Canada

Actually it seems to be one of the more talked about aspects, right after the local environmental costs of mining in some poorer countries, dispite being one of the easiest to solve.

You drop EV batteries into a dielectric bath industrial crusher and get thousands of dollars of absurdly high grade lithium-cobalt ore out of it. While there are hard questions that industry has not put much public press into answering, especially when it comes to environmental concerns, in this case the reason is that it’s actually pretty trivial to deal with.

Given that lead acid batteries have a ninety seven percent capture rate dispite only being worth a few dozen dollars at most, we can expect higher rates with the far more valuable EV batteries. Lithium is infinitely recyclable after all, and for all the failings of the free market when it comes to keeping personal electronic’s batteries out of landfills I doubt you need much overarching regulation to get people to take the five to seven thousand dollar payout from recycling in this case.

The reason we don’t see high recycling rates currently in the space is that despite worries that the batteries would degrade to the point of uselessness after a few short years, the vast majority of EVs are still on the road and looking to have a longer average lifespan than gasoline vehicles. On top of that there are a lot of applications which want the reuse them and there is a reason that reduce, reuse, recycle are in that order.

And of course, any talk of the environmental impacts of EVs has to be caveated by the fact that 60 to 70 percent of an EVs emissions cost comes from the power grid itself, which is rapidly changing as renewables push out more expensive coal and natural gas. Of the remainder, most of it is in mining the raw material for the battery itself, which as mentioned only has to be paid once before it is recycled for quite potentially forever.

Unlike a gas car which on average produces more than twice their weight in co2 every single year it’s on the road, an EVs emissions break even after only two to four years, after which that car and its future descendants will continue to just go mile after mile without contributing to gobal environmental collapse.

While things like more of Vancouver’s trolleybus network would obviously be best, given the population densities involved as well as the housing shortage we’re not going to be able to replace all cars in North America on the timelines the laws of physics demand we meet, and it’s important to keep that in mind when discussing it.