> As is often pointed out on HN, electrical cars are substantially heavier
Often asserted, rarely backed up. A LR Model 3 weighs 4000 lbs. A Chevy Bolt weighs 3600 lbs. An AWD Camry weighs 3600, an Audi S3 weighs 3500. It's ~15% more for sedans.
For SUVs it's essentially nil. The #1 factor in the weight of a car is how big a car you get. Weight is also a secondary factor to size, as drag is the biggest cost. AND weight matters less in an EV, because at low speeds where weight matters, the EV recoups energy from regenerative braking.
> Furthermore, we're digging our lithium brines from the environment
Lithium is ~2% of the weight of a battery. It's a tiny amount of what is mined to make a car. It's also absolutely NOT a new thing- batteries were a minority use of lithium until ~2015.
> without really understanding what all this lithium will do once it's leached out into the environment
Absolutely, completely wrong. Lithium is present in low concentrations EVERYWHERE, just like any other salt. The lithium concentration in batteries is so low that if they were ores, it would not be economical to mine them. Economically viable hard rock lithium ore is 2-3x more concentrated.
Lithium is already in your drinking water, in your dirt, and a huge amount is in the ocean. If we were dumping giant blocks of it into landfills that would be an issue, but nobody is doing that.
> what impact the mines themselves will have.
Lithium brine is found in very arid places like salt flats where no water has washed the lithium into the ocean. Clay and brine mining is pretty non-disruptive, as long as you replace the water and aren't dumping acids everywhere. Hard rock lithium is just like any other quarry, but we need very little of it.
> should we be focusing more on closing the carbon cycle and simply be producing fossil fuels from the waste products
When you have a cycle that is 20% efficient on one side and 50% efficient on the other side, you're consuming 10x as much energy as a pure electrical solution. It's a terrible idea. The sheer amount of fossil fuels burned globally is also like, beyond comprehension. If we did this, it would be a plurality of all human effort to sustain it.
> better than we understand some of the rare metals we're now introducing
lithium is not a rare metal, or a rare earth metal. There are no rare earth metals in batteries. Lithium is as common as lead. Coincidentally, gas cars use more lead than EVs use lithium. Lead is also way, way more toxic.