LogFAQs > #973119079

MacArrowny posted...

Battery is good for the future/for the environment though, right? The more people who have batteries, the more power consumption at night will be renewable.

If the alternative is fossil fuel grid at night then maybe, but it's not clear cut because the grid is existing infrastructure with sunk cost already, and manufacturing batteries is super expensive environmentally. Something like 20% of an EV's lifetime carbon footprint is in the battery construction alone. And we very likely will not be using our current batteries long-term since we'll find better chemistries, so if we can't find a good recycling process for these batteries, the waste becomes even worse.

If the alternative is nuclear-based grid then there's almost no way for batteries to be better. But who knows if we'll get that in the US.