Topic
The Prius has been available worldwide since 2001.I am told the battery has a life of 150K miles, so it wo not be long before this ''green'' technology becomes so much toxic waste.
Will the Prius and like vehicles cause more problems than they purport to solve?
The batteries are HUGE Lithium Ion types.The existing recycling programs are designed for much smaller batteries.There is little/nothing available that I've found concerning the recycling infrastructure necessary to deal with the volume and volatility of this material.
The batteries are HUGE Lithium Ion types.The existing recycling programs are designed for much smaller batteries.There is little/nothing available that I've found concerning the recycling infrastructure necessary to deal with the volume and volatility of this material.
UPDATE:Once upon a time, people thought DDT and Thalidomide were good ideas.''New'' does not always mean improved, even if the inventor is heart is in the right place.
I've placed a call with my county is hazardous materials department, in an effort to learn what is the future of any hybrid vehicle batteries that are once they reach their lifespan, since nobody here knows, and l have come up blank using the web as a resource.
If the net result of a dead battery is that the car is essentially totaled, the costs of saving fossil fuels over the life of the car would be evaluated against the environmental costs of replacing that car before one based on an internal combustion engine might need to be replaced.What actually happens to the battery and it is environmental impact(unknown) would be compared against the effects of continuing to burn fossil fuels (also unknown.)
Being an environmentalist is not as simple as feeeling good about using less gas.