The lifetime of a lithium EV battery is far greater than its equivalent weight in petroleum products. Once that considerable charging infrastructure is in place, the saving on drilling, refining, and transportation of fossil fuels will be considerable. Once lithium batteries are beyond use as static storage, after their useful 150,000+ mile life in an EV, current methods show that they can be as much as 96% recyclable. How much does it cost to run the UK fuel tanker fleet, both marine and road? Thousands of them delivering to petrol stations every day. Electricity flows without trucks. And without the plastics which are a low-cost by-product of our petroleum industry and subsidise it, we will perhaps invest more in the local recycling of the plastics we use and throw away so freely. Most plastics are not that difficult to recycle, it is just too cheap and convenient for manufacturers to use virgin plastic. Perhaps cross subsidising of recycling by taxing virgin plastics would produce a sharper focus on this problem.
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