EV predicament

Thursday, 15 July 2021 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Amidst the usual doom and gloom, there was welcome news this week, with the Government announcing plans for wider use of electric vehicles in the hope of reducing the country’s long-term carbon emissions.

A proposal put forth by the Environment Minister noted that over eight million cars had been registered by end-2020, with a significant number of them older than 10 years and thus prone to poisonous emissions.

With research also showing that vehicular emissions account for 60% of air pollution in the country, the move to shift zero emission electric vehicles is a welcome one, and a journey that many other nations are embarking on. But the new transport age comes at a cost.

Considering Sri Lanka’s poor track record with waste disposal, now would be a prudent time to ask, how can Sri Lanka deal with the wastage of both hybrid and electric vehicles? Many countries around the world are taking several measures with some opting to put the responsibility of recycling on car manufacturers themselves or encourage investment in third-party recycling plants.

In the US, many electric car companies such as Tesla, Nissan and Toyota are linking up with other companies to reuse batteries as they can still store large amounts of power even when they are partially discharged. One option is to up-cycle batteries from electric cars to store power from wind turbines and other renewable energy plants. This would give a longer lifecycle for the batteries but still leaves the question of where they will end up unanswered.

Shoebox-size, lead-acid batteries have powered ignition and lighting in gasoline- or diesel-powered cars for decades. They already are widely recycled, mainly because lead is such a health hazard. The batteries for hybrid and all-electric cars are far more powerful and much larger, with some weighing up to around 250 kg, or 550 pounds. They also can be the car’s most expensive component, mostly because of the complexity in making them, rather than the value of the materials.

Companies that fail to plan for recycling face ‘brand damage’ at the very least, as well as potential fines and legal action if the batteries end up being illegally incinerated or dumped in landfills. In many cases, automakers will be responsible for final disposal of the batteries – even if they did not actually manufacture them – because of stricter laws governing recycling, especially in Europe. Sri Lanka could take this route and call on the car manufacturers to do their part.

Car companies themselves need to focus more on this issue because measures such as standardising production could also make batteries easier to recycle. Given their sheer size, batteries cannot be stored at home and landfilling is not an option. Moreover, recycling or retrieving materials such as lithium make little economic sense and as such companies are unlikely to invest money in the effort.

However, long term, unless these resources are reused in some way, the finite availability of raw materials makes these types of vehicles unsustainable.

This is in no way a justification for the continued use of fuel guzzling conventional vehicles. But the effort to be green comes with challenges that the world is still figuring out. Being aware of the problems is one way to be part of early solutions.