this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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The best thing trolleybuses have going for them is their relatively low dependence on rare earth elements in production in contrast with BEV buses with their large batteries. Trolleybuses environmental toll is way smaller and it makes producers and operators way less dependent on third world countries devastating the environment with slave labor.
Hurr duurr rareearth . Written from your phone with rare earth materials, tomorrow you're going to drive to work using rare earth to work on your laptop with rare earth materials.
Neither batteries nor drive train components of bevs HAVE to use rare earth. There's tons of cars without them (bmw electric cars for example).
If you even respond, please include a modern car which does not contain ANY rare earth material and does not use electricity for energy storage.
Nothing is black and white you know. No decision is 100% good or 100% bad, we live in a sepectrum where some decisions may be less bad than others and that is the point.
Also current batteries will use cobalt or lithium, other options are either not efficient enough (like metal hydride or sulphuric acid batteries) or developed enough - solid state batteries, or LiFePo.
Also current BMW BEVs are still using lithium based batteries, whose mining pretty much is environmental disaster as a process.