Depends on how 'bad' is defined. Does it matter if Lithium in an Afghan desert sits under sand or as a battery in a car ? Water usage is red herring because its renewable unless you drain underground aquifers.
Ignoring that, the headline should still be 'Batteries are bad'. Rest of the car is less intensive to build because electric motors are simple and servicing is not needed compared to the brutal work gas engines do.
Why am I quibbling about this small detail ? Because there are electric vehicles without batteries that run under transmission lines like trains. They're efficient for predictable routes like freight or passenger buses. As long as electricity is generated by natural gas or wind/solar, its 'greener', though not 100% green.
For personal vehicles, you are correct, batteries take so much energy to make, it will never be green.
masterofballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
Building communities where you don't need a car would be ideal. Build them so they are bikeable to the grocery store. Or even allow golfcarts to the shop. Make as much food produced locally as possible. Unfortunately without a authoritarian government demanding it (and probably doing it wrong) that will only occur when scarcity occurs.
IMO a sitting president could save lives, save the environment if he mandated that every HOA allows every house to have a chicken laying eggs, a goat to milk, and a apple/pear/orange/peach/fig tree (just pick one ore more it doesn't matter). And maybe even funded the tree planting or the chicken raising. People would need to travel less. If something happens and the food system gets broken it will hit people a lot less hard. Design houses with water collection systems so that rain provides some water. Apartment buildings the same thing.
The decentralization of the food system would make things a lot better.
wigglehard@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
Or they could Try Nikolai Tesla’s idea of using the core of the earth as energy like the magnetic pole or whatever magnetic fields
masterofballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
I'll need to see it to believe it. If those things were real someone would have probably made one in their back yard by now.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 2 years ago
The golf cart thing I think could be done without authoritarianism, just legalize city cars. Lots of people who can't drive or drive old crappy cars could get a brand new 2500 dollar electric city car that runs off of tiny batteries and putt around town with that. I am loathe to buy another whole full power car, but I'd be eyeing a city car pretty carefully. No gas, just something that'll get me to the supermarket and back? Sounds like a good deal to me.
masterofballs@wolfballs.com 2 years ago
Those are everywhere in china. One of the nice things about a country with little to no enforcement of regulations.