Allan Milne Lees
1 min readJan 26, 2021

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When writing for a general audience it's rarely a good idea to use local argot; few outside India know what a Crore or Lahk means. Far more importantly, however, is the fact that lithium-ion batteries are a non-starter when it comes to global production of EVs. Not only are they extremely toxic (and can't easily be recycled) but they rely on rare earth metals like Cobalt. These are mined largely in the Congo using slave & child labor - not very green - and there's insufficient supply even to meet projected Chinese demand by 2028, never mind meet global demand. So EVs will come to a dead halt unless new battery technologies can be rolled out very soon. Furthermore, the running costs must include replacing the battery packs - notably omitted from everyone's fantasy version of how much an EV will really cost the consumer. In addition, until real fast charging is feasible, we need to factor in the costs of time lost as drivers wait for their vehicles to recharge. EVs may be the future, especially when electricity is generated by renewables (otherwise the EV owner is merely using electricity created by burning coal at the local power plant), but there is far more needed to get there than today's naive enthusiasts imagine.

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Allan Milne Lees

Anyone who enjoys my articles here on Medium may be interested in my books Why Democracy Failed and The Praying Ape, both available from Amazon.