The Electric push to move away from carbon based fuels is very skewed and misleading. The Toyota Prius for example, is not the most efficient car on the market! It averages 40-45 mpg on a regular basis, and that is with the aid of the electric motor that engages from 0-35 mph, at 35 mph the gasoline engine takes over. The Volswagen Jetta/Rabit/Golf TDI line of cars will get you better mpg than a Prius. On a road trip a few years ago, driving a VW Golf TDI, We averaged 58 mpg for the entire trip, 500+ miles!
I'm sure there is a lot more development coming up for these Hybrid cars, but at what cost? The current batteries in our gasoline and diesel powered vehicles are typically Lead-Acid. Lead-acid batteries are the most widely recycled product in the world because they're 70% lead by weight, the recycling process is simple and a global recycling system already exists, thus there is a desirable profit margin in recycling these Lead-Acid batteries as well as several other types of common batteries. However, the batteries that are being produced for these Hybrid/Electric cars are Lithium-Ion. These lithium batteries use cobalt and nickel, which are far more expensive than titanium, iron, and manganese that were previously used in lithium batteries. The switch to cobalt and nickel was due to an increase in battery performance when using these metals, as opposed to iron, manganese, and titanium. Despite their extremely high metal value, cobalt-based lithium batteries are rarely recycled because the process is so difficult and expensive. There was only one company in the world that had a program for recycling these lithium batteries, Unicore. The reason for this is because it is so damn expensive to recycle these batteries!!! The amount of Cobalt extracted from these batteries does not hold enough value to justify the process, and Unicore's only facility designed for this process is in Sweden! There are several other companies in the US now, Toxco is one, that have been given grants from the US government as part of a stimulus package to develop their own process and facilities to recycle these lithium batteries, there is also a facility in Trail, British Columbia, Canada as well.
The big push to electric/ hybrid cars is intensely backed and funded by the US government, it is part of Obama's pledge to transition the country away from a dependency on foreign oil and foreign-made batteries. Bull s**t!!!!!!!!!!!! There is obviously a profit to be made by producing these batteries, but (and this a huge BUT), by how much is it going to lessen our dependency on crabon based fuels?! Here is a quote from the CEO of Nissan: "Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan, whose electric Leaf was unveiled this month, has said electric vehicle sales will make up 10 percent of the market by 2020, a figure equal to about 65 million units last year." 65 Million units?!!! Where is all the money going to come from to dispose of and /or recycle 65 million units worth of lithium batteries? The consumers, that's who will pay for the cost of the process, and when it's all said and done my 1994 Toyota pick-up(gasoline) that gets about 22 mpg, will still be cheaper to operate and maintain over the next 10 years than a Prius which needs new batteries every 3-5 years(batteries don"t last forever)! And what powers the factories and plants that are disposing of and recycling these batteries, what source of energy do they run on(insert: coughing ...carbon based fuels...bull sh*t!!-Oh , please excuse me, I had a lump of coal stuck in my throat!)?! It is nothing but smoke and mirrors to mislead "us",the consumers, into buying a product that is "GREEN" and saving the planet from Global Warming! There must be a cleaner/ better power source out there than what is currently available, but we cannot simply change our economic dependency on carbon based fuels over night. If the current economic status is a glimpse of things to come, then perhaps we should further development on current technology like DI for 2T's for cleaner transportation.......!!! When the economic status has come out of the dumpster, then it's time to look elsewhere for alternate fuels and power sources!
Apologies for the rant! My .02 cents have been spent!
