Is this a well-written article? I'm not so sure. The whole issue of whether Lithium Ion based EV vehicles are 'good' for the planet is perhaps a little more complex than Rowan's admittedly eloquently overview. For example:
1. Rowan argues that Lithium Ion batteries are bad, because the amount of CO2 produced during their manufacture is high, and thus outweighs the reduction in CO2 of the vehicle they power. But that is only true because the mining of Lithium requires large amounts of energy that is currently based on fossil fuels (See: Crawford, I. (2022, March 1). How Much CO2 Is Emitted by Manufacturing Batteries? Department of Mechanical Engineering. Retrieved November 25, 2022, from <
https://meche.mit.edu/news-media/how-much-co2-emitted-manufacturing-batteries). It's not that mining lithium is a process that intrinsically generates a large amount of CO2. Use green energy to power the mining and the problem then may be largely solved. And of course, once you have mined it and put in batteries, there is then the opportunity to recycle the lithium when the battery life is complete - that may or may not be possible with acceptable levels of CO2 generation.
2. He argues that most people sell their cars on after 3 or 5 years. Again that may be true, but is there a big pile of unused cars sitting around as a consequence of this? Are people scrapping such useable cars - don't they just get used by those of us who buy second-hand? My ICE Seat Leon at 10 years old is pretty much as good as new - and I might expect that someone will be using it for the next 10-20 years. Rowan states: "The first owners of new cars just kept them for five years, on average, instead of the current three, then car production and the CO2 emissions associated with it, would be vastly reduced." Surely this is not a valid argument, as subsequent owners will use the car - and consequently, the total number of cars in use does not increase simply because some folks sell after a few years.
I would regard this article as falling into the entertainment category than scientific or economic analysis. (Sorry, Rowan).
