Martin Crosby’s Nov. 6 letter (“Letter to the editor: EV battery production is hard on the environment”) asked important questions about the metals required for battery production. Unfortunately, they were leading questions designed to make readers anti-electric vehicle.
For example, Crosby instructs us to Google the amount of water required to mine lithium. The answer, 500,000 gallons per ton, is sobering. However, that amount pales in comparison to the amount of water required to grow a ton of almonds more (about 736,000 gallons). And a ton of lithium can produce batteries for a hundred cars.
New and improved battery chemistry is one of the hottest areas of research, largely because of the expense of metals needed for lithium-ion batteries. Tesla is already using cobalt-free lithium-iron-phosphate batteries in some vehicles. Others want to eliminate lithium altogether, perhaps in favor of sodium. Search YouTube for “battery technology research” and you’ll find hundreds of videos.
The critical point is that we don’t have time to wait until all EV technologies are perfect to begin the transition. We need electrified transportation now to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support the build-out of charging infrastructure. In five years, the EVs we can make will be more environmentally friendly and “range anxiety” will be gone if we have enough chargers. But we have to move forward with what we have now.
Daniel Smith
Yarmouth
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