I Have So Many Doubts About All Electric Cars,

especially given the fact that, and I quote, current EV batteries “are really not designed to be recycled,”

photograph ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY of a shredded electric vehicle battery which can yield recyclable metals, but it is often cheaper for battery makers to use new materials, but the quote, current EV batteries “are really not designed to be recycled,” is by Thompson, a research fellow at the Faraday Institution, a research centre focused on battery issues in the United Kingdom, and here is just one of many problems, from the article: ‘Batteries differ widely in chemistry and construction, which makes it difficult to create efficient recycling systems. And the cells are often held together with tough glues that make them difficult to take apart. That has contributed to an economic obstacle: It’s often cheaper for battery makers to buy freshly mined metals than to use recycled materials, there are 2 processes to strip down batteries, both produce extensive waste and emit greenhouse gases, studies have found. And the business model can be shaky: Most operations depend on selling recovered cobalt to stay in business, but battery makers are trying to shift away from that relatively expensive metal. If that happens, recyclers could be left trying to sell piles of “dirt,” says materials scientist Rebecca Ciez of Purdue University’

the two methods to extract rare metals from the batteries are pyrometallurgy, that burns spent batteries into a slag, and hydrometallurgy, which dissolves them in acids. Both aim to extract cathode materials. The ideal is direct recycling, which would recover the cathode intact. But for recycling to be viable it must be cost competitive with mined materials,

also from the article: ‘Engineers might be able to build robots that could speed battery disassembly, but sticky issues remain even after you get inside the cell, researchers note. That’s because more glues are used to hold the anodes, cathodes, and other components in place. One solvent that recyclers use to dissolve cathode binders is so toxic that the European Union has introduced restrictions on its use, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined last year that it poses an “unreasonable risk” to workers’, so buy an all electric car and certainly for the next few years add to the pollution problems of the world, I know that all of the above flies in the face of being so green, but read the article and weep if you bought an all electric car or are thinking of buying one to save the planet! for myself I will be responsible and stick to my diesel.