Are Lithium Batteries The Eco-Friendly Solution That Will Help Us Preserve The Environment?

The climate has changed, the ecosystem has changed and the pollution is higher than ever. The world needed a fast solution to tackle global warming on an international scale so we started using solar and wind power to power up our homes.

There was a lot of improvement made to lithium-ion batteries that are used in electric vehicles as well and people started accepting electric vehicles massively in the last 10 years. Tesla Motors (now known only as Tesla Inc.) announced the Tesla Roadster and shipped the first order of these electric supercars in 2008. In the next decade, Tesla released four new models of electric vehicles that have made this manufacturer the number one company in the world when it comes to electric vehicles!

Currently, more than half a million electric cars are on the roads, but some predict that European manufacturers will go all-electric by 2035. This would be an amazing chance for the environment when it comes to CO2 emissions, but there’s another side to the story as well.

A Better Solution Than Gasoline Or Diesel Powered Vehicles

When it comes to CO2 emissions and sound pollution, electric cars are the best alternative to traditional cars powered by petrol, LPG or diesel. Electric vehicles are much quieter and there are no CO2 emissions.

There are, unfortunately, some disadvantages to using electric vehicles and they’re mostly regarding infrastructure (the lack of public chargers), and the limited range most of the electric vehicles have. Price of electric cars was a huge issue before, but with the new Tesla models coming out, that isn’t the case any more.

When it comes to large scale transport vehicles, electric-powered trucks are still a long way from being the primary vehicles on the road. There is a lot of research being done that should improve the range of these massive trucks, but currently, only smaller trucks are worth buying because they don’t cover such long distances.

The Switch From Internal Combustion To Electric Vehicles Is Taking Too Long

The increased number of electric vehicles was supposed to decrease the speed the climate is changing. Unfortunately, research and development of electric vehicles isn’t fast enough to stop the climate change and even though some companies have made significant improvements to the batteries that are used in electric vehicles, people still love driving their internal combustion cars. Governments around the world need to take more drastic measures and slowly, but steadily introduce new laws when it comes to electric vehicles.

Many countries have allocated funds to give grants for buying electric vehicles. The US is among the most successful countries in the world when it comes to the number of electric vehicles and infrastructure. Currently, there are more than 500.000 electric vehicles on US roads and the numbers are rapidly climbing.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Using Lithium-Ion Batteries?

When talking about the climate, sound and air pollution, lithium-ion batteries seem like the ideal solution to many of the problems we’re facing as mankind. But what happens to all those batteries when they’re not good any more?

Recycling batteries is an extremely expensive and long process and unfortunately, lithium-ion batteries are NOT 100% recyclable. This means that a lot of these batteries will end up in the earth or water. Because the batteries used in electric cars last from 10 to 20 years, it’s expected that we’ll face another problem in the next couple of years when the old batteries in electric vehicles need to be replaced. Hopefully, someone will come up with a solution for that as well.