Think again: Are electric vehicles truly greener for the future?

Argumentative entry on 10 October 2022

My father crashed our family car last Sunday. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘It’s probably a more economical idea to sell the petrol car now and buy an electric one before the 2030 deadline.’

At the time of writing, the UK government is proposing a deal that would prohibit the purchase of petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Electric vehicles, or EVs in short, are long renowned for their award-winning efficiency and relatively lower impact on the world when compared to traditional petrol and diesel cars, with the latter consuming fossil fuels to run. Lower taxes were imposed on EVs to encourage people to jump on the bandwagon. That explains why the market for electric vehicles exploded in the 2010s, and the demand for vehicles has skyrocketed, with sales of battery electric vehicles in the UK rising 79% to 39,315 units in early 2022. In China alone, electric car sales nearly tripled in 2021 to 3.3 million, and sales also grew in Europe, which increased by 65% to 2.3 million. However, recent investigations have also revealed the potentially dark side of EVs — one that might be worth considering — EVs can also harm the environment: although in a different way, they can be equally destructive to the environment.

A vehicle is our indispensable tool in the modern world and we rely on it to go anywhere. As more and more people adopt EVs and the demand continuously going up, the price of EVs has slowly but steadily become more affordable. In addition to the growing adoption, the proposed law mentioned earlier could also push manufacturers to focus on producing EVs primarily, which would in turn encourage new customers to opt for an EV instead. Some people would argue that EVs are a cheaper and more appealing long-term investment for consumers as charging an EV makes more sense now when compared to the cost of petrol when fuelling a car, as petrol and diesel prices are rising dramatically at the time of writing. An EV might be expensive upfront when buying the vehicle itself, but in the long term, customers are arguably saving a lot by not having to fuel the car with diesel or petrol. Repairs to an EV are also cheaper as there would be fewer components to go wrong, with the absence of an engine or exhaust system. Not to mention that electric cars can also be more futureproof when the industry is heading towards EVs anyway, making the investment more worthwhile.

Some people would argue that EVs are indeed going to make our future greener. While a lot of people may agree that a greener future is equivalent to less carbon, EVs are an appealing option for a lot of people with their lower carbon footprint. The explosion in popularity of EVs is not difficult to understand, as most people do buy into the idea of electric cars being more environmentally friendly and it would help achieve our eventual goal of becoming carbon neutral. Although producing an electric vehicle may make use of a lot of finite, rare earth resources, unlike petrol and diesel cars, those resources can be reusable and recyclable. Electric batteries, for example, can be rechargeable and recyclable. On the other hand, traditional petrol or diesel combustion vehicles incinerate fossil fuels every time we drive, which pollutes the air and increases CO2 emissions. Some EVs also utilise renewable energy, which makes them even more appealing to the general consumer who would probably be concerned about the carbon footprint of the vehicle that they are driving.

However, there is a dark side of electric vehicles that is often overlooked. Although electric vehicles were built to last and consume less carbon, the negative impact of EVs during the production and manufacturing process is undeniable. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an electric vehicle required six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle. That is not all. Most EVs require a rechargeable battery; the elephant in the room is the battery housed in the EV itself. To make the battery in the car last, and to resist extreme temperatures (as batteries are very sensitive in terms of environmental conditions and temperature), a mineral called Cobalt (Atomic number: 27) has to be used. Cobalt is a blue mineral originally used just for making ceramics turn blue, but now it has a really useful purpose of regulating heat and the volatility of the electric vehicle while we are driving long distances to prevent the battery from exploding. Due to the increasing demand of cobalt in such a short period, the value of cobalt has nearly tripled over the past year. However, it has to be extracted from the Earth’s crust in remote locations as it is a rare earth element. The Democratic Republic of Congo, previously known as Zaire, has the most natural cobalt resources in the world. It holds 70% of the world’s cobalt supply. There are 19 cobalt mines in southern Congo, and 15 of them are controlled by China. As China controls most of the world’s cobalt supply, it gives them a distinctive advantage to leverage and power as the world transitions to cleaner energy. During his interview with Politico, Bryce Crocker, CEO of Jervois Mining (an Australian mining firm), once said, “China is not processing that refined cobalt to export to the west to support your electric vehicle revolution. They’re going to make cheap cars themselves and the best you can hope for is that they’ll export cheap cars to you.” That essentially means that China is controlling a massive burgeoning market that they would like to have a corner on, by essentially controlling 70% of the world’s supply of this rare earth mineral, cobalt. This creates a massive roadblock in the west where technological innovation has been caught up by China, a new player in the game which has a terrible reputation for dealing with user data and privacy, undermining their user data with technology. Imagine your EV is made by a Chinese brand, with all of the bells and whistles installed that allow the Chinese Communist Party to conduct surveillance on your every move, wouldn't that be scary enough? However, there is more to the dark side of electric vehicles.

Aside from all the great power rivalry with the technology between China and the west, ethics also come into play while talking about cobalt mining and the EV revolution. To maximise profits and ensure growth, the cobalt mines, especially those controlled by China, often ignore worker safety, with dangerous mines everywhere and child labour being exploited. Kids are often sent to work in dangerous mines. According to UNICEF, an estimated 40,000 children work illegally for long working hours. Plus, as the mines are so risky, there are always people routinely dying on the job. According to Reuters, in 2019, at least 41 artisanal miners were killed when part of a copper and cobalt mine owned by Glencore collapsed in southeast Congo. The worst of all is that Cobalt is a finite resource once again, and the process of mining and refining it requires deforestation, polluting rivers, and general exploitation. The sustainable green revolution with electric cars turns out to be, ironically, the same story of people destroying the earth with a finite resource race among big powers that got humanity here in the first place. This is a vicious cycle that humans are trapped in without knowing it, when we are trying to save the environment by destroying it. Once we illustrate the whole story, the toll of EVs for the environment is clear as glass. That is why EVs are controversial at the same time with some environmental conservationists arguing that manufacturing EVs would be devastating for the environment, and pushing the EV revolution is not helping to achieve a greener future.

To conclude, although the benefits of electric vehicles are significant enough to convince people to invest in them, the devastating impact of the manufacturing process of electric vehicles is also very dark and often overlooked. As the general market is heading towards EVs anyways, the best bet is to think of any solutions to help reduce the earth-destroying extraction of rare earth materials during the manufacturing process of EVs. Although extracting cobalt from the earth’s crust is arguably just as bad as incinerating fossil fuels, cobalt and other rare earth materials are highly recyclable and reusable. In fact, we are already recycling finite resources, including cobalt and lithium, which are the main ingredients for most batteries. When the lifespan of these finite resources is dramatically higher, it gives us one less reason to extract them naturally, preventing general exploitation of the planet. Also, instead of fixing the problem with cars such as their batteries and fuels, we can fix the problem of cars at the same time. Perhaps lowering car dependencies by raising taxes on car ownership might help, along with investments to refine and improve public transport. If a car is still a necessity to some people, a hybrid car might be more economical in the short term (as it is a somewhat better balance between fossil fuels and rare earth materials), although its lifespan is questionable with its value expected to be dropped dramatically by 2030. But anyhow, solutions would not be 100% effective in all ways, and so while we are heading towards a cleaner future with electric cars starting to become the mainstream, the cleaner future would have problems that we still have to solve.

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