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The article by Charles J. Murray, “What we’re not being told about the cost of EVs,” published recently in the Rogue Valley Times, is pretty good but rather incomplete.

The sales pitch is EVs will save the environment by weaning us from oil. Aside from the reality that oil is here to stay, unless people are willing to give up cellphones, video games, bike helmets, televisions, computers, clothing and everything else made from oil, EVs are worse for the environment than vehicles that run on gas and diesel.

The extraction of coal and gas requires far less mining and environmental destruction than if we went net zero in accordance with the green solar/wind powered pipe-dreams of Democrats and Greens.

According to the numbers crunched by Mark Mills — the co-director of Northwestern University’s Institute on Manufacturing Science and Innovation — more mineral ores will need to be mined than humanity has extracted to date given predicted battery and related green energy demand over the next 30 years.

In his report titled “Mines, Minerals and Green Energy: A Reality Check,” Mills finds that a lithium electric vehicle battery weighs about 1,000 pounds.

Such a battery typically contains about 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper, about 685 pounds of steel, aluminum and various plastic components (made from oil).

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(M)ore mineral ores will need to be mined than humanity has extracted to date given predicted battery and related green energy demand over the next 30 years.

From these figures and average ore grades, one can estimate the typical quantity of rock that must be extracted from the earth and processed to yield the pure minerals required to produce an electric vehicle battery.

Lithium brines typically contain less than 0.1% lithium, meaning some 25,000 pounds of brines are required to get 25 pounds of pure lithium.

Similarly:

• Cobalt ore grades average about 0.1%, nearly 30,000 pounds of ore per battery.

• Nickel ore grades average about 1%, thus about 6,000 pounds of ore per battery.

• Graphite ore is typically 10%, thus about 1,000 pounds per battery.

• Copper at about 0.6% in the ore, thus about 25,000 pounds of ore per battery.

That adds up to a staggering 87,000 pounds of raw material to make one EV battery.

It only gets worse.

When accounting for all the earth moved (i.e. the materials first dug up to get to the ore), one battery requires digging and moving between 200,000 and 1.5 million pounds (or between 100 and 750 tons) of earth per battery.

Note these figures don’t include the vast quantity of materials and chemicals used to process and refine all the various ores or account for disposing of batteries when they expire.

Producing EV batteries to replace the 375 million gas and diesel automobiles in the U.S. alone is an environmental disaster in the making.

What is even more hypocritical is the blind eye to child slave labor forced to mine the minerals used to make EV batteries. Obviously not in the U.S. but it is happening elsewhere.

In addition, EV batteries are extremely dangerous. Authorities warned residents who own EVs that have been exposed to water, like the recent hurricane in Florida and flooding in other states, to put their EV far from anything that can burn.

When lithium is combined with water spontaneous combustion occurs. Wrecking yards have resorted to placing wrecked EVs in Dumpsters filled with wet sand to prevent the lithium batteries from burning down their entire operation. Once lithium catches fire putting water on it adds fuel to the flames.

The pitch that EVs are better for the environment than gas and diesel vehicles sounds great but when one looks at the facts that pitch falls short.