The Price of Electric Car Batteries Has Dropped 89% in 10 Years
December 31st, 2020Via: Fast Company:
A decade ago, a lithium-ion battery pack used in an electric car cost around $1,110 per kilowatt-hour. By this year, according to a new survey, the cost had fallen 89%, to $137 per kilowatt-hour. And by 2023, the cost is likely to fall far enough that car companies can make and sell mass-market electric vehicles (EVs) at the same cost as cars running on fossil fuels.
Ok, so the price went down. They still are not green. There is nothing green about strip mining the ore or the refining into the raw element. There is nothing green about the process by which that element is made into a battery. In the end, there is no green process through which you can recover lithium from a battery at the end of its lifecycle, or from one thrown aside out of whimsy for a new widget.
Then there is the production of electrons to be stored. How much cement goes into the base of a single windmill? Cement is one of the most energy intensive and polluting endeavours humans take part in. Windmills only last so long and need to be replaced due to the stress placed on them makes them prone to catastrophic failure.
None of the “Green” alternatives is ecologically inert, nor are they sustainable. Someday, perhaps, we will collectively realise the techno-orgy was a mistake…