a 230V supply) ; but a friend who has done that told me it has to be installed professionally and supplied via a "smart"-meter of its own, separate from the rest of the domestic supply.
I do not know the reason but guess it can allow future taxing of car electricity to compensate for the revenue lost from falling petrol and diesel sales. It may also give the electricity companies a better engineering view of network demands and behaviour.
All the mains wiring in British homes it at 240V - now nominally 230V - both for the switched outlet sockets on the wall, and the lighting - on separate ring-mains from the same distribution box. So it doesn't matter if it is a washing-machine, portable-phone charger or ceiling lamp, it is still supplied at 230V.
