@Brendan Cooney: Unfortunately I don’t have a dash cam Brendan. I couldn’t believe that people would do that kind of thing. Even worse, when they know there are drivers behind them. Shocking carry on.

@Alan Biddulph: then go enlighten yourself on how lithium-oin batteries are being utilised before arguing with me.

@Brendan Cooney: i wont waste time arguing with a person that has no idea what he is talking about. i would strongly suggest you as well getting the actual information on the EV battery utilisation
,break pad pollution and euro7 diesel.

Have a nice day.

@Larsen Cib: Surprised you didn’t call the two lads trolls for not agreeing with you as is your modus operandi.

@Larsen Cib: Average price of new car in Ireland is €33k, new EVs can be bought for this average price. EV batteries last twice as long as the design life of the vehicle they are not single use like a tank of petrol or diesel. EVs use their brakes so little than Audi released their latest EV with rear drum brakes. EVs brake pads last well over 100,000km because EVs use regenerative braking which uses the electric motors to return recovered energy to the battery. Brake pad pollution from EVs is a fraction of same from ICE vehicles. Euro7 is yet another con from the lying cheating diesel industry. DPF regen is the dirty little secret of modern diesels as they vent to atmosphere twice as often as manufacturers pretend #dirtydiesel vents to atmosphere every 400km with no filtration whatsoever

@Gavin Tobin: Well said Gavin, I love when the likes of Larsen tell you to go educate yourself when he hasn’t a breeze.
He’s probably still driving around in his smelly diesel thinking he’s saving us all from lithium leprosy or whatever he’s talking about.

@Larsen Cib: The only misguided person here who clearly didn’t keep up is you:
Studies clearly show that while the production of lithium Ion batteries and the disposal is very wasteful, it falls well short of the pollution caused by equal long term usage of combustion engine cars.
In the near future we’ll see hydrogen fuel cell cars, less polluting again, but requires huge amounts of energy to create and the price will reflect this.
Hence many experts are in favour of public rather than individual transport as the fast majority of people don’t need it on a daily basis.

@Larsen Cib: The world is full of plastic products that didnt exist when i grew up eg. mobile phones, ipads, wrapping, bottles, and toys – I remember toys made from steel. A huge increase in plastic clothes too all kinds of poly acryl etc. Regardless of fuel use f cars all of these plastic products are derived from hydrocarbons by processing oil. We have seen large increases in energy use, no surprise as billions of mobile phones that did not exist before are charged daily.

@Larsen Cib: An interesting video regarding lithium salt mining in Bolivia from DW:
https://youtu.be/LZjiEggYglM

@Gavin Tobin: ah the notorious EV propaganda troII.

Lithium-ion batteries are being made from rare and limited resources like nickel, cobalt, aluminum, and manganese. Some of which are bwing mined i Africa by African children , but thats not the case OF COURSE who cares about the children exploitation? We care about our batteries. The problem starts where there are shortages of material to create the battery if EV’s market grows.
And if it grows and in 5-10 years when you are on 200k-300k km you will have to change your battery – 95% of which CAN NOT BE UTILISED , because there is no such technology to utilise them. It is going to be dumped and burned down which will create unimaginable damage to the environment.
And since you are so smart , then you should know by now that a dumped battery contain toxic chemicals – including lithium cobalt, copper, nickel and sulfuric acids!!!! AND SINCE THERE IS NO technology to utilize the lithium-ion batteries – these toxic chemicals will go into the soil and contaminate the groundwater, and we are not even considering the burning.

Get your facts straight and go learn some scientific facts before posting nonsense.

@Mark V: hydrogen fuel vehicles will be far less damaging than Electrical cars, that is for certain.

BY INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF CLEAN TRANSPORT(ICCT)
Cite:

In the conventional car industry, according to a study from the international council of clean transportation (ICCT), 99% of lead-acid batteries (the ones running in fossil fuel powered cars) are recycled in the US. This is not the case for the lithium-ion batteries that have a very specific mix of chemical components and little quantities of lithium, which doesn’t make them an appealing market opportunity. For instance, in the EU market, in 2011, only 5% of lithium was being collected and the rest was either incinerated or dumped in landfills (this specifically doesn’t make electric cars greener at all), as it was not justified by price or regulations to recover it by hydrometallurgical processes.

Nevertheless, the more batteries that are out there, since the electric cars market is growing, the more interesting it gets to try to figure out how to recycle them or recapture rare earth elements.

Please go research 1st.

@Damian Moylan: thanks for sharing , i will definitely take a look. EU EV propaganda makes people believe that all the resources are magically growing on a green trees. But only few actually research what is going on.

@Larsen Cib: This guy (engineer) presents a quite good comparison of EV’s. Interestingly the emmissions an EV produces during use depends on the method of electrcity generation. This is mapped in the U.S. Notably nuclear waste is not factored in and nuclear electricity is regarded as emmissions free.Emmissions are higher in states where coal fired power stations are still in use eg. Virginia, well worth a watch;
https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM

@Larsen Cib: Yes, Li-ion batteries are an issue and solid state batteries are not there yet. The truth is 1. modern diesels are v low Co2 highly economical and ideal for longer rural distances 2. EVs have a role especially in dense areas like large cities where driven miles are low 3. Electricity availability/generation is an issue, in the future will probably be a mix of wind, gas (for when the wind dont blow). This MiT prof. thinks Liquid Metal Batteries might solve the electricity storage issue for intermittent electricity generation methods such as solar and wind. Quite a good video and discusses the issues too with Lithim-ion batteries and their unsuitability for electricity storage “on scale”,
https://youtu.be/ZRyo0Nr7CrY

@Larsen Cib: ehhhh no, ev battery’s can be recycled, melted down and used against and again or alternatively used as a domestic home battery storage at its end of life stage for the car, this is going to be a big thing in the not so distant future. If you’re going to talk shite, at least have some decent facts.

@Damian Moylan: good food for an evening thought, thanks for the links.

@Larsen Cib: because you don’t have any facts?

@Larsen Cib: The metal mined in Africa by kids is Cobalt. The biggest use of cobalt is in the desulphurisation of diesel, kerosene & petrol.

If you cared in any way for kids down mines in DRC you wouldn’t burn diesel and then also emit its poisonous exhaust gasses at toddler level in our cities & towns.

BTW current batteries used by Teslas delivered to Ireland use non toxic Lithium Iron Phosphate which also don’t use any cobalt.

EV batteries last 20+ years not 5 to 10.

Everything you are spouting is easily debunked big oil nonsense.

@Gavin Tobin: There are issues with lithium based batteries though. The White Gold doumentary is pretty good,
https://youtu.be/LZjiEggYglM

@Gavin Tobin: EV batteries wont last 20 years. Gruber Motor Company are quite busy regenerating Teslas, https://youtu.be/GcpPyBYRDcM

@Damian Moylan: My EV battery is 8 years old and has only degraded by 8%.

@Damian Moylan: Na it is not good. Low on hard facts, high on emotion and utterly lacking in any balance.

Evaporation of lithium from brine under a desert pales into insignificance when faced with the utter disaster the oil industry has already imposed like tar sands in Canada.

No crocodile tears from you on this one?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/alberta-canadas-tar-sands-is-growing-but-indigenous-people-fight-back

@Larsen Cib: I stand by what I said about being outdated: you quoting figures from an US based organisation about the EU dated from 2011 should say enough about who should catch up mate.

@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: the problem starts with people buying the plastic wrapped stuff. No one forces anyone to do so but people are selfish expecting recycling to be better,taxes be better,the government to act faster JUST to acomodate our everlasting need for things things and more things. People justify anything as long as its wrapped up in a lie we telp ourselves. the pollution will noy stop until people stop buying shit they dont need for reasons they make up.Cause why would we be the problem,how is it our responsibility, china is the main polluter right so why should the irish suffer…oh god,we heard them all at this stage. The matter of fact is if you grew up appreciating the natural world,have wonderful memories of unpolluted seaside, mountain tracks without coke bottles then you understand what you are missing. Also,lots of debate about EV here today. The thing is, unless you are fully educated on the science behind it,you probably got second hand info on any of this. We are chasing the next solution to everything. As if solar and wind will solve the problem. As if they are made from no energy input and no material. Instead of becoming more energy efficient ourselves we rely on the production of billions of things that eventually will expiry and will end up a big rubbish pile. This whole choosing to look for any other solution but to change ourselves and be aware of our responsibility is soo outdated now, and hard to believe we as a species have still not learnt anything. We think we are bloody intelligent but looking at people arguing about which type of car is better is misses the point.

@GaMran: also,Portmarnock beach clean???? Maybe I care too much, but the rage I felt looking at the amount of rubbish left behind in the last while. Its just so sad that the place you want to escape to when you have a crappo day is basically as dirty as a pissy lane in dublin is so so soul destroying..

@GaMran: Very simplistic view to put the onus back on the people. This needs to be done at a govt level, Think about it. How many plastic bottles are littered all over the world that were produced by coke? Coke say its the peoples fault but the solution to the problem is simple. Go to the source and make coke use cans and glass with a deposit scheme so that these products make their way back to coke to recycle. The coke govt lobbyists do not want this to happen as its gonna hit their profits. Its all about the bottom line.

Supermarkets have a lot to answer for so do the multinationals. They use plastic and lots of it so they can make more money. If you have ever done a shop then the recycling bin is full. It cannot be avoided.

Then we also have the waste companies not actually putting in an effort in making people separate the waste. Like in other countries they have 7 or 8 different bins to segregate everything. In Ireland we have 2, maybe 3 if you live in the countryside.

My last rant is about Carboard. Amazon make a fortune and millions of trees are cut down every year to produce cardboard. There needs to be a better solution as this is not sustainable. How much of this cardboard is recycled and how much is burned? How much ends up in landfills. Think about coffee cups? How much ends up in landfills? No one seems to care and the green party’s policy seems to be to increase taxes, no innovative solutions.

@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: fair points there and I was not arguing with the above whatsoever. Just pointing out the simple fact that we all are responsible. If at least some of us would stop buying plastic bottled coke,Coca Cola wouldnt produce them.Theyd be forced to make a real fast change because their money is on the line. Every multi’s response to the public demanding change is a forced lie about their efforts to be better. What I was pointing out is that any of us can vote and change things with how we decide to spend our money. Yes,it be fantastic if we all call them out and tell these organisations to change. This will take a few years or decades -depending on how big of a deal it is. To them its not urgent.
But…my point is that I can change how much I spend on plastic,will I buy a new iPhone everytime one comes out,do we need 2 cars in a family,being concious about what I buy and spend my money on. It doesnt make me simplistic, just aware. I still live a very normal modern life,but I do believe in starting the change now,even if its on a micro scale I and you and all of us can start making small changes.. Not on years and decades.

@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: also regarding your comment about Amazon,again I agree with you. I think that the people in charge,have not been creative enough to ask these questions you have wrote above..the problems arent discussed enough,questions asked and solutions uncovered..

@GaMran: ah I know it’s very disheartening in fairness. There is so much we could do to make the world a better place but there is no urgency. People or governments. Some are trying but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to what needs to be done.

@Diarmuid O’Braonáin: yes,its hard to find the line between doing things right and living in constant anxiety. But its good to have the conversation going and also seeing that there are people who care;) whatever way we want to fix it. As long as we want to fix it.