How are electric-vehicle batteries different from the lead-acid batteries vehicles use to start gasoline engines? How can I use my electric vehicle to extend its life and range? What are the environmental effects on ecology, wildlife and native peoples of mining or salt pond evaporating to produce lithium?

Rechargeable lithium batteries have a positive terminal, the cathode, and a negative terminal, the anode. A non-water-based electrolyte solution with a permeable barrier allows charged particles to move from the anode to the cathode, creating electricity. Electric-vehicle batteries, whether cars, trucks, school buses or mowers, can be used until discharged to 20% without damaging the battery. This is different from a lead-acid battery that should not be discharged over 50%, since it will greatly shorten the battery life.

Research produced the first effective electric-vehicle batteries around 1990 and continues to improve the functioning of several kinds of lithium-based batteries. In mountain desert evaporation ponds, lithium is concentrated in Argentina, Chile, Nevada and the Salton Sea in southern California. The cheapest way to extract lithium by water evaporation in huge salt ponds in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile has environmentally damaging effects. In Argentina, wells permanently removed huge amounts of water from a wider water table, thus reducing water supply for wildlife and Indigenous peoples. In Chile, rivers and lakes have dried up from extracting groundwater in the driest desert in the world.

At Thacker Pass in the Nevada desert and in Peru, lithium mining is being planned by Canadian American Lithium Corporation, with 60% Chinese stock ownership. Local Pauite Shoshoni peoples oppose this hard-rock mining project, which after extracting rock from a 1-by-2-mile pit, will also use large amounts of water. Many tons of trucked-in waste sulfur from fossil-fuel refining will be burned to make sulfuric acid to extract the lithium.

Chinese battery manufacturers are researching and improving a sodium-electric battery that is produced from sodium chloride (table salt) that is both widely available, cheap and less ecologically destructive than lithium mining. A few vehicles with sodium batteries will come out this fall in China, and continued development may offer a less expensive, shorter-range EV battery as the first substitute for lithium batteries in vehicles.

There are many kinds of batteries that are designed to maximize the functions of the battery, whether for high power, long life or lower cost. While consumer batteries need high capacity, industrial applications require battery systems that have good loading capabilities, deliver a long life, and provide safe and dependable service.

Nickel, cobalt, manganese or aluminum as well as the silicon enhancement can conveniently be chosen to enhance the specific energy (capacity or run time), specific power (ability to deliver high current) or cycle life of a lithium-ion battery. Lithium batteries have a very low discharge rate, so electric vehicles can be left for months without losing much of their charge.

Lithium-manganese is used for power tools and medical instruments as well as hybrid and electric vehicles. Its high specific energy, which is related to run time, makes lithium-cobalt the popular choice for mobile phones, laptops and digital cameras. Its fast-charging rate and ease of discharge save time for charging these frequently used items.

Cobalt is the most expensive metal, often in short supply, used in early development of lithium batteries. It is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo using hand tools and can injure workers, which have included many children. Battery manufacturers are replacing some cobalt in the positive lithium battery terminal with nickel and manganese (NMC). NMC is the battery of choice for power tools, e-bikes and other electric powertrains.

Most EV car batteries have an eight-year or 100,000-mile warranty. California, which has higher standards than the federal government for air quality, requires auto manufacturers to provide 10-year or 150,000-mile warranty. How deeply you drain your battery, your battery’s capacity, whether you upgrade the EV’s battery management system regularly, and the temperature and speed at which you charge your vehicle affect battery life.

I recommend searching on batteryuniversity.com to answer any questions and learn more about different kinds of batteries. Hopefully, in the near future, a good market for used EVs, at prices many Mainers can afford, will develop. Batteries maintain high capacity and power even as their range declines after many recharge cycles. These used EVs will be useful for shorter trips and commutes, especially if they were well managed.

Nancy Chandler studied Animal Behavior and Anthropology at Stanford University, then received her master’s in biology education in her home state of North Carolina at U.N.C. Chapel Hill. She is passionate about teaching energy conservation and hopes to get you thinking about how to use energy use efficiently to save both money and reduce greenhouse warming gases.

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