I did the computation because I just learned about this cobalt use for fossil cars (thanks to HN !) and wanted to check if it was significant or not.
On your comment:
- Cobalt (and CO2 and other chemicals) from fossil car is lost as pollution, cobalt from car batteries will be recycled (cheaper than mining) - even if recycling losses will likely be near in magnitude to fossil losses in the case of Cobalt.
- Typical EV batteries are not 100 kWh
- Tesla Model 3 SR+ MIC have 0 cobalt since use LFP chemistry. Tesla said it will use LFP for all entry level cars in the near future, and no longer use cobalt
- You didn't address the point about rare earth media coverage for fossil cars vs EV
My take on the last one: given that the company currently owning 75% of the BEV market in the USA doesn't pay mass media for advertisement at all, given that fossil car maker spend lots and lots of money for advertisement (in the 10% of car value range), mass media has massive incentives to paint EV in a negative way and it what's they're doing since the beginning.
Sure, cobalt can be recycled from EV batteries (it's one of the few things that is currently economical to extract, and even then, only if the batteries are essentially incinerated first). At around 98% recovery, that means you'd lose about as much cobalt as an ICE-driving person would consume over that same period. However, it doesn't help the fact that every EV currently needs around 10kg of the stuff in the first place, so that all has to come from somewhere.
>Typical EV batteries are not 100 kWh
For these order-of-magnitude calculations, it doesn't matter if we're talking about a 100kwh battery or a 75kwh battery.
>Tesla Model 3 SR+ MIC have 0 cobalt since use LFP chemistry.
LFP might have some nice properties, but it has around 2/3rds the energy density, and poor temperature performance. I'm sure you'll tell me "it'll get better", but then it looks to me like we're going to continue buying many generations of EVs with the promise that "the next one will fix everything!".
>You didn't address the point about rare earth media coverage for fossil cars vs EV
Why is that an issue? ICE cars don't use much in the way of rare earths, and certainly not until de-sulphurisation became a thing (which is predominately for diesel, anyway), and catalytic converters became mandated.
Once we're done talking about cobalt, we can move on to all the rare earths in an EV's traction motor...
Over ten years, I might drive 100,000 miles, using 12,500 litres of petrol. That's 13g cobalt, in the form of sulphur-removing catalyst.
Very obviously, widespread adoption of EVs is going to cause a tremendous increase in the demand for cobalt.
You don't do EV advocacy a favour when you try to distract from these things.