Are Electric Vehicles As Green As We Think? Rob Handfield Weighs In

Operating cars without fuel may sound good in theory, but critics of electric vehicles say producing the electricity one needs to run isn’t entirely environmentally friendly. 

Plus, some argue that the demand for ‘green metals’ used in electric vehicle battery manufacturing far exceeds global supply and today’s known reserves. 

“Global green metal deposits are less than the world’s petroleum reserves”, according to Rob Handfield, executive director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative and Bank of America University Distinguished Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management.

Handfield suggests, “not only are the metals difficult to mine, but the mines themselves aren’t able to produce enough to meet the world’s demands. There’s still a lot of oil out there, and their reserves are much larger than originally thought, whereas reserves of copper, cobalt and lithium are limited. It’s possible we might discover more, but based on what we know today, there isn’t enough to meet projections for EV-grade metals that are required.”

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This post was originally published in Poole Thought Leadership.