These photos depict hydraulic fracturing and cobalt mining, which many see as the environmental fallout of electric car batteries. Photo illustration courtesy of reporter Dawson Nelson.
Current San Luis Obispo High School students could possibly live in a time where most, or even all, that is driven are electric cars. That is where the technology and consumer demand seems to be leading the automotive field.
“I feel very lucky to have an electric car because I can just plug it in overnight, and I don’t have to pay for gas. My family has solar, so I don’t pay anything when charging at home, but when I charge in the downtown parking structure it’s around 5$ for a full charge. I feel less worried about it breaking and they are fun to drive, said senior Owen Speidel.
Electric cars have many benefits over internal combustion cars, but still, society is not fully prepared to go all electric. There are many hidden disadvantages to going all electric that need to be addressed before the switch can be made.
“One of the concerns of electric cars is the lithium ion batteries and the pollution they make. Also the cobalt to make those batteries are in African countries where at least it was reported that there are pretty bad slave-like conditions used to mine it,” said automotive instructor Jeff Lehmkuhl.
Lehmkuhl went on to explain why it is hard to compare electric car pollution to gas powered car pollution.
“The only concern is the chemicals that they use in the hydraulic fracturing [oil fracking] being polluting potentially to the water. It’s a hard question to answer because how do you quantify the negative effects of let’s say the chemicals in hydraulic fracturing, number one versus the pollution caused or the negative human costs of making lithium ion batteries,” said Lehmkuhl.
However, with gas powered cars the main problem is carbon being released into the atmosphere during combustion causing global warming, but society doesn’t yet know the full ramifications of electric cars because they are still under one to six percent of the cars in the United States.
“The main drawback of my car (2013 Leaf) is that the range is only 65 miles,” said Speidel.
Even with this, electric cars still seem like the safer but more expensive alternative being about 10,000 dollars more expensive than the industry standard.
Sources: nrdc.org