this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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They also introduce their own share of issues like increased road wear due to weight and environmental costs from the mining of rare metals like cobalt and lithium.
With the fact that vehicle size is generally trending towards larger, at least stateside; we're looking at a situation where those shiny electric pick up trucks that need a battery that's four to eight times larger than a compacts or sedans battery are going to require further scaling of rare metal mining and are going to result in vehicles that blow way past the weight of anything our roads were designed to handle. Public transit is just far more sustainable. Trains can be hooked directly to a grid so no ridiculously heavy battery, buses carry the same number of people on a road that it would take... Let's be generous... 30 cars, so even if they were using a cell larger than a pick up truck, their wear would be far lower than the 30 or so cars they could replace.
Of course the issue with America is we've got bigger fish to fry like boys who kiss boys and people who want to fuck without having kids.
In terms of mining they kinda shifts it around, because gasoline cars also use rare metals (although smaller volumes). Weight depends, the batteries certainly need to be larger (currently) but motors are smaller and you ditch a lot of mechanics.
But public transit is definitely better overall
The damage to roads from added weight is absolutely tiny, practically negligible. Even pickup trucks barely cause any damage. Semis do exponentially more damage.