First oil companies tried a misinformation campaign that electric cars were just as polluting as gas-powered vehicles.  That myth has been rubbished.  Now the oil companies have turned to a new attack, – that mining resources to build EV batteries is just as bad for the environment as burning petrol.  But that myth has been thoroughly discredited as well.

A new study by Transport and Environment (T&E), an NGO that looks at the impact of transport on the environment has found that only about 30 kg of metals would be lost after recycling an electric car battery pack at the end of its useful life. 

In comparison, an average gas-powered car will burn 300 to 400 times that weight in gas over its lifetime.  Over its lifetime an average petrol car burns close to 17,000 litres of petrol which would be equivalent to a stack of oil barrels 90 m high.  The metals lost from an electric car battery equate to the size of a microwave oven.

These figures above assume just 70% of battery metals can be recycled under the current European standard.

Recent real world recycling factories show that over 90% of most metals in an electric car battery can be recovered.

Now try recycling the petrol you have burned in an ICE car.