Originally posted by reeftool Yeah, batteries will be the issue down the road. They are expensive. Ask the manager of any warehouse that uses elec powered fork trucks. Also, batteries aren't very environmentally friendly. Put millions of elec. cars out on the road and we will have a pollution problem that may be more difficult to deal with than exhaust emissions.
Not necessarily, batteries are highly recyclable and for most battery types they can recycle over 95% of the materials so long as the batteries aren't tossed in the trash. Traditional lead acid batteries are almost all recycled since most people either get them changed at a store or bring it back to the store for disposal so they have one of the highest compliance rates for all recyclable materials. I think that bigger batteries like the ones being put into PHEVs or straight up EVs will see even higher compliance.
How Battery Recycling Works
At the size needed for transportation they have stationary uses once their ability to hold a charge has degraded to the point of providing an unacceptable range. So for example, if a volt's battery degrades to where it only holds charge for a 30 mile range the owner may decide to replace it but a battery that can still hold 12 KW/h would be useful to a utility seeking to be able to store electricity if they can stack a thousand of them up in a warehouse next door to to a nuclear power plant. Then at the end of the batteries useful life for a utility it can be sent to a recycling center.
There are markets for used batteries at this capacity so I don't think there will be a waste problem generated by switching to EVs.