Canada

There is an environmental cost to nearly everything — but the cost for virtually everything related to EVs is significantly less than those of ICE vehicles, especially in a country like Canada where over 80% of our electricity is from hydroelectric sources, and over 90% of it is from non-carbon-emitting sources.

Yes, the batteries (today) need lithium. That’s not likely to be true moving into the future — China is already releasing an 2024 model based on a sulphur battery. However, what many people (and this article) conveniently ignore is that ICE vehicles use rare-earth metals as well. For example, very ICE vehicle uses palladium (one of the rarest metals on earth) for the catalytic converter — a rare earth metal not required in EV production. And Russia produces 40% of the global supply of palladium.

And oil refining uses cobalt as part of the de-sulphuring process. A lot of cobalt. Over its lifetime the average ICE vehicle will use more cobalt than any EV being manufactured today.

EV batteries are recyclable — up to 95% recyclable. But even before disposal is needed, used EV batteries can be repurposed — Nissan in Japan already resells Leaf batteries with >80% capacity as home backup and camping power packs, and elsewhere in the world used EV batteries are finding a new life as solar power generation storage. Sourcing lithium from used EV batteries cells is vastly more economical than mining for new lithium, so we’ll likely hit a steady-state where only minimal mining is required for new EVs. EV battery recycling is somewhat nascent right now as the oldest EVs are barely 12 years old, and many of those are still on the road.

The worries about the environmental cost of EVs is vastly overstated — especially when you set them side-by-side with ICE vehicles. Anyone who unabashedly drives an ICE vehicle but then complains about how polluting EVs are is being completely disingenuous.