Toyota’s former CEO, Akio Toyoda, has publicly challenged the global push toward fully electric vehicles, claiming that a single EV’s overall environmental impact ” especially from battery production and energy sourcing can be equivalent to that of three hybrid / petrol vehicles with internal combustion engines. His argument centers on lifecycle emissions, including mining, manufacturing, and power generation. While EVs produce zero tailpipe emissions, the electricity that charges them often comes from fossil fuels. Producing one EV car battery consumes @ 26,000 litres of water while raw material mining particularly for lithium is exceptionally water intensive. It is estimated that the metal casing and other components of a discarded battery can take a 100 years to decompose while the chemical substances would take thousands of years to wear down to net zero. Globally only 5% of batteries are recycled, the rest are simply dumped into landfills poisoning the air, soil and water. Spreading limited resources across more hybrids, instead of fewer full EVs, could cut global carbon emissions faster. There is a need to assess green tech not just by output, but by the full spectrum of its environmental cost.
