Electricity generation and battery production are very far from clean and green technology.
Unlike the exploration, prospecting, drilling, extraction, transport, refinement, and distribution of fossil fuels which have never produced any pollution and long-term environmental damage whatsoever.
Replacing one pollution with another...
Battery technology is advancing faster than anyone could have imagined even a few years ago. The LiFePO4 batteries on my solar array contain no nasty cobalt and can’t overheat or catch fire. They can be charged at 3.5KW, be discharged down to 10%, have no cycle limit and are guaranteed for 20 years.
But they do contain Lithium.
I've noticed mention of wireless charging being the solution to the 'how do people in town charge their EVs'? .... there are supposed to be experimental systems being trialled .... as the average mobile mast transmitter has 10 watts or so of output and is way up high somewhere, but to charge a street of even a modest EV in an hour will require 60Kw to be transmitted to each car every 4 metres or so along the street .... as the laws of physics are largely non-negotiable I struggle to see how this can be done without microwaving passing dog-walkers. To shove the required energy into a battery in the required time will be the domain of old fashioned wires for the forseeable future would be my guess ... which brings us back to the logistical problems of charging.
K
Proposals for wireless charging - at a frequency around 90 kHz Keith, not microwaves. This is very low frequency. Unfortunately, current proposed systems would lead to pretty much blanking the radio spectrum way above high frequencies (up to 30MHz). Before Peter J suggest only ham radio operators occupy this region of the RF spectrum, there are many marine/air/military services still using the hf spectrum. There's a lot of information out there, but you'd really need to be interested in and have an understanding of radio and EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) issues. If the wireless charging industry can clean up its act, I see little problem with implementing the idea, until they develop faults.
Some will say they already use wireless chargers without problem - phones, toothbrush &c. But these are very low power and do not radiate very far. The other issue is they aren't as efficient as actually physically (electrically) connecting to a power source, so power would be wasted.
