Alpha 
Post by fretslider on Jul 5, 2019 6:08:25 GMT -5
Electric cars are all the rage and nobody has thought it through - not one little bit.
Jaguar Land Rover have become the latest company to defy the doomsayers – this morning they’ve announced a billion pound investment in their Castle Bromwich plant. JLR will convert the plant to a state-of-the-art electric vehicle factory which will build an electric version of their XJ model, a luxury saloon which retails for upwards of a cool £60,000. JLR say:
<“The future of mobility is electric and, as a visionary British company, we are committed to making our next generation of zero-emission vehicles in the UK.”>
order-order.com/2019/07/05/jaguar-land-rover-announce-billion-pound-investment-uk/
First, let's look at the cars, themselves. They require a lot of rare Earth metals in their manufacture.
...for the 31.5 million cars currently on the UK roads to be replaced with “the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries’, cobalt production would need to nearly double to 207,900 tonnes, with vast amounts of lithium carbonate, neodymium, dysprosium and copper also being needed.
www.energylivenews.com/2019/06/06/cobalt-production-must-nearly-double-to-enable-required-ev-growth/
How many cars/trucks etc are there in the US, Canada, Europe, etc? Way more than there are resources for. It's impossible to replace all those hundreds of millions possibly billions of vehicles
And getting those metals blinds the green fraternity to the suffering and exploitation...
The mere extraction of the exotic minerals cobalt and lithium used in the batteries of EV’s present social challenges, human rights abuse challenges, and environmental challenges. Hazardous working conditions where the workers make such meager wages they live in abject poverty. Moreover, they are regularly exposed to out of control pollution and countless other environmental issues which cannot be ignored.
The key minerals used in today’s batteries are cobalt of which 60% is sourced from one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and lithium of which more than 50% is sourced from the Lithium Triangle in South America, which covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile. Today 20% of cobalt is mined by hand. Amnesty International has documented children and adults mining cobalt in narrow man-made tunnels, at risk of fatal accidents and serious lung disease.
The cobalt mined by children and adults in horrendous conditions in the DRC in Africa is entering the supply chains of some of the world’s biggest brands. The richest most powerful companies in the world are still making excuses for not investigating their supply chains. Even those that are investigating are failing to disclose the human rights risks and abuses they find.
As demand for rechargeable batteries grows, companies have a responsibility to prove that they have ethical supply chains, a priority when implementing green policies, and are not profiting from the misery of miners working in terrible conditions like those in the DRC. The energy solutions of the future must not be built on human rights abuses.
www.cfact.org/2019/02/18/the-dark-side-of-green-technology/
Yes, they really do turn a blind eye to it, just as they ignore the streamers over Ivanpah, and the birds and bats diced by windmills - a price well worth paying.
The horrors of obtaining rare Earth metals are put aside in favour of more trendy causes...
Sweatshops employ millions of people, mostly young women, in deplorable conditions around the world, while their employers profit in the billions. These modern day slaves are barely able to survive under poor conditions and their wages are miniscule.
www.feminist.org/other/sweatshops/sweatfaq.html
Now how about the energy needed to make those cars move?
Secondly there’s the minor matter of power generation and distribution. Admittedly the number of charging points is growing and it seems there is plenty of time for the network to mature. However, last I heard we were rather concerned about being able to generate enough electricity for our current needs. There is no sign of our reliance on electronic devices slowing down and, if anything, new iterations of the existing ones are getting ever more power hungry. Given that there will be a ramp up of electric vehicles by manufacturers from now until the target date: how are we going to keep up with the demand for power?
The quick option is fossil fuel burning power stations but that merely moves the pollution problem and we are highly reliant on imported fuels for them already. Renewables are coming up but I have yet to be convinced that – again from cradle to grave – they are the leap forward that hype would have us believe. Then there is nuclear which, if the latest project is anything to go by, will take a long time and be rather expensive. Whatever happens there seems to have been a target set without any realistic idea of how to get there
www.theengineer.co.uk/electric-cars-have-they-really-thought-it-through/
A small country
We are closing fossil fuel power plants and replacing them with imported electricy from Europe when the wind doesn't blow. Clever, eh?
Wind farms would need to ‘cover whole of Scotland’ to power Britain’s electric vehicles
Jack Ponton, emeritus professor of engineering at Edinburgh University, said another 16,000 turbines would be required in order to replace petrol and diesel cars with electric vehicles.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has pledged to phase out the internal combustion engine by 2032 – eight years ahead of the rest of the UK.
But Prof Ponton said that, even if the issues of power generation and charging points were sorted out, the National Grid could simply not cope with the increased demand.
He said: “It is a nice idea as electric cars are much more efficient, cleaner and actually simpler devices than the current internal combustion engine vehicles.
“Technically, it is an excellent idea. But the problem starts when you begin to think, ‘Where are you going to get the energy to run them?’.
“I’ve seen three different estimates for the amount of new generating capacity that we would need if were going to have all the cars in Britain running on electricity.
“The most detailed calculation says we’d be looking at five Hinkley nuclear stations to run this. It would be the best way, the most efficient way to get electricity because nuclear power stations can run 90 per cent of the time.
“If you want to do this with wind turbines, you are talking about 16,000 more wind turbines, four times as many as we have at the moment, and I’ve estimated that would occupy some 90,000 square kilometres, which is approximately the size of Scotland.”
wattsupwiththat.com/2017/10/30/16000-additional-wind-turbines-required-to-power-british-electric-car-fleet/
Human carnage and a promise that can never be delivered. Virtue signalled.
