The Cost Of Driving An Electric Vehicle

@Longleggedlady Those are all really good points. And, for sure, corporate isn't going to talk about the downside of the cars. It just wants our money.

@PhoenixPhail It is much the same as your cellphone when it is new you have so many hours where it is idle not being used, but they don't declare how long it will hold it's charge when you start using it to do it's function and that is to talk to people on it, it might have a SUPPOSED 48 hour battery but in reality you would be lucky if that translated to 4 hours of actual in use time. As the phone ages it will eventually not achieve a full charge after 2 or so years it simply doesn't hold charge at all or if it does it will be greatly decreased and will need charging 2 or more times in a day.
As for the disposal look at how many phones, tablets batteries are already piled up somewhere because nobody knows what to do with the now useless lithium battery. In a few years we will have mountains of car ones too that nobody knows what to do with?
To many looking at it sensibly the EV is currently going to do more damage environmentally than a petrol engine.
1. Lithium mining is not environmentally friendly it is also very unhealthy for the people that live in proximity of the open cast mines.
2. Manufacturing the batteries is not exactly environmentally friendly.
3 . How are we going to create all the extra electricity needed to charge X MILLION of them, most countries don't have the capacity to do so, especially not with green renewable energy, where would we put all those extra solar, wind, hydro etc to produce it. So is it fossil fuel moved some place else
4. As I said where are going to do with or where are we going to put a whole load of these depleted and toxic batteries??
To my mind the EV is solving one issue but creating several others in the process of solving one.

@Longleggedlady Lithium is nasty stuff but presumably is recoverable with the proper methods and equipment. And so it should be, like all metals.

@ArishMell Then if it is recoverable why are there already millions of cell phone, laptop etc batteries that are being stored out of site of the public or sent to other countries to be stored?

@Longleggedlady That suggests poor management, not an engineering problem, by the authorities and the waste-disposal companies. To be fair though, it's possible the batteries are being stored pending the scrap trade installing the necessary equipment, or simply to create economical loads for transporting.

Of course they are out of public sight. These stores are industrial facilities, and industrial facilities are closed to all but authorised personnel, for safety and security; and as necessary enclosed in weather-proof buildings. So don't let that "out of site" worry you. It's right and normal.

Possibly much more serious is the sheer waste of materials by people discarding unwanted but often still serviceable or repairable, electrical and non-electrical equipment in landfill - there is no excuse for that.

While throwing Li-ion and some other types of batteries in the dustbin can, and does, lead to fires in refuse-lorries and waste-disposal facilities.

Do your local supermarkets and other shops have battery-collection pots? They do around where I live: just simple plastic jars. When full the batch is presumably collected by the battery suppliers, or taken to a suitable "recycling" point.

Though voluntary collection by the shops, the disposal of old batteries, and other electrical items generally, is of course covered by the EU's "Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment" Directive; and although the UK has left the EU we still apply the UK-law transposition of this set of regulations.

@ArishMell
Pollution Due to Lithium-ion Battery Recycling
Material recovery is usually what impacts the environment negatively. For instance, pyrometallurgy is one of the processes that demand a lot of energy resulting in the emission of GHG and other toxic fumes that contaminate the air.

read this
https://www.cenex-lcv.co.uk/news-media/exhibitor/what-is-the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries#:~:text=Pollution%20Due%20to%20Lithium%2Dion,fumes%20that%20contaminate%20the%20air.

@Longleggedlady Interesting - thankyou.

The message though is contained in the conclusion: it's not using these batteries that is the problem but how the materials are mined, and how the old batteries are scrapped. Well, they know the problems so it is up to the manufacturers to solve the problems and do it properly, if necessary by legal compulsion - although no-one can tell a country like China to behave.

It is also up to the users, including we public, to dispose of old batteries and other electrical equipment via the proper routes, not by just chucking it in the nearest dustbin. Or on the ground.

The lithium extraction "mining" being started in Cornwall is showing considerable promise, not least because it has no intrinsic environmental problems. Just the opposite if anything, by removing the metal salts from the ground-water flooding the abandoned mines.