The Amount Of Raw Material That Goes Into An Electric Vehicle

In their latest episode of the VALUE: After Hours Podcast, Brewster, Taylor, and Carlisle discuss The Amount Of Raw Material That Goes Into An Electric Vehicle. Here’s an excerpt from the episode:

Jake: You guys might have seen some of these before. I think it made the rounds on what actually goes into an electric vehicle. Frankly, it’s daunting. The typical lithium car battery weighs 450 kilograms and in that is 11 kilograms of lithium, 14 grams of cobalt, 27 kilograms of nickel, 40 kilograms of copper, 50 kilograms of graphite, and 181 kilograms of steel, aluminum, and plastic. Well, supplying all of these materials for a single car, like that which is discussed in a blog about vin, requires processing about 40 tons of ore. And given how low the concentration is of a lot of these elements, you actually have to extract and process about 225 tons of raw materials per car.

Think about just [laughs] the amount of energy required to process and extract all of these things to create, per car, 225 tons of raw material. Jesus, this is quite a Herculean task. The idea of switching everyone over to electric cars very easily, with the current battery technology, it seems like a pretty daunting task.

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