"However, in the EU as few as 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled. This has an environmental cost. Not only do the batteries carry a risk of giving off toxic gases if damaged, but core ingredients such as lithium and cobalt are finite and extraction can lead to water pollution and depletion among other environmental consequences."
source [emphasize mine]
Someone needs to look into adding pantographs to cars and catenaries to roads, get batteries out of the equation.

But then cars would become street cars with tires. Or continue improving the internal combustion engine, but reduce the number of miles traveled by car.
I live in an urban area, I have a car and so does my spouse, I'm never giving up my car, but I would really like it if I could make more of my trips without needing to use my car. That's all I'm advocating for.
If you live in a rural area, you will need a car and that will probably never change until teleportation is invented.

Originally Posted by
1958carnut

Originally Posted by
Rumpole
The whole concept of working in crowded dirty urban environment is a model for antiquated academics who are invested in it. Stop perpetuating it. Taxing the hell out of people to try to build mass transit in cities where it doesn't exist is a fools errand. Time for a new model where people are freed from commuting. In the connected world of today more and more people work remotely and only periodically need to visit an office and colleagues. For 10 years I have enjoyed driving for pleasure and not for daily slogging my way into an office.
How nice for you. Try working in a burger joint, shopping center, construction site, or warehouse from home.

I work in Machine Learning and Computer Vision, I could do all my work from home, and not a single employer I had allowed us to work from home. Not the 5-person startup, not the Fortune 100, and none of the companies that fall somewhere in between.
"We put so much money into our office building, we need you to be here" is their usual argument. It is stupid, since we don't really interact or socialize at work other than thru email and messaging, so what's the point? We could save time and fuel working from home, and free the roads for people who truly need to drive to work.