rev your engines, today I'm gonna talk about why buying a brand-new electric car
may not actually be so green for the
environment no most electric car these days are powered by lithium ion
batteries in the process of mining lithium is really horrendous for the
environment for example Argentina Bolivia and Chile they call it the lithium
triangle it contains half of the known supplies
of lithium on the planet to extract it they bore holes they pump in salt water
it's so dry they don't any fresh water so they get ocean water they pump it in
and then up comes a mixture of all kinds of chemicals which then goes through
various evaporation ponds and after 12 to 18 months they get the lithium
carbonate out but it does take 500,000 gallons of water for each ton of lithium
carbonate that they get out in one area of Argentina 65 percent of the
freshwater is using this process leaving the farmers high and dry there and in
Tibet with as much a lithium they've had a lot of leakage from these ponds that
pollute the groundwater or the people living there realize mining has always
been a filthy process there's all kinds of suits in the American West for the
crap that the mines left behind when they went out of business leaving it
just sitting there cuz while they're bankrupt so they don't have to fix
anything now when a mining companies leave they leave just miles and miles of
contaminated salt rivers and mounds of debris this has gone so far that
Guillermo Gonzalez a lithium expert out of Chile says this isn't a green solution
this isn't even a solution at all and of course that's just the battery end electric
cars run on what electricity it's gotta come from somewhere lot of it
still comes from burning coal or burning other fuels like oil or natural gas
the electricity's got to come from somewhere it's not magically just
appearing now I talked about the infrastructure problem both in the
United States and Canada oh really industrialized nations the power grids
are not set up for recharging millions of these batteries everyday just doesn't
exist so somebody have to build an infrastructure for it not just build the
cars then expect there to be something to charge them up with but one of my main
points about not buying a brand new electric car think that you're being
green is this don't throw the baby away with the bathwater why buy an expensive
brand new electric car course the expensive ones are well over $100,000
why would you spend all that money when you already have a car
we're over the old cock throw it away there's pollution air what are you gonna
do with all the pieces you can convert cars to electric cars for example
there's a company in Europe and they convert diesel cars into full electric
cars so you're going from the most polluting cars to the least using the
same car the company's called transition one and they're taking an already
existing car why throw it away and it's been a ton of money building a brand new
car for all the pollution that creates when you're ready on the car that's got
four wheels you can convert it to electricity if you want to me that's a
much smarter idea than just throwing your car away buying a brand new car
that cost a whole bunch of money realize electric cars are actually very simple
they're not all the complexity of a gasoline or diesel car they don't have
an ignition system they don't even have transmissions they just have a big
battery an electric motors kind of like the toy electric cars you had when you
were a kid as an example here in the United States 12 year-old Adam Lansing
he decided to turn a 1980 Celica even older than this one it's an electric car
and he did it himself at home granted it took them awhile to get it down but
here's a 12 year old kid trigger that stuff on electric motors are a simple
device that take a lecture as deep running two motors that drive the wheels
it's not rocket science and now that he's older mr.
Lansing has started a company
Hawkeye innovations for converting cars to electricity and in respect to that
anyone else out there who has kits for converting cars to electric cars if you
got a kit that'll work in my 94 Solo cups lend it to me or bring a crew I'd
love to make videos on it and check it out myself and then try an electric car
out without wasting a whole bunch of money buying a brand new one
we already got a perfectly good car sitting there because if you want to
talk about really being green using what you already have and converting it from
running on gasoline to running on electricity makes a lot more sense to me
like if a French company can do it already for fifty six hundred bucks a
car when you get that stuff done and mask the price is gonna come down even
more and why should you throw away a perfectly good car just cuz you want an
electric one doc there's a company out there now called zero labs that has an
electric Ford Bronco they took out the big old v8 engine and put in a big
electric motor and battery pack different from everyone else they kept a
stock manual transmission instead of having direct drive to the wheels
they're using a transmission so they can use that electric motor in different
gear ratios so it has more power which is what you'd want in an off-road Bronco
these are four-wheel-drive ones they're making for going offroad you want to be
able to use the power when you want to all four wheels not a bad idea that's
the advantage of conversion you can even converted wherever where you want top
end power you're making for speed you want low end drunk you can set them up
for torque and if you want to do like those guys do with a Bronco you can
leave a multi speed transformation so you can play around with it as you drive
in this way the conversion way you could do both the price and the power what you
want if you wanted to go the most efficient route you'd have regenerative
braking put in which of course would cost more money to convert if you didn't
care that much you could just go with electric motors leave the normal braking
system in the car and yeah it won't be able to go as far but still it would be
an electric car if you're the type of person that is commuting short ranges or
not driving much you know care if it could go 250 miles if you could even go
80 miles they'd be fine for you if you're not driving much and just
recharge it when you're not using it no I've seen this technology already in the
modern electric motorcycles it basically took the motorcycle chassis and braking
and suspension systems they added on a big old lithium battery an electric
motor to the mix and of course motorcycles being so small they're
pretty easy to build using the technology that's there
cars are bigger yeah and they're gonna be less efficient because they weigh
more you can still convert them hey Neil Young had a big old American car
converted years ago now he's got more money knows what to do with so you
know that's a one-off thing but as time goes on if electric cars really become
mandated it's gonna be a lot of these old gasoline and diesel ones converted
at a much better price than going out buying a super expensive brand-new
electric car Plus here in the United States you can bring a lot of jobs and
money of converting the cars China's gonna be making a whole bunch of them
they make them cheaper than we do but we already got all these cars over here
converting them can be done at a fraction of the cost of even that
building a new one going to electricity is gonna take a long time United States
many of the infrastructure of all new power plants new wiring systems that can
take all that heavy amperage and you're in charge a car it uses a lot of power
and the old wires like in my neighborhood this things were put up in
the 1940s if everybody was recharging them with 50 60 80 amp chargers and
probably melt the waters on a pole they're so old and the pure generating
power that exists today it's probably not there if you have 2 million electric
cars in Houston driving around being recharged all the time if it goes
gradually just like the car conversion from gasoline to electric that can be
done gradually too because not starting over from scratch is a smart idea the
old cars a they steer fine they brake fine they drive fine if you rip out their
engine and transmission and put an electric motor and a battery pretty
simple thing actually everything else has already been done so now you know
why I think buying a brand new electric car not the greenest thing you can
possibly do think conversion instead, so if you never want to miss another one
of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell