Electric cars are all the rage today, but some of the smartest people I know believe that moving towards electric vehicles is a terrible idea. Looking casually as an outsider at the unappealing economics of electric vehicles (the need for a new and immensely expensive infrastructure, cars that cost much more than either traditional gas engines or hybrids, limited ranges and long recharging times), I find it hard to understand why the Obama administration is pushing electric cars.
One argument I’ve heard is “national security,” the idea being that electric vehicles would make the United States less dependent on imported oil. Be careful what you wish for, however, because if electric cars become a mainstay, we may be trading one dependence for another that is even more troubling. Ninety-five percent of the world’s output of rare-earth metals today comes from one country: China. By some estimates, demand will outstrip supply within five years. At least with oil we know there are fifty years of oil reserves readily available. Moreover, oil is produced all over the world, limiting the monopoly power of any one country.
Katherine Bourzac’s interesting piece in MIT’s Technology Review profiles the plight of the only active rare-earth producing mine in the Western Hemisphere.
It is quite possible that scientists will figure out alternatives that lessen the need for rare-earth metals. If not, add the words dysprosium, praseodymium, and terbium to your vocabulary, because you will be hearing a lot about these elements in the future, and the news is not likely to be good.
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Can you buy rare earth futures?
Look to the asteroids, there are millions of kilograms of rare earth elements out there and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy will allow for cheap enough access to space to make mining them feasible. As for energy needs, solar panels built on the moon and put into earth orbit could intercept multiples of what we will use as every human is elevated to a developed world level of consumption. This could be done without scarring up the Earth’s surface to mine it and then polluting it with hundreds of square kilometers of solar panels.
I’ve got to agree with Mike M here. A little due diligence would show that the U.S. has boat loads of rare earth metals, its just that the Chinese are doing it so darn cheap. As a result of the recent scuffle regarding the chinese withholding rare earth exports, the U.S. has begun to look at establishing their own mines. Granted, this is a 5-10 year process, but its something where the supply is there, its just about tapping it.
And I think you need to understand the quantity of rare earth metals used. Your car needs lots of oil every week, electric cars (and computers, cell phones, etc.), require a tiny sliver of some of these elements one time. There is ample supply of this, plus it is much more easily recycled compared to oil. You can use the rare earth metals in an old cell phone but good luck trying to get the 1000 gallons of gas that your car ate up last year.
huh? the leap from electric cars to rare earth metals is a non sequitur of note. there are two pieces of info without which the connection cannot be made. so: what is the rare earth content of electric cars? and what is the rare earth content of petrol cars?
lastly, no fan am i of electric cars, but an economist of all people should know that e-car prices will come down over time and range will expand — nothing deflates prices like consumerisation of a new technology.
The US had the largest Rare Earth Mineral mine in the world in Mountain Pass, CA. Still there, although in mothballs. When we decide the benefits of REM are worth the environmental cost again, we can have them domestically, again. Very simple story.
As a casual REE observer, it is easy to get the impression that rare earths are a barrier to electric and hybrid vehicle adoption. It is correct to say that there will be large difficulties getting higher levels of dysprosium, which is added in about 3-12% to neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets used in most hybrids and EVs today.
On closer inspection there is a clear alternative – the AC induction motor, used by e.g. the Tesla Roadster and the GM EV1. Nd-Fe-B magnets were discovered in the 1980s, while one of the first electric cars was invented in 1828. So no show-stopper here, although Nd-Fe-B batteries typically offer 2-4% higher efficiency than induction motors, which is valuable when batteries are expensive.
It’s the developed world’s obsession with driving. Is cycling and good public transport not enough? Those are the things we should be pushing.
America is particularly poor on the subject of driving. I read on the BBC website the average american transport cost per year is $2.6k compared to $1.4k in Europe.
This is with petrol/gasoline costing at least half it is in Europe.
There will obviously be other reasons but driving too much has to be one and an ingrained culture of driving is more likely to go for developing electric cars than good public transport and cycling.
Ultimately
No, cycling & public transit are NOT enough, though of course they could be profitably used more than they are. But even for me, cycling more than 100 miles in a day is not something I want to do all that often, while public transit to places like trailheads in the Toiyabe Range are hardly economically viable.
You missed one critical point. Even if China were to cut off our rare earth supply, the cars already on the road will still run. Old batteries — including those from all the cell phones, computers, tablets, etc. — could be still be recycled to extract rare earth. In other words, the total potential storage capacity from the rare earth that we already have will not diminish but will accumulate over time. If the recycling technology is yet not mature today, its development would be a gold mine to be explored, because a complete sustainability solution should include the recycling of rare earth elements.