With the 2030 ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars rapidly increasing within the UK, the sales of electric cars have understandably increased.

Sky News Business Reporter, James Sillars, reported that “almost 500,000 new hybrid and electric cars will be seen on UK roads this year, according to new industry projections, following a spurt in production and sales.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said pure electric vehicles (EVs) accounted for almost a quarter of the market last month as sales rose by 18.2% during February. The body said overall sales were 26.2% higher than in the same month last year - with 74,441 new registrations - completing seven consecutive months of growth.”

However, a key dilemma arising with the production of EVs is the use of lithium batteries. Lithium iron phosphate technology accounted for about half of the battery capacity of EVs sold in China last year, according to research from consultancy Adamas Intelligence.

In the US the technology represented only 9 percent of capacity in 2022, up from zero the year before (Financial Times). Despite the batteries often being built in China, the mining process often occurs elsewhere (mainly in South America) and has come under ethical and environmental scrutiny.

According to a report by Friends of the Earth (FoE), lithium extraction inevitably harms the soil and causes air contamination. As demand rises, the mining impacts are “increasingly affecting communities where this harmful extraction takes place, jeopardising their access to water,” says the report (EuroNews). The mistreatment of miners, the overuse of freshwater sources and the destruction of local ecosystems continues to be a major problem.

Despite this harmful mining process, the continuous argument that EVs are better for the environment than petrol or diesel vehicles is now being disputed. The American ‘Alternate Fuels Data Center’ published a detailed report weighing the benefits and detriments of the use of EV’s.

With regards to vehicle emissions, EVs were evidently better for the environment- “Electric and hybrid vehicles can have significant emissions benefits over conventional vehicles. All-electric vehicles produce zero tailpipe emissions, and PHEVs produce no tailpipe emissions when operating in all-electric mode. HEV emissions benefits vary by vehicle model and type of hybrid power system.”

Conversely, the availability and affordability of EVs used to remain just for the wealthy. The New York Times examined a rise in EVs in suburban areas of the states of New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. “Whilst the earliest purchases of electric vehicles were mostly in affluent areas, over the past two years there has been explosive growth in ownership in moderate-income counties in and around the states.”

The reasoning behind this has been linked to the growth in model variation, expansion of EV production, more public charging stations and now prices between EVs and petrol/ diesel vehicles have become competitive.

Nissan’s chief operating officer, Ashwani Gupta, warned the BBC in February that due to the United Kingdom’s high energy bills and inflation, the production of British EVs is becoming increasingly more challenging within the market. In order to make new models of EVs the “economics have to work”. To follow more information on the use of EVs, head to the British government website.