North Americans love driving SUVs and big pickup trucks as passenger vehicles — a trend expected to continue as drivers replace their fossil-fuel rides with electrics. But is it possible to drive a big electric truck and be green at the same time?
In early November, I arranged to test drive a Ford F-150 Lightning — the EV version of North America’s bestselling pickup. Not because I need a truck, but to better understand the real cost of this behemoth on the world.
Standing over two metres high, everything about the Lightning is writ large: the expansive “entertainment system” console, the 1,800-pound battery pack, and not least, the price. It costs over $100,000, before taxes.
The Lariat model of the Lightning comes in “anti-matter blue.” There’s no particulate-spewing tailpipe or even a gas pedal. I step on the accelerator and zip from a crawl to about 70 km/h in five seconds along a Vancouver sidestreet. The acceleration is soundless and so utterly smooth that it feels more like flying than driving.
The jump from internal combustion engine to EV is more like a great leap: Tesla drivetrains, for example, require only about 20 moving parts compared with 200 in conventional vehicles. EVs are also much more metal-intensive: the F-150 is not just huge, it’s incredibly heavy — it weighs 6,500 pounds, 35 per cent more than a non-electric F-150. That’s largely because this EV is basically a giant metallic battery pack encased in aluminum, finished with over-the-top electronics and posh leather upholstery.
The Lightning I am testing employs NCM (nickel cobalt manganese) battery chemistry, which enables it to go over 500 kilometres on a single charge. Making this possible is 75 kilograms of lithium, 95 kilograms of nickel, and about 12 kilograms of cobalt, along with many other metals, including copper, manganese, and multiple rare earths. (The salesperson would not discuss battery ingredients — except to stress I shouldn’t worry because there’s an eight-year/160,000-kilometre battery warranty, which can be extended if I pay more.)
If the future is to electrify the world’s 1.5 billion fossil fuel vehicles — including North America’s humongous fleet of pickup trucks and SUVs — it will demand a lot of new mining. Most of these metals will come from the Global South, where ore grades are declining and water scarcity from climate change is already limiting production. Not to mention, Indigenous rights and community conflict over mining impacts. And the spoils are rising.
In this way, an F-150 Lightning driver in Toronto or Los Angeles is intimately connected to the Global South, whether they know it or not. In Chile, the second-largest producer of lithium (and biggest producer of copper, required for most electrification), lithium-rich brine is drawn from beneath ancient salt lakes and dried in the open air. In 2022, I was in Chile’s Atacama Desert researching my book Pitfall when I witnessed the deep divisions being driven in Indigenous communities between those who profit from lithium and copper mining and those who do not. Chile’s ongoing 15-year megadrought is also starting to make water-intensive copper mining more expensive, presaging a future where hard limits will be imposed on the amount of metal that can be economically harvested.
Indonesia is an important source of the nickel needed for batteries, where low-grade laterite is strip-mined, smelted and processed into battery-grade materials, an environmentally destructive process generating big streams of toxic waste, powered almost entirely by coal. A boom is now on, with at least 34 large-scale nickel smelters in operation in 2023. Most of it is funded by Chinese companies, which maintain a stranglehold on global battery production.
The Lightning EV pickup was in the news this year when Bloomberg traced the aluminum used to frame F-150 passenger compartments to bauxite mined in the Brazilian Amazon, where locals allege land appropriations and serious pollution. Not far from the mine, a class action lawsuit has been launched by 11,000 people living around a Norwegian-owned bauxite smelter, which has allegedly spewed pollutants into rivers, sickening thousands.
Probably the highest-profile “battery metal” is cobalt. Manufacturers are trying to phase it out of batteries, largely because most cobalt mining is limited to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where child labour, debt-bondage and modern slavery have been documented among artisanal miners, whose production feeds into the global supply chain.
It’s inevitable that battery chemistries will evolve, replacing the more scarce and problematic metals with more common, inexpensive materials; but in the shorter term, lithium-ion batteries will dominate EV battery tech, for better and worse.
Closer to home, all of the EV rechargeable batteries will need to get energy from somewhere. Considering that about 60 per cent of U.S. utility-scale electricity currently generated still comes from coal, natural gas or oil, how clean is a 6,500-pound truck that needs regular electrical charging? And how will our antiquated electrical grids cope if all the vehicles on the road transition to electric?
Safety is an altogether different issue for everyone who shares the road with heavy metal EVs. During a panel on EV truck adoption at the Fully Charged LIVE EV trade show in Vancouver last September, one safety advocate compared EV trucks to tobacco — “a public health concern, in terms of injuries.”
In the end, considerations about being green (and even safety) are moot if a truck is actually required for work or life. But need can be a subjective thing. I know a guy who was the recipient of one of the first F-150 Lightnings shipped to British Columbia who shut me down when I suggested he could live without the truck. “I have always driven a pickup truck, and I always will,” he told me. The only pressing consideration was whether he could afford to buy it. Green or otherwise, lifestyle was not negotiable.
Vancouver freelance journalist Christopher Pollon is the author of Pitfall: The Race to Mine the World’s Most Vulnerable Places, published in October 2023 by Greystone Books. He can be reached through Chrispollon.com.
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I am very distressed by the
I am very distressed by the emphasis on power that EV manufacturers promote.
A truck is (normally) a working vehicle that comes home each day, where it can be recharged overnight; why does it need a 500km range autonomy?
Do you really need to reach 100km/h in 4 seconds?
Heavy powerful EVs are becoming a weapon on the roar.
How green are these EV's
For years, government regulations have forced manufacturers to improve the efficiency of their vehicles by reducing their fuel consumption in L/ 100km. They need to do the same for EV's, by forcing a reduction of electricity consumption kWh/100km. This should be the first characteristic promoted.
We've seen the reactionary
We've seen the reactionary response by the feds to threats made by companies to pull out if they don't get more subsidies. From TMX to VW and Stellantis battery plants, the feds have failed to be proactive.
Stronger leadership is needed. But that could be in a spirit of partnerships and cooperation where the feds first approach industry with generous subsidies targeted to specific climate and efficiency goals, backed by regulation as a fallback.
Energy efficiency could thus have a stronger role.
E.g., the feds could offer
E.g., the feds could offer big companies like Teck and steelmakers a billion dollars up front for each new green steel plant they build, preferably in areas where job losses are expected in the fossil fuel industry as the transition proceeds. Preference would be given to sites and cities that are located on major rail lines and near low emission power transmission.
This way outfits like Teck would receive a proactive, positive initiative from the feds to at least seriously look at converting from mining and raw metallurgical coal exports to manufacturing green steel, creating more jobs at home than mining, and capturing the added value of stepping it up to manufacturing finished materials.
The feds could integrate the front end subsidy into a climate initiative where Canadian green steel is guaranteed to be used in Canada to build out and electrify rail transport in all its forms, from trams and rapid transit to regional commuter rail, national high speed rail and new freight rail. Ditto renewable power and HVDC transmission corridors and construction using very energy efficient building codes.
I’m sorry but ai couldn’t
I’m sorry but ai couldn’t finish this article. As soon as I started to read the egregious BS about the minerals used to build EV batteries.
1. Lithium has now been found in big enough quantities every where humans have looked to make it easy to mine and virtually from every country willing to mine it.
2. Almost ALL Cobalt is a byproduct of mining nickel, Canada is the 6th largest producer of nickel.
And while China is the biggest producer of cobalt from its artisanal mine in Kinshasa, it certainly ISN’T the only producer commercially.
3. Bauxite, has been mined in Brazil, China, Guinea, and the Netherlands since aluminum became a commodity, in the 1890’s, it’s not like this is a new thing, and unless the writer is advocating we ban the full use of it, it is beyond hypocritical to suggest even lightly that because it's used for EV’S it’s a bad thing.
I love reading articles about EV’S or the environment, but I want actual facts not biased ones. I want honest reflections on issues, not ones driven by an internal ideology!
And I want unvarnished truth, not shaded by those who sit on the extremes of the issue!
For me the bottom line is
For me the bottom line is that pulling stuff out of the ground stuff to make batteries that last for many years and can then be recycled, to replace a situation which involves pulling stuff out of the ground to burn, again and again and again, filling up the tank every few days, kind of has to be a net environmental improvement. Mining lithium or whatever has to be better than mining oil, particularly by fracking for it, let alone the bleedin' tar sands, because you need hundreds of times more oil.
I do think we need a strong movement to reform mining in general. But even at the height of energy transition, mining for batteries and solar panels is not going to be the majority of mining, so why is it the only kind being complained about in mainstream media? Because it's an oil company talking point as they pay for propaganda to try to slow down the transition, that's why.
I do agree with the article about one thing: Big expensive pickup trucks pretty much suck. Most of them aren't even really designed to get pickup truck work done any more, because hardly any of the people driving them actually use them as pickup trucks. But they're kind of not very good as the normal commuter vehicles they actually are, so it's really stupid, and they're big obnoxious bullies on the road that take up too much space and get in the way. Every time I see a shiny jacked up pickup that has clearly never been outside the suburbs or been used to carry anything that could possibly scratch the paint job, I assume someone's compensating for something.
And, I think we need to finance transit massively and reduce the number of personal vehicles on the road more generally.
But, if expensive electric pickups are what it takes in this cultural moment to get people out of ICE cars and crush the power of the fossil fuel lobby, I will grumble and say go for it.
Thank you for your, in my
Thank you for your, in my mind, Shakespeare-evoking response.
" I want honest reflections on issues, not ones driven by an internal ideology!
And I want unvarnished truth..."
Seems to me that an "honest reflection" will by definition be driven by any personal ideologies or proclivities. How could it be otherwise? And what statements in the article aren't truthful?
Yes, one could argue that there was some cherry picking of examples but is it better to choose a fat, juicy cherry or a wizened little thing?
For example, the GoC website* says that while Canada is the 6th largest supplier of nickel (less than 5% of global production) we apparently hold just 2% of known global reserves, compared to #1 producer Indonesia (37% of global production and the cherry chosen by the author) and Australia (the #1 & 2 reserves) having 22% each. Why should the author have mentioned Canadian supplies of nickel is his arguments?
There are any number of legitimate references** one could cite (regarding the incremental demand for minerals to facilitate the transition away from fossils) to substantiate a response, yet you provided none.
You protest too much, methinks, and with poorly chosen and somewhat rotten arguments.
*https://natural-resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/minerals-minin...
** For example, after 20 seconds of googling (to be fair, I've known of each of these organizations and Derrick Jensen's book(s) for years):
https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energ...
Do we have a lithium supply problem? - IRENA https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Events/2022/Jul/Lithium...
https://books.google.ca/books/about/Bright_Green_Lies.html?id=RdPoDwAAQB...
Thank you for the links.
Thank you for the links.
One of several tangential benefits of EVs is that they displace petrol tanks. My sense (sorry, no links) is that one gas tank eliminated will result in the elimination of a dozen(s) barrels of bitumen in production in the oil sands over the average lifespan of a burner car.
In terms of every million EVs sold in Canada and Alberta's oil export markets in the next decade, that is profound.
In addition, every EV sold in the next decade will also result in major positive feedbacks for renewable energy projects and for increasingly advanced battery storage in the grid, currently saturated with LNMC and LFP car battery chemistry. Non-lithium batteries using cheaper, more common materials are now appearing on the grid in direct competition, which will act to limit mining for some (but not all) metals with negative production issues (i.e exploitive labour and environmental practices) like lithium, cobalt and nickel.
It's a fast changing field, and battery research is responding quickly to supply challenges.
I have always appreciated
I have always appreciated your comments but have to say you totally lost me here.
What a poorly written, biased
What a poorly written, biased article. About the only thing this author got right is that there's no need for most people to drive a giant truck on a daily basis. That's true whether it's an EV or not, and if people are going to continue to drive these things, it's far better that they're EV rather than ICE.
Please see my response above
Please see my response above to Alexis Thuillier (rather than my repeating it).
I stopped reading a few
I stopped reading a few sentences after the $100,000 sank in. How am I supposed to read about governments falling over the price of milk, and $100k machines that are purchased because "people like to drive them"...on the same day?
"But is it possible to drive
"But is it possible to drive a big electric truck and be green at the same time?"
Personal automobiles would not be green even if they ran on fairy dust.
Using two or three tons of metal to transport a 150-lb human being is an ecological non-starter.
A one-Earth footprint cannot accommodate an energy-intensive lifestyle where people drive everywhere they go -- or an urban model relying on millions of cars to transport millions of people.
Cars and car culture are an environmental and human catastrophe even without a tailpipe. The energy extravagance of billions of people using private vehicles in sprawled cities is obscene. Billions of people commuting hundreds and thousands of kilometres per week is an environmental nightmare. Such a system will never be sustainable.
Eight billion people on the planet and counting. If half the population commutes hundreds and thousands of kilometres per week in two- and three-tonne metal behemoths, energy use and ecological footprint go off the scale. The lifestyle and unlimited mobility North Americans feel entitled to — unimaginable for most of history — are ecological non-starters.
EVs may make some problems even worse: traffic injuries and deaths, particulate pollution, and upstream mining impacts.
Same mayhem and carnage on the roads, different energy source. Same injustice, different engine. Not a solution.
Obscene energy expenditure. Lost productivity, sedentary lifestyle (and health problems), millions of deaths and injuries, roadkill, and social isolation.
Urban sprawl, disintegration of community, loss of green space, endless freeways and traffic jams, inefficient public transit, strip mall blight, mega-mall culture, parking lot proliferation, accidents, and property damage.
Insanely long commutes in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Sprawl multiplies congestion, energy consumption and waste, time and productivity loss, emissions, and footprint.
Both propulsion types leave non-drivers -- the poor, the disabled, the old and the young, and the marginalized -- out in the cold. On the social equity index, both cars fail.
Car culture will never be sustainable. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
Thanks for reminding us,
Thanks for reminding us, Geoffrey, to go back to first principles (why do we do things?) rather than simply trying to come up with new "how do we do ingrained things differently?" (which rarely incorporate 360 degree, lifecycle analysis) to maintain status quo.
I'm with David Owen on this.
I'm with David Owen on this. As he wrote in "The Conundrum" (way back in 2011), "one possible version of a green automobile: no air conditioner, no heater, unpadded seats, open passenger compartment, top speed of 25 mph, fuel economy of five or ten miles per gallon. You'd be able to get your child to the emergency room, but you'd never run over to Walmart for a bag of potato chips and you'd take public transportation to work."
Makes lacing up a pair of
Makes lacing up a pair of Nike runners to fetch a bag of chips in a walkable neighbourhood look like a profound climate policy. ;-)
Pick up EV are a habit as the
Pick up EV are a habit as the article said. I have always driven a pick up and always will. Way back in the 70s oil crisis I also made a decision to down size to small fuel efficient cars. Married with nursing babies I upgrade in 83 to a full size Pontiac as air conditioning was a necessity in the Prairie summers. Then to family van which Chrysler made popular but by the time kids were 16 in mid 90s back to small fuel efficient cars. And now a Kia Rio which gets 50 mpg imperial and a 350, 000 km Ford Focus which gets excellent litres per 100 and with good maintenance runs like a Swiss clock. I like small fuel efficient vehicles and always will and it was the high price of oil in the 1970s that got me there.
Arguably, we haul 3X more
Arguably, we haul 3X more cargo in our 8-year old Yaris hatchback to- from Vancouver Island every month than our neighbour who hauls nothing more than a gym bag in his monster SUV, the largest land yacht VW makes. And that's in addition to his wife's large Volvo.
Is it any wonder why the planet is falling apart?
I think the main salient
I think the main salient point in this article is there are many people who drive pickup trucks and SUVs that don't need them but I really wish you would talk about some of the alternatives.
Canoo is a small company that has a electric pickup truck design that's weighs 2/3rds the weight of the Lightning. It would satisfy the needs of the vast majority of pickup truck purchases.
On the other hand the Aptera is the exact opposite of the Lightning. Super light vehicle, super aerodynamic, half the battery size of a Tesla model 3 and the launch edition will travel 400 miles on a charge. It also can charge up to 40 miles on a sunny day with its solar panels.
If people switch to vehicles like these we would probably have half the consumption issues we have with the standard evs.
Though they currently remain
Though they currently remain too expensive, VW really needs to be encouraged to bring their ID 2 and ID 3 compact cars to North America. They are being outcompeted in urban Europe by Chinese models like MG and BYD. Canada has subsidized Canadian battery production, one biggie for VW. The time is right to overlay additional subsidies targeted to more appropriate sized EVs for our cities and commercial van and deliver vehicle fleets, and use Canadian green steel, another area that received big subsidies.
I kinda Agree with Alexis
I kinda Agree with Alexis Thullier. The article starts out well enough but tends to then drift into Nay Sayer territory. Personally, I don’t love trucks especially too many used as single passenger vehicles. However, they do have a purpose and many people love the feeling of safety of driving one. Any switchover/change is hard. I do think EVs are a better way to go especially by having less moving parts (200 as opposed to 2000) which leads to no Oil Changes and virtually no service checks; Major pluses in my book. If you haven’t ridden in a Tesla yet, I encourage your next article to be about that. Tesla’s self-driving feature is AMAZING and look for the $25,000 Model coming soon from Germany (2025 ?). Exciting Times to be a alive (and a Green).
Nay Sayer is such a
Nay Sayer is such a pejorative term, Victor. I find it's often invoked by -- using an equally pejorative term -- techno-salvationists.
Can you specify what Nays you found objectionable?
I think what people are
I think what people are annoyed by is that the article basically claimed to be a review of an electric pickup truck, but spent most of its time either objecting to the basic idea of large vehicles like pickup trucks or objecting to the basic idea of electric vehicles. And the particularly weird thing is that it did this kind of in a vacuum--the article basically talked as if there was no such thing as an internal combustion powered vehicle, much less an internal combustion powered pickup truck. Its comments only really make sense if you assume that, absent people going around making electric pickup trucks, there would just be no pickup trucks at all.
So you get this whole "Oh no! Mining will happen!" thing, as if there is no such thing as mining without EVs, and as if extracting oil for ICE vehicles has no environmental footprint and creates no human rights violations. The whole way the article is framed is either really stupid, or nasty propaganda, depending on whether its transmission of oil industry talking points is due to gullibly absorbing them without realizing what they are, or deliberate.
What's with all the
What's with all the unjustified trashing of this entirely acceptable article? So poorly or badly written that you couldn't read it? I'm a huge fan of the "unvarnished truth" but is that really salient here? I think not.
More than anything it's an example of how social media works as a really negative opinion affects other responses, even if it's not clearly understood or is arguably disproportionate.
This is likely pedantic.
This is likely pedantic. Sorry.
In any open comment forum, quite apart from annoying trolls, one has to consider that contributions may be on behalf of commercial interests. One can speculate on motivations; ultimately, though, I think one just has to respond, for the benefit of others who may read, with clear, supported points of argument or rebuttal (calling out BS).
(Although, as I'm learning from a new-ish book "The Persuaders" by Anand Giridharadas, such points of truth don't always win the day)
In the subject domain of all things "sustainable", one also needs to consider how broadly and completely people are looking when discussing problems and solutions. Oftentimes, people are quite superficial in understanding and/or analysis. It's unfortunately complex!
Lots of great comments above
Lots of great comments above with enough references to add months to my already tall stack of books and long reading list.
I too found plenty of statements in the article to furrow my brow over. At risk of repeating some points already made, here's what I do know about EVs.
* Lithium is perfectly recyclable, and there is a new industry and regulations forming very quickly around it. Cobalt and nickel are being displaced very quickly by iron and phosphate, a much safer and stable chemistry. LNMC battery fires occur at a rate of 1/20th the rate of petrol car fires, but they get all the news. Now, LFP batteries are becoming more common. The fire issue should dampen down, so to speak.
* All the above battery chemistries will be replaced by far more ubiquitous materials like sodium and silicon and will lead to batteries with far higher energy density, longevity and efficiency in areas like cold weather performance.
* Advances in batteries are very fast moving. It's easy to see why some authors are not quite keeping up. It's also easy to see how they miss the application of batteries beyond EVs and into much larger fields, namely our vast electrical grids, arguably a more important area with far greater positive impact on fighting climate change. And rid batteries cover a much larger range of types that cannot be placed in SUVs, no matter how big. Flow batteries immediately come to mind, so.e with even more benign make up.
* Copper remains a challenge in terms of the quantities needed for mass electrification and the use of cheaper metal sourced from exploited people and landscapes in the developing world vs. copper mined in Canada with much higher labour, social and environmental standards, but at several times the cost. Ditto aluminum.
* The above concerns apply equally to ALL metals and metal processing everywhere and for everything, from kitchen table utensils and smart phones to steel bridges. A saying about motes in eyes comes to mind when contemplating what too many critics have said with phenomenal naitivity on their own hypocrisy.
The author did nail it on lifestyle choice, though. This is where price will make a difference. Debt does have a powerful influence on family budgets, especially when they are in default over buying a car for every family member and the collection agencies are pounding on the door.
Thinking globally and looking
Thinking globally and looking locally, I don't have an electrified house (the expense of conversion is an issue), but do live in a walkable community.
Being retired and having 500 shops within a 15-minute walk has got us wondering about going carless. Our 8-year old econobox sits motionless on the street 90% of the time. However, that remaining 10% is extremely essential, mainly for using on elder care trips and to haul heavier loads, such as canned goods and bulky items.
Is that 10% going to motivate us to buy an EV when the econobox finally rusts out? At today's prices, no. Keep the car, drive it even less. Besides, no automaker of consequence is making compact EVs for urban use in North America, even though 85% of Canadians live in cities which, on average, have better transit and a bit more density than our American cousins. F150s and Expeditions are an impossible fit in cities, and are pure ego to non commercial drivers, nothing more than horribly expensive driveway ornaments that are documented as unsafe for pedestrians and give a false sense of security in accidents involving rollovers.
The feds need to prioritize transit for cities tied to efficacious zoning (i.e. exemplary walk scores) and give graduated subsidies to automakers and battery plants to up the ante on EVs in the mid and compact car range and commercial vans and trucks.
And let's not forget large scale batteries for the grid, especially if / when a National Smart Grid is planned. If they can do it for TMX "in the natinal interest" they can do it for low emission power corridors under the same mantra but with far, far more benefits.
This article resonates with
This article resonates with me. I live in the country. Our household has an electric Bolt car and an old Toyota Tacoma pickup. We do most of our charging through our solar array, and the truck gets driven less than 10,000 km per year now. But we drive a lot!
And here is why: Canada has exceptionally poor public transit. There is no passenger rail system worthy of the name. I do use the bus that runs along the highway sometimes, but it still requires 20 km of driving to get to said highway, and the schedule is spotty to say the least. Bicycles work well in the summer, but are more difficult in the winter, and the bus won't take one in the winter.
For rural dwellers who work the land in some fashion, a pickup is really, really useful. It hauls firewood, sand, gravel, manure, lumber, and my guests' luggage. The car simply cannot do that.
I would love to have an electric pickup. But I shudder at the cost and obscene waste of the vehicle described here. Here is what I need: 400 km of range. Four wheel drive. A heater. Five seats.
That would still be a heavy vehicle. But it could last a long time, be charged from renewables, and fully recycled.
But I can't have that.
Actually, public transit in
Actually, public transit in Canada's largest cities is pretty decent compared to the rest of North America. Compared to Europe, it sucks. Nonetheless, Vancouver's core rapid transit network, for example, is fast and frequent and is quite well connected to other transit modes, like buses.
You are spot on regarding public transit in rural areas. Canada used to have decent rail service to small towns near the big cities. Metro Vancouver's old Interurban lines come to mind. Part of Vancouver's SkyTrain runs on the old Interurban corridors. Regional commuter rail is in demand everywhere and should be a priority component in any climate plan.
A century ago the national railways gave priority to passengers and there was a station in every town on the mainlines. That was superseded by freight in the 1970s. Today it's relevant to consider a parallel passenger rail network that follows the mainlines, then branches out from there to towns not currently serviced by rail.
This seems like an impossible task in anything resembling long term planning squeezed in between short political cycles. One way to ease the burden may be to have regional management organizations run the rail service once Via Rail builds it out, thereafter funded by annual grants from Via with regional fares added accordingly. The fare structure could be graduated, low in the beginning when the grants are larger until ridership builds, then incrementally increased in reasonable steps as grants step down.
There will always be the call among conservatives to kill passenger rail because it doesn't make a profit. This is irrational compared to the much larger public road network that never pays for itself, let alone turn a profit, and remains a bottomless hole where rivers of public money flow in.
Our addiction to private cars needs to be eroded with affordable and more viable alternatives, the best being building better communities designed purposefully for walking followed by fast, frequent rail eventually extended to points beyond urban regions.
It normally isn't the case,
It normally isn't the case, but I found the comments more thoughtful and interesting than the original piece. Mining and safety are issues raised repeatedly by industry groups (fossil fuel Industry supporters to be spcific) and there is a significant attempt to hype ideas like, "oh no! The electricity grid can't handle it!" The same people that raise concerns about EV issues as if they are insolvable problems, conveniently ignore the clear and present dangers of fossil fuel use in their stories. Seriously, am I supposed to be convinced that EVs aren't safe because of a single quote by some rando at a Fully Charged event. I'd be more interested in a story about how many people hired by fossil fuel companies attended an EV show or (COP28) and how coordinated their talking points were.
Leaving aside the entire non
Leaving aside the entire non-ICE resource extraction part. (Which was the point of the article and not an analysis of trucks except as a bigger version of EVs)
What the hell is anyone doing driving a 3 tonne vehicle at 70kmh down a side street of Vancouver or any urban environment? As far as I know only some of the bridges permit anything over 50 in Vancouver. As a cyclist - well not for the last 8 months - I'm still recovering from an encounter with a much lighter ICE vehicle who wanted to go faster in a narrow street. The difference between 50-70kmh is an almost doubling if the Kinetic Energy of the vehicle.
Speed fatalities for pedestrians basically reach 100% above 50kmh (https://www.edmonton.ca/sites/default/files/public-files/202201_Stopping...).
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