Which technology, Hydrogen or Electric, will win the future of automotive transportation and why?

EV can be short-term pleasures or long-term disasters. Check out this quora question about why Japan decided to go Hydrogen. You can find excellent information in the post stream on your concerns and objections. The rollout of hydrogen fueling stations is being sponsored by the government.

Their biggest concern is the unsustainable future dumping of used battery by millions of cars. These batteries can be compared to your double-A batteries but multiplied by the 7104 Tesla batteries.

The 85 kWh battery pack of the Tesla S is 1,200 lb (540kg) in weight. It contains 7,104 lithium-ion batteries in 16 modules wired together in series (14 in flat section and two stacking on the front). Each module has 6 groups of 74 cells wired parallel. The 6 groups are then wired together within the module. The Tesla 3 contains 4416 batteries.

There are currently 1.4 billion vehicles in the world with a saturation rate of 18%, which means there are many more people coming online to purchase vehicles who don’t have them yet. If the current vehicles were replaced by battery EV cars, we would have sometime in the future from just those cars alone approximately 10 trillion batteries to deal with and that’s just the conservative lower limit. This is obviously not a sustainable model for the future, unless that country doesn’t care about the environment and already has a secure dumping ground for their toxic garbage.

Battery recycling is currently not possible. They are not intended to be disassembled at the moment. The batteries are large and heavy, almost as big as your entire back area. They are hidden under your seat. This is not the same as motor oil, where you can have it changed and someone take it away from an oil change shop. It can be difficult to transport these heavy items and get them down to the individual cells for recycling. Different manufacturers produce different lithium-based batteries. This makes it more difficult to standardize the recycling process. A cathode could be made up of different percentages of Lithium and Cobalt, Nickle or Magnesium as well as component parts, wires and connectors. It is not as easy as just dumping the EV batteries in a heated pot to separate them. Recycling itself is a polluting process. Each type of battery must be treated through a unique chemical process that takes into account its particular composition. This Chemical and Engineering News article provides more information.

Reusing batteries can be expensive and polluting. Think about the number of battery dumps all over the globe where there is already a problem with garbage overload. You can also see the Trashopolis TV series. This is the future we want for our kids.

The future burden battery issues associated with EVs are not as severe for hydrogen cell technology.

The US is known for prioritizing short-term pleasure and convenience over long-term considerations about the environment, our planet and the preservation of fragile biomes. These things should be considered before we boast about how wonderful EVs are for us individually in the present.

Michigan National Public Radio: Recycling that household battery is not as easy as you might think.

 

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