Back To More EV Info There has been some concern over what we would do with 'all those batteries' from the electric car. Well my question to you would be what do we do with the batteries from our gas cars ?
There are over 150,000,000+ gas cars in the United States and each of them has a battery in it for starting purposes. With the California ZEV Mandate only 20,000 EVs are to be made available for sale the first year. That's a long, long way from the number of gas cars on the roads.
Battery manufacturing is a dirty business and highly toxic. But it is a 'point source' and easier to keep clean than those millions of cars on our roads. One manufacturer, Horizon Batteries, says that their plant is so clean that the water leaving the battery plant is cleaner than when they brought it in.
Lead-acid batteries are one of the most recycled products in our country. The battery manufacturers say that 97% of each battery is recycled and most of it goes back into making new batteries. The lead is melted and recast, the plastic is ground up and then melted for battery cases, and the battery acid is cleaned up and reused, or get this, made into fertilizer.
And who's to say what types of batteries will be used in the future EVs. It probably won't be lead-acid though, but something more environmentally friendly like nickel-metal hydrid or maybe even a fuel-cell of some type powered by water (hydrogen).
The electric vehicle has to get its power from somewhere and it's generally your local utility. So depending on what material is used to make the power will determine how much pollution the power plant generates. But even with the dirtiest fuels like coal or oil you will still have less air pollution than from driving a gas car. And if you're in an area of the country that uses alot of renewable resources for power production like wind and solar, or cleaner fuels like natural gas then you will reap the additional benefits of even lower air pollution.