“Chinese companies, particularly CATL, have secured vast supplies of the raw materials that go inside the batteries,” The New York Times reported in December. “That dominance has stirred fears in Washington that Detroit could someday be rendered obsolete, and that Beijing could control American driving in the 21st century the way that oil-producing nations sometimes could in the 20th.”
By increasing our use of electric cars, the United States will require more lithium batteries and will further rely on China to sustain our supply. While the current energy crisis could be an opportunity for America to increase our energy independence, the current administration refuses to take advantage.
As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported in August, Biden’s electric vehicle plan “is a big win for Beijing.” Despite our capability to become independent and profit from American-made energy, Biden has no plans to trump China’s mass energy production, even as China continues to flaunt the rigid “green” standards that hold our own producers back.
Funny that Biden would do that.
Although I can not say it as eloquently as the Federalist, I have been saying the same thing for at least 3 years.
Trump made the USA energy independent because he focused on oil, gas and coal which are all abundant in the USA.
It also meant more jobs for Americans.
Going ” green” (electric vehicles, wind, solar etc ) means depending on foreign nations that have the necessary minerals and the rare earth metals that are not abundant in the USA. Which also means less jobs for Americans.
Going green weakens the USA and makes China and a few other nations stronger.
Saving the planet from ( non existent) gloabl warming is a sure way to weaken the USA.
If you think for a minute that our Dear Leaders are going to let us drive anything with four wheels into the not so distant future, I have a cheap rusty bridge to sell you.
You see, THEY don’t intend for us Serfs to be leaving the plantations at all.
Walking, biking and mass transit will be the order of the day , provided you are a good little peon & pass the gatekeepers daily Digital ID scan for your daily ration.
Sparky and boom boom vehicles be damned.
Dear Leader will try to force us there but reality will set in that it’s not doable in the climate zone we are in. He might do it regardless. Don’t know if QDM ….. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQCdsHLE7N7HHGlHzYkKmwA … would have a word or two to that 🙂 . If sane people group together we can make the gasoline engine fashionable again. If not get used to living in your basement. Latest news suggest Germany fire up coal plant again in fear. Briton as well with a fossil source. The gigs up and they are in a box. Fouck Yea.
bverwey
So the monopolistic left wing Democrat regime recognizes that they have been outplayed by another monopolistic left wing Communist Chinese regime and that worrying about equity, diversity, intersectionality, inclusivity, sexuality, and a whole range of other “ities” and “isms” doesn’t really accomplish anything of importance like keeping a roof over one’s head, clothes on one’s back or food in one’s stomach. Yeah, I doubt it, too.
The piece in The Federalist brings up two points that really aren’t about electric cars. The first is the use of coal-fired generating stations to generate electricity. Two things about this. First, you can (and they will) replace coal with nat-gas (to reduce) or nuclear (to eliminate) CO2 so this excuse on its own means nothing. Second, you have to compare coal-gasoline to coal-electric and this is a problem in congested cities or on major highways that is helped more by coal-electric (looking at the brown air on 401 anyway).
The other issue has to do with not wanting to mine our own metals. Lithium is one of the Earth’s most abundant metals. It is easily mined and processed. But not without a cost. Same for cobalt and nickel. For some reason the western world would rather get its metals from the store than from a mine. The Chinese are happy to provide that store, but that is not the fault of electric cars. That is pure virtue-signaling bull-crap by us.
We don’t have to have the Chinese eating our lunch. But they are happy to do so at our expense.
I could go on about how there isn’t that much lithium in a lithium ion battery and the fact that the writer from The Federalist is a student in psychology and religious studies (well on her way to becoming an engineer I’m sure), but why shoot the messenger. We have a problem with mining and oil & gas extraction. We want the drug but we hate the drug dealer.
Lithium is not the problem, rare earth metals are.
They are necessary for green energy, Evs, wind, solar and cell phones etc etc
and 90% of rare earth metals are in China.
Lithium is not a rare earth metal.
Just which rare-earth metals are you talking about? The original Tesla 3 used some rare earth metals for its batteries but they engineered that out in subsequent models, switching to induction motors. Most of the rare-earth metals that China mines are found elsewhere on Earth. It’s just that “we” now hate mining so we are happy to let the Chinese embed the metals into products and sell them to us at a nice store front. The Chinese are tricky-smart. They drop the price of rare earth metals to capture the market. Once they have it they raise prices. Americans are tricky-stupid. They open mines when the prices are high and let them go bankrupt when the Chinese drop the prices. Then when the prices go up the Americans complain that the Chinese have “cornered the market”. Of course they have. They’re tricky-smart.
from Reuters,
[…] Rare earths are used in rechargeable batteries for electric and hybrid cars, advanced ceramics, computers, DVD players, wind turbines, catalysts in cars and oil refineries, monitors, televisions, lighting, lasers, fiber optics, superconductors
from americangeosciences,
[…]Rare-earth elements (REEs) are used as components in high technology devices, including smart phones, digital cameras, computer hard disks, fluorescent and light-emitting-diode (LED) lights, flat screen televisions, computer monitors, and electronic displays.
from idtechex.com
[…] in 2020, 77% of the electric car market used permanent magnet motors [ in other words ; rare earth elements] , a ratio that has remained fairly consistent over the past 5 years.
As you can see most of those things ( from battery to super conductors to computer screen to LEDs) that use rare earth elements are found in electric cars, but not necessarily in the motor.
it is true some EV motors do not use such rare elements but 77 % of EVs do use them.
Tesla uses both types of motors, with and without rare earth elements.
then there is the pollution problem…
From idtechex.com
[…] Rare earths are extracted from ores which can contain radioactive materials such as thorium and extracting the required rare earths typically uses a huge amount of carcinogenic compounds like ammonia, hydrochloric acids, and sulphates. It has been estimated that processing 1 tonne of rare earths can produce up to 2,000 tonnes of toxic waste.
not to mention that it uses billions of gallons of water…
and rare earth elements are very hard to recycle…
Green energy is not even really green.
Which is in part why nations such as the USA prefer the mining to be done far away in some less developped nations…
Green energy creates new problems yet the demand is growing fast
From idtechex.com
[…] In 2021, the demand for EV motors is expected to increase by 40% in the car market alone. Electric motors literally drive EVs, but many designs utilize kilograms of magnetic materials. These magnets rely heavily on rare-earth materials like neodymium and dysprosium, which are expensive, produce lots of waste and have various mining concerns.
[…] China has invested approximately double the US in the energy-related transition over the last decade.
The day the green crowd and the general public realize mining for those rare earth elements that are in almost everything we use everyday, is killing the environment, they will become even more rare.
And it is not only production that is higher in China,
the USA does not have as much untapped reserves of rare earth elements as China does
from visualcapitalist.com
China reserves 44 million tons
USA reserves 1.5 million tons
As I said somewhere above, the USA has an abundance of oil, gas and coal, in fact the largest reserve in the world, which is how Trump easily made the USA energy independent
but with green energy, the USA is not sitting on such abundant reserves
Abandoning petrol is a mistake.
We are entering into a green nightmare.
China has an unelected tyranny while we have an elected one. Our tyranny is working at destroying wealth and liberty significantly through green theocracy and China is happy to sell us the hardware to do so.
How about we build a car as we did in the 1950’s. I know there was a lot of crap out there but computer crap was not required and there were many good vehicles built.
I hear you regarding too many electronic gizmos but you’ve got to admit that when fuel injection replaced the carburetor, it was the best thing that happened to the ICE. Instead of changing plugs constantly and writing the car off at 100,000 miles, you can now get twice that mileage.
Fuel injection (and catalytic converters) also helped reduce — drastically reduce — emissions from gasoline-powered cars. That’s the main reason our cities have much less air pollution than they did 40 years ago.
When was the last time you had to stick a screwdriver to hold the butterfly valve open on a carburetor car when it was flooded at minus 40?
You had to be a magician to get those old cars started when it was brass monkey weather. You had to feather the frozen gas pedal perfectly or it would flood. And I had the singed eyebrows to prove it when it would backfire as it coughed to life.
Fuel injection solved that problem and thank God for that. Or is it Allah?
I usually had manual chokes, so flooding was a rare occurrence. One truck I did own that had an automatic choke I used a tail comb on when it flooded. Pop the air cleaner (upside down, of course, ’cause those old Quadrajets made that wonderful howl), hold the choke butterfly open, place the teeth of the comb over the butterfly & the air horn, et voila! ‘Course, if the engine backfired, you would frequently find your comb teeth melted together, if not outright burning, & no longer useful for their intended purpose.
Ah, memories…
Just keep making gasoline powered vehicles and producing coal and gas-fired generating stations. It worked for decades. We were incrementally making those things cleaner. Simplistic but rational.
almost daily now, confirmation we’se in a newly minted episode of the old Rod Serling ‘Twilight Zone’.
what brain damaged nation on EARTH will set up such a VITAL aspect of civilization as your very transportation system, where the ‘fuel’ the ‘energy’ necessary hinges COMPLETELY on the whims of *one* of them with a history of 4,000 years of dictatorshit?
hmmm? the ‘admired’ ones get all the cash and control. the west ‘ties the knot’ (not that one), the NOOSE aaaaand puts it so readily ON ITS OWN NECK.
fcuk fcuck fcuk fcuk etc