this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
208 points (91.3% liked)
Technology
59607 readers
3790 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Cobalt: https://earth.org/cobalt-mining/
There is zero cobalt in a lithium iron phosphate battery.
Is that the most commonly used type of batteries in EVs?
I'm not sure on the global percentage, but they're becoming far more common. Most of the top selling EVs where I live (Tesla Model Y/3, BYD Atto 3, BYD Dolphin, MG ZS EV) all use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.
They have a somewhat lower energy density so they've been avoided, but they're way safer and better eco wise to the point that they're getting uptake
This is irrelevant. First, there are chemistries not using cobalt, as explained already. Second, elemental cobalt is infinitely recyclable as all elemental metals, thus we don't need to mine that much more, just like we don't mine as much iron ore as we did centuries ago (relative to overall consumption). Yes, we still mine a lot of iron ore, but we recycle a lot as well.
This cobalt must be mined first to be recycled later, and being infinity recyclable doesn't mean it will be, for example if it's cheaper to mine new cobalt instead of recycling.
It was already mined, it only needs to be recycled if we continue using old battery chemistries. Which is unlikely.