500,000. This is the number of electric battery – powered cars sold in Europe in 2020, a year on year increase of about 40%, and a milestone in the industry’s move away from fossil fuels.
My comment: Of course electric batteries and charging points have other snags for the environment – the electricity has to come from somewhere. But at least it’s a huge improvement on gasoline.
When a laptop battery dies one can’t just toss it in the trash. Well, one can, but shouldn’t, if one is environmentally responsible. Something about its chemistry makes it an environmental hazard which requires special (i.e. expensive) handling for proper disposal. I wonder how the batteries of those 500,000 electric cars will be disposed of when they expire? They’re a bit larger than laptop batteries. They’d be less harmful to the environment than fossil fuel emissions, though; I guess… maybe. Kind of makes me think about disposal of that stuff that’s left over from nuclear power plants. But those are being replaced by wind-powered and tide-powered turbines; I think… maybe. I wonder what folks with electric cars did during that cold snap in February when the regional power grid had “rolling blackouts” and some people had no electricity for days, due to turbine failures? Which reminds me, I need to find out what happened about the five and ten thousand dollar electric bills people were getting. Seriously, though, electric cars do have environmental advantages. I would only stop short of “huge improvement”. Technology and engineering have brought major improvements to the environmental impact of internal combustion engines. And the pandemic has shown that people don’t really need to use them as much as they’re inclined when given free reign. Finally, there’s an awful lot of area in the world where there won’t be charging stations for quite some time. I think we’ll need gasoline for a while yet. Ultimately, though, I expect it will be replaced by other fuels. When you think about it, it’s really quite amazing that after 100 years the internal combustion engine is still mainly how we motor about on the ground.