Originally Posted by
mknight
Now you are starting to mix things together and even contradict yourself:
- primary power source is an issue. I guess most people agree that pumping dead dinosaurs is not sustainable in the long term.
Electricity in a battery, hydrogen or synthetic fuel is just a transport medium. Out of these batteries are at the moment most efficient and I don't see that changing in near future (15-20 years), but off course it's possible it will change at some point.
- "cabling" is an issue that can be slowly compensated for, as the demand grows. Load balancing is in many ways the fastest solution (no charging when energy demand is highest in the evening or early morning). To compare with hydrogen you would need to include distribution (by lorries?), production is already handled in previous point. Thing is, there is an existing electric grid that you can use and upgrade... there is no "hydrogen grid".
- battery production and end of life, that is the area that experiences most changes. Some problematic minerals are less and less used in battery production already. On the other end of the line old batteries are not thrown to trash after few years but often used for many years for other uses (for example for solar/wind power balancing) after they are taken out from the car. In the end you have a concentrated "brick of pollution" of some 200kg in 4x2x0,2 m instead of "tiny" pollution distributed all over the atmosphere (CO2, NOX...) and inside people's lungs (particles).