Lithium

Electric cars use rare earth metals and lithium and the mining of these metals poses environmental hazards. The later disposal of these materials causes additional hazards. Lithium batteries alone create a problem and these small batteries are just the tip of the iceberg. Each electric car has about 5,000 lithium batteries. Most experts feel the car battery will last about 65,000 miles. Some say we are trading clean air for contaminated soil. Back in the middle of the last century chemicals would be stored in steel drums and buried. These people knew that the drums would rust and this resulted in many contaminated sites around the country, sites like the infamous Love Canal. Today there are 1,700 such sites and it cost $25 million to clean up each site. A super fund is set up to pay. Some feel we are doing the same thing all over again with electric cars.