- Electric and hybrid vehicles are often seen as environmentally friendly, but there are many issues with them beyond just the vehicles themselves. - The production of the batteries used in these vehicles is complex, environmentally damaging, and energy intensive. It involves mining scarce materials, shipping components around the world, and producing radioactive waste. - When the batteries reach the end of their lifespan after only a few years, there are few options for safe recycling and most must be disposed of as hazardous waste. - Considering the full lifecycle from production to disposal, electric vehicles may not be as green as advertised and individual transportation may not be the most sustainable option overall.

1. Transit Myths
Phillip Clark
The idea of a hybrid car is nothing new. Neither is the idea of a fully electric car. In fact,
one of the first commercially available cars, built by Ferdinand Porsche – the very namesake that
would go on to build some of the most iconic race and exotic cars, was fully electric. However, it
took over a century for a more practical electric car to become a reality.
The modern electric and hybrid vehicles are seen as somewhat of an automotive messiah
– come to save the world from its sinful ways of fossil fuels and “foreign oil dependency.” They
are supposed to be the coup-de-grace of innovation in the personal transportation sector. This all
really started with the Toyota Prius. The word “Prius” has become a household name in all of the
developed world and is synonymous with “hybrid.” People automatically connect that name with
such things as fuel efficiency, environmentalism, and a reduced carbon foot print. This car, and
the ideals behind it, have become the starting point and industry platform that have shaped such
things as; the Tesla Motor Company, the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, and electric car charging
stations – just to name a few.
The technology behind these things is actually quite simple and fascinating. For normal
hybrid vehicles, a gasoline powered engine runs the vehicle and powers the batteries until they
are fully charged. After that, the gasoline engine shuts off and an electric motor takes over. All of
this is controlled by the cars on-board computer so the driver does not have to do anything
different from driving as they would in a traditional gasoline vehicle. This being the case, these
cars are sold on the principal of enormous fuel efficiency which is better for the consumers bank
account, and better for the environment.

2. With all things considered, there is one simple fact that is hard to ignore. This is that
electric and hybrid vehicles are a poor choice when it comes to being environmentally conscious.
There are a number of innate issues that go far beyond the end consumer product of a single
vehicle in and of itself. It can, and should, be noted that each individual vehicle does present a
clear image of this greater problem. As such, it is necessary to consider all points of the problem
at hand.
These cars themselves are plagued with their own problems of negative environmental
impact. Mainly, it is because of their batteries. The energy has to come from somewhere and this
is usually from the electric grid – which is the first issue. This problem leads directly to the
reasons why the batteries are a major problem. Other issues that follow are where and how the
cars are generally made, how they are used by the consumer, and finally their innate issues when
it comes to owning these vehicles. All of these issues will be evaluated in turn.
Fully electric cars only differ from hybrids in that there is no gasoline engines. These
vehicles take their power directly from a plug – one not all too different from the plug that you
plug your large household appliances into. In fact, these cars can easily be plugged into your
house's electrical system. The benefit being that it costs quite a bit less to charge the car than it
would to fill up a normal car with gasoline. Of course, these vehicles do tend to be drastically
more expensive, and they experience limited ranges even on a full charge.
However, fully electric cars do present a fairly obvious problem: they get their charge
directly from the electric grid. It is fair to say that the majority of the world gets its electricity
from coal or natural gas fired power-plants. So, you your plan is to reduce carbon emissions, this
really does not cut it. In fact, it may actually increase carbon emissions per-capita of electric
vehicle owners. Basically, what this means is that unless money saving is your goal and not

3. being “greener,” than this is probably not the way to go.
Of course, there are those areas of the world that have other power sources feeding their
electric grids. One very popular one is hydro-electric where a dam is built with electric
generators inside that are turned by water currents. Sounds much “greener,” right? Not exactly.
Ask any archaeologist or paleontologist what they think of large dams – specifically ones like
China's new Mekong dam that has completely submerged thousands of years of China's history.
Not to mention the effect that dams have down stream by halting fish migration, allowing
sediment build up, and starving ecosystems downstream of vital water. Not so green, but plainly
necessary.
So that just leaves nuclear, wind, and solar power. The dangers of nuclear are clear when
events such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are considered, though these events are rare and
nuclear really is the greenest approach to powering the modern world. Solar and wind are also
beset with their own innate problems: wind energy relies on windmills that must be started by
diesel engines, these giant wind-fields must by set out in the middle of nowhere (natural, prime,
wilderness) and constantly maintained by diesel powered trucks that drive up and down roads
constructed solely for this purpose, and the windmills themselves have a nasty tendency to
confuse birds and disrupt bird and animal migration. Not to mention, they do not work when
there is no wind. Solar on the other hand is not so bad. Yes, solar fields do need to be fairly large
to be efficient, but they can be put in downtown city centers amidst buildings and parking lots
that have already bee constructed. The only problem is that they need light, obviously, so they
are not practical in places that receive a lot of rain, up north where it can be dark for weeks on
end, or where they can be covered by dust or other debris.
Basically, unless you ignore all the facts surrounding electric and hybrid cars, they are not

4. as eco-friendly as they are advertised to be. There is a much larger picture at play. You can not
take a microscopic view of a telescopic realm. The problem doesn't even end with where the
power comes from. That is but a small portion of the entire problem.
Since where an electric car's energy comes from has already been addressed, we must
now look at where that energy is stored. In this case, it is in the car's battery. The production of
these devices is complex, questionable, and dangerous. First, raw materials must be mined,
which is not at all uncommon for any device being produced. But the electric car battery relies
on minerals that are scarce and difficult to extract. This process is extremely detrimental to the
environment, and it depletes minerals that, if the process is left unchecked, will run out before oil
ever will.
Next, once the raw materials have been obtained, the battery itself must be produced.
This requires the raw minerals to be refined (the specialty of one country), shipped off to another
country to be made into a usable product, shipped from there to yet another country to be put into
the battery components, and finally it must then be shipped to another country where the final
product will be assembled into the final product.
It does not just seem like there is a lot of shipping involved. The process really does take
place as stated. Now, this is great for global cooperation and trade, but it is terrible for the
environment. Most of the shipping takes place on diesel powered vehicles such as trucks, to get
each thing from one building to the next and to ship it around a single continent; but most of the
mileage of the transport is by barge from Scandinavia, where most of the raw minerals are
obtained, to Canada where they are processed, then to China and Japan where they are produced
and assembled. The remaining shipping takes place by train where this is possible.
So this shows us just a glimpse of the vast amounts of carbon waste are put into the

5. environment before the car itself is anything more than an idea. And yes, there is mining and
such involved in the production of traditional internal combustion vehicles, but that is virtually
all for the chassis – a component that internal combustion vehicles share with hybrids and
electrics alike. So there is much more involved in making just the battery, a core component, of
the electric car.
Next, one must look specifically at the raw materials that are used in the battery. It is so
much more than where they come from. Early electric car batteries were based on a design called
“Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH).” The “metal” in these batteries was cobalt. In its natural form,
cobalt is a relatively harmless metal that is very hard when processed into a carbide, and useful
in the industrial sector when made into grinding and cutting bits. However, when it is refined, as
it must be to make a NiMH battery, it becomes radioactive. It is its radioactive properties that
make it work in batteries. So aside from begging the question “which would you rather have
under your car: a flammable substance like gasoline, or a radioactive substance,” there are some
major environmental issues that must be addressed such as disposal of spent batteries,
recyclability of used parts, how repair technicians and mechanics are affected by these things.
However, most batteries now are Lithium-ion. Lithium itself is much safer for the
individual, but it has its own costs for our planet, as was analyzed above in the section about
mining and battery production. With the beginning of battery life already examined, one must
now look at the end of its life. Disposal is inevitable. These batteries, whether NiMH or lithium-
ion have a set, and often short, life span. One can expect their electric car battery to last for about
three to five years. Then it must be replaced. This begs the question, what happens to the old
batteries. Aside from there being very few mechanics willing to deal with replacing the batteries,
there are very few places around the world that are equipped to process the spent product.

6. The obvious environmentally friendly idea would be to recycle them. However, they
contain very few recyclable materials – amongst which is usually not lithium. So they must be
put into landfills, but not just any old land fill, they have to be put into hazardous waste landfills.
These are the only locations equipped to handle heavy metals and radioactive materials. This is
an obvious gut-shot to the environment.
Now one must look at how and where the cars are made. They are usually produced by a
conglomerate company that has suppliers around the world providing different parts and services
that facilitate the entire process. A sample of this was seen in the examination of how the
batteries were made. This whole process is not unique to electric cars, but it does kind of exclude
the idea of a “locally produced” product from being a point of the final consumer.
The primary producer nation of these cars is Japan. This is the country that owns the
company Toyota which gives us the Prius. Although there is an entire city in Japan named
“Toyota,” this tiny nation is hardly one of the biggest consumers of their own vehicle. Primarily,
the Toyota Prius hybrid, and the also Japanese Nissan Leaf electric car, are shipped to such
places as the United Kingdom and the United States. These nations are all the way around the
world from Japan where the majority of these cars are made. This fact will probably remain true
for quite some time as Japan is such an innovative leader when it comes to electric car
technology.
The next largest producer of electric cars is the United States. It is our country here that
has come up with the Tesla and Chevy Volt. Buying these cars from our own nation does cut
down the environmental cost of shipping the vehicles, but with places like the United Kingdom
being another large consumer of these vehicles, it becomes a “wash” so to speak: yes it helps for
us to buy our own vehicles, but if people in the U.K. Decide they want a Tesla or Volt, than

7. shipping the vehicles there then becomes part of the issue again. So it only applies locally, as it
is.
The next issue is how the cars are used by the people that buy them. There is a prevailing
idea that hybrid and electric vehicles do better on the freeway. While this may be true for
traditional internal combustion vehicles, it does not seem to hold up for electric and hybrid
vehicles. They can really only be used for short freeway trips before the battery goes flat and a
hybrid has to switch to its gas engine, and an electric car has to be recharged.
Aside from the above debunked half-truism, there is another problem with how the cars
are generally used. With limited ranges, the ideal consumer buys these vehicles with the intention
to use it as a city run around car; a vehicle that sees very little, if any, freeway travel. This forces
the car to spend its entire life in the grueling environment of spot and go traffic. This being the
case, the car is less able to use its highly advanced technology such as regenerative braking to
charge the batteries. What this means is that the batteries are charged up a little bit, drained,
charged and so on for the entire time the vehicle is driven. This does not give the battery a
chance to fully charge, and fully drain – a process called “exercising” the battery. When a battery
is not “exercised,” its over all life expectancy is actually dramatically reduced. For an electric
vehicle, this means that the battery goes from lasting three to five years, to only potentially
lasting two to three. When you combine that with the rest of wear and tear on the vehicle, as the
owner opts to exclusively use the electric one in town over an even split between another internal
combustion vehicle, the cars whole life is shortened and must eventually be replaced or disposed
of.
The only redemption factor at play here is that there may be niche markets where and
electric vehicle can be more effectively utilized. Ideally, this would be as a courier vehicle in a

8. nation that is nuclear powered, where customers are too distant for other couriers, but not so
distant that a day trip is out of the question. Of course, this is a perfect world scenario. Other
niche markets might exist, and already be in play, where electric vehicles are effectively utilized
better than a fossil fuel vehicle would be. These markets may be some from of what has been
discussed here, some thing completely different, or a combination of these. But it is safe to say
that, at any rate, the primary consumer is not a niche market.
Now there are the innate issues of the electric vehicles to consider. As they are like any
other vehicle, is the bare essence of things, these cars do need the occasional repair. When how
the cars are used is considered, it is plain to see that a fairly common repair would be a battery
replacement. As was stated, there are probably few shops willing to deal with this, and even
fewer that are actually equipped to do so safely. This makes this process very difficult, not cost
effective, and potentially dangerous.
This being the case, some consumers might be inclined to just replace the vehicle. What
this means is that either the vehicle is sold and repaired, going through the same process that was
just stated, or the vehicle is sent to a junk yard and scrapped. In terms of new versus used for
parts and the entire vehicle, most people might be inclined not to repair, not to maintain, but to
replace with either new parts or an entirely new vehicle. Sure, the old things may be recycled,
but any truly environmentally conscious person knows that reuse is the right way to go.
With this in mind, what is the process of recycling when reuse is out of the question? The
fact of the matter is that the majority of the car can be recycled. At least as much as any other
vehicle. But it, again, comes back to the battery. There is very little recyclable material, and even
fewer places that will put forth the vast amounts of energy and effort that are required to obtain
reusable materials from the entire process. All the rest just gets put back into the environment in

9. a very bad sort of way.
It may seem like nothing can be done. It may seem like hybrid and electric vehicles are
about as bad as you can get in reference to the environment. It may even lead one to ask if we
have gone too far with this particular technology. But at this stage, these statements are arbitrary,
and the questions they raise unanswerable. We are only left with a foggy image of the future and
how these vehicles fit in to that.
This makes it clear that one must go back to the essentials of environmentalism and
conservation. First, there is the idea of being “local.” Cars may be big brutes of machines, but
they are often produced locally just like any other product. Buy a car from your own nation. You
may be surprised what you can get. If you want a Mercedes, for example, there is a factory in the
United States that produces the majority of American owned Mercedes luxury vehicles – they
don't have to come from Germany. BWM and Volkswagen do the same. Also, if you must have
an electric car, Tesla and Chevy are American.
Another proposal is to buy used. Again, if you must have electric, there are used ones on
the market. Buying one practically makes it like buying local. When you buy used, you end up
with a vehicle that has been tested, been repaired, and you don't buy something that has to travel
to our nation from some distant shore. Sure, it may have started that way, but you make sure it
does not got from distant shore, to local trash heap. Also, if you continue to repair and maintain
it, it keeps new vehicles off the road; it is the pinnacle of reusability instead or recyclability or
disposability.
Finally, there are other alternates. You can choose to not use a vehicle at all for certain
trips. This is beneficial whether you consider electric, hybrid, or fossil fuel cars and trucks. A
bike is about as efficient as you can get in terms of personal transportation. Walking is even

10. better for the environment, albeit much slower. But if you need to travel far or haul something,
car pooling or ride sharing seriously cut down on environmental impacts.
To be honest, there are no great alternatives. With our population numbers being so large,
and people being so spread out, we need to travel far and fast. This only leaves us with the
technology we have at hand: cars, trains, boats, and planes. Hybrid and electric vehicles are a
part of this technology. This means that we can not ignore their reality all together – that is not
rationally possible.
The fact of the matter is that things could be worse. They could also be better. Electric car
technology, although it has been in some way around since the dawn of the personal car, is still in
its infancy. Innately, it is not a bad technology. But they way we use it is extremely bad for out
world. This means that it needs to be further developed to a point where it is not so detrimental.
However, rolling out the latest untested technology is not the way to do this. Real-world testing
is not the proper way and it has to stop. For the time being, hybrid and electric cars should be a
back burner item on the agenda, and people should consider to use internal combustion vehicles
for the good of the environment.