Luke Crawford: Rethinking environmental impact in electric vehicles beyond surface perception

To The Daily Sun,

Despite the prevailing belief in the eco-friendliness of electric cars, a closer examination of the subjects from multiple sources reveals many factors challenging this theory. Electric cars, praised for their environmental benefits, face many outstanding factors such as tire longevity, battery recycling and increased cost to manufacture and dispense many of these parts. As well as increased costs for consumers and concerns about the recycling of parts and used materials from the car there's also concerns raised about the ethical portion of them. With major mining operations in countries like Africa being a large part of the supply chain for substances like lithium it's no wonder that some people are concerned about the environmental impacts of mining and tearing apart Earth. On top of this many of these third-world countries have undeveloped laws against child labor, meaning that many of the cars' batteries are mined mostly by underpaid and overworked children.

Does the need for these minerals in electric cars discount ethical concern for the wellbeing of future generations? I don't believe electric cars are far enough along yet to really consider them as more eco-friendly. Although with advancements in technology such as better tires, solid state batteries, more recyclable materials as well as advancement in human rights in labor laws, someday electric cars will be an industry leading product surpassing internal combustion engine cars in most every way possible.

Luke Crawford

Gilford