Converting America’s fleet of privately owned cars and trucks from internal combustion gasoline and diesel-fueled engines to Electric Vehicles (EVs) will cause critical shortages of Lithium—a must-have for batteries—and prompt more environmental damage due to increased mining, according to a new report.
Avoiding the lithium shortages and dramatically increased environmental demand will require all but eliminating privately owned vehicles, concentrating the U.S. population in big cities, requiring the use of smaller batteries and making Americans rely on public transportation, the report claims.
“A crucial aspect of electrified transportation is new demand for metals, and specifically the most non-replaceable metal for EV batteries—lithium,” said the report produced by a team of scholars from Providence College and the University of California at Davis, working in conjunction with researchers associated with the Climate and Community Project….