Electric Vehicles and Lithium Ion Batteries

Author: Nicholas Stubblefield Edited by: Nora Lewis

Suggested Citation:

Stubblefield, N., Lewis, N. (2026). Electric vehicles and lithium ion batteries. Technology Assessment Project Case Study Library, University of Michigan. https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/tap-case-study-library/electric-vehic…

Electric Vehicles and Lithium Mining

Key Takeaways

• To support energy transitions, countries and transnational companies will promote extractive economies in low-income countries under the guise of "green" development, passing climate burdens onto states abroad.
• These low-income states will bear the brunt of environmental harms associated with extraction, reaping few benefits of clean energy transitions and technological innovation.
• "Green" tech development may be used to extend dependency on unsustainable and environmentally harmful ways of life, distracting from more lasting responses to the climate crisis.

The Electric Car: An Unrevolutionary Answer to Climate Change

Electric cars, once thought obsolete because of the dominance of oil, gas, and the internal combustion engine, are in an era of resurgence. Concerns over pollution, climate change, and gas prices are driving renewed electric vehicle (EV) interest among governments and consumers alike. Additionally, EVs provide a seductive promise of fighting climate change without changing the embedded transportation infrastructure, habits, and culture of the world. A simple switch of power supply can help ameliorate our environmental burdens. Yet the switch is not so simple. While many countries hope to eventually replace their domestic fleets of gas-powered vehicles with electric ones, obstacles remain. Gas power is the prevailing technology, and policymakers are exploring ways of breaking its technological lock-in. But perhaps the more insidious feature of EV technology is the way its adoption has promoted and will likely continue to promote the shifting of environmental harms. As countries and consumers demand cleaner roads, a focus on EV strategies is shifting climate and environmental burdens from roadways to power plants and mining.

A Historical Struggle Against Lock-In

Inventors throughout Europe tinkered with electric powered vehicles throughout the 19th century, and, in the 1890s, Iowan William Morrison debuted the first electric vehicle in the United States (U.S. Department of Energy, n.d.). Not many years later, electric cars occupied a significant portion of the automobile market. In fact, during its early years, car technology offered a wide range of diversely powered designs, with gas, steam, and electric as available model options. Many consumers, particularly urban drivers, actually preferred electric powered cars due to their quieter design and lack of pollutants (U.S. Department of Energy, n.d.). By the turn of the century, a third of all road vehicles were electric including fleets of city taxicabs (Cowan & Hultén, 1996; U.S. Department of Energy, n.d.). For all their popularity and growth, however, electric cars were soon to be victims of a series of economic and technological factors that facilitated a boom in the gas powered designs. Innovations in combustion engine design, automation at Ford's model T plant, and the ease of accessing and transporting gas, made gas powered vehicles abundant, desired, and comparatively cheap (Cowan & Hultén, 1996; U.S. Department of Energy, n.d.). Between 1899 and 1909, electric vehicle sales in the U.S. doubled; gas vehicle sales multiplied by more than 120 (Cowan & Hultén, 1996). Gas vehicles became firmly "locked-in" as the car of choice for drivers worldwide, and electric vehicles faded into obscurity.

Industry has flexed the muscles of its gas powered lock-in many times since the early twentieth century. A failed electric vehicle mandate in California provides one telling example. In 1967, California founded the California Air Resources Board (CARB) with a mission to promote public health, welfare, and ecological resources by reducing air pollutants (California Air Resources Board, n.d.). CARB focused much of its attention on tailpipe emissions, and, in 1990, it announced an electric vehicle mandate. The mandate stipulated that 2% of all cars on sale between 1998 and 2000 EV, and that by 2001/2002 EVs would comprise 5% of all car sales, requiring automakers to provide about 160,000 EVs for California showrooms (Cone, 1996). Six years later, intense opposition from California's auto and oil industries pressured CARB to rescind the rule, the first time it had so in its three decade history (Cone, 1996). These industries united with one cause to overthrow the threatening regulation. One CARB member described the auto-maker opposition as "so strong, uniform, concerted, well-funded and unyielding that it would have been foolhardy to proceed," (Cone, 1996).

Overcoming this lock-in has posed a significant challenge, even as governments and consumers have expressed interest in electric vehicles due to climate change and a preference shift for "clean" vehicles. Further, technology lock-in in the transportation sector is especially challenging to break given high infrastructure costs, but scholars have identified ways policymakers can help break this lock-in and create opportunities for new technologies. Among these tools are R&D funding and legislating favorable tax regimes (Cowan & Hultén, 1996). Many governments around the world are currently turning to these policy tools and others, including quotas, to wean their countries off of gas dependent transportation and support emission-free cars.

Government-Led Tech Lock-In Disruption

Local and national governments are embracing the gas-free promise of electric vehicles as a climate change solution and an opportunity to preserve car-based infrastructure and lifestyle. All 27 European Union countries (EU) have committed to banning fossil-fuel cars by 2035, another 13 countries signed onto the A.2 agreement of COP26 which mandates all new cars be zero emission by 2040, and at least 22 other nations have created plans to phase out combustion engine vehicles by 2050 (Coltura, n.d.). In the US, transportation accounts for 27% of all carbon emissions (Ewing, 2022), and 12 states have introduced plans to ban the sale of gas powered cars in the coming decades (Graham & Avery, n.d.). California leads the EV charge and has provided a template for other states seeking to wean off gas vehicles. California's Advanced Clean Cars Regulations stipulate all new passenger cars, trucks, and SUVs sold in California will be zero-emission by 2035 (California Air Resources Board, n.d.-a).

As governments seek to break from the hold of gas-powered vehicles, they pursue electric vehicles at the cost of other, cleaner transportation methods. Indeed, government mechanisms aimed at breaking gas vehicle lock-in are now attempting to lock-in electric vehicles as the answer to the US' carbon transportation problem—a move that largely maintains present transportation infrastructure (i.e. highways, nearly all car centered infrastructure) and therefore the transportation lifestyle many people enjoy.

Returning to California and CARB provides a good case study of this phenomenon, a state trend which has burgeoned to represent a national movement. Responding to California's deteriorating air quality, the state government passed and signed the Mulford-Carrell Air Resources Act to create the State Air Resources Board and therefore a united state approach to tackle and reduce air pollution. To lead this charge, the board created yet another board (boards beget boards), CARB, by merging the Bureau of Air Sanitation and the California Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board. The merger cemented the connection between tailpipe emissions and pollution, and thus focused California's pollution battle on cleaning car emissions rather than expanding transportation alternatives (California Air Resources Board, n.d.-b). Indeed, CARB's own list of accomplishments has been mostly focused on cleaning and reducing car tailpipe emissions including: the nation's first tailpipe emissions standards for hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide (1966), oxides of nitrogen (1971), and particulate matter from diesel-fueled vehicles (1982); catalytic converters beginning in the 1970s; a zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) regulation (1990) requiring manufacturers to produce an increasing number of ZEVs; and the nation's first greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars (mandated by the Legislature in 2002 and approved by CARB in 2004). As CARB notes, "cars today are 99 percent cleaner than in the 1970s" (California Air Resources Board, n.d.-b).

CARB's preference has locked in the preference for EV solutions in more recent government mandates. In 2020, Governor Newsom announced the state's intended phase out of gas powered vehicles, a responsibility placed on CARB to execute. In 2022, CARB voted to start meeting these goals by requiring 35% of new cars be zero emission by 2026 (Green Party of California, n.d.).

This strategy of elevating individual EV transportation approaches over alternative infrastructure has been embraced at a national level. President Biden's goal to decrease the transportation sector's carbon emissions were charted primarily by supporting EV development and deployment. The White House expressed a goal to have 50% of new vehicle sales be electric by 2030 (Ewing, 2021). The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal reflected this objective by designating $7.5 billion to EV charging infrastructure; nearly twice as much as the sum between the $1 billion given for electric buses and the $3 billion for projects which address "neighborhood equity, safety, and affordable transportation" (Electrification Coalition, n.d.; Osaka, 2024; U.S. Department of Transportation, n.d.).

Shifting Climate Burdens and Lithium Mining

While focus on EVs represents a general desire to stay invested in present day transportation infrastructure and habits, the EV approach to climate change also shifts the environmental impact of gas vehicles from tailpipe emissions to electricity generation, manufacturing, and mining. EV expansion strategies are engaging in a form of environmental bargaining: cleaner air at home for greater extraction and environmental degradation abroad. Supporting the U.S. EV transition could require three times as much lithium as is currently being produced, necessitating a massive uptick in current lithium mining.

On March 18, 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $30 million in research for securing the domestic supply chain of earth elements and minerals necessary for producing clean energy (U.S. Department of Energy, 2021). Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm commented on the funds, "America is in a race against the economic competitors like China to own the EV market – and the supply chains…lithium and cobalt will determine whether we win or lose. If we want to achieve a 100% carbon-free economy by 2050, we have to create our own supply of these materials," (U.S. Department of Energy, 2021).

Recent legislation has sought to bolster American manufacturing and expertise in lithium related technologies. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provides $3.1 billion to "make more batteries and components in America, bolster domestic supply chains, create good-paying jobs, and help lower costs for families," (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, 2021). It also establishes funding schemes for battery demonstration projects.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) targets earlier stages of lithium ion battery production via an incentivizing "regulation" mechanism (Inflation Reduction Act, 2022). Electric vehicles are subsidized for auto buyers so long as the raw materials within the car's battery (i.e. lithium, cobalt) comes from the U.S. or its trade allies.

Yet for all their promotion of American business and electric vehicle (EV) purchases, these bills are scant on regulations for the domestic lithium industry, and the IRA specifically fails to make most US-sold EVs (which are primarily made out of state) more affordable (Ewing, 2022). The Biden administration supports the United States reaching carbon reduction and climate change goals, though it does so primarily by pumping money into the free market and abstaining from heavy regulation. This means the government is not intervening on behalf of communities who feel targeted by unjust resource extraction, thus feeding a narrative that these mining procedures, no matter their regional, ecological cost, are ultimately green (Penn & Lipton, 2021).

Take lithium mining company Albermarle which is investing to expand its lithium extraction capabilities at Silver Peak, Nevada and increase the facility's output from 5000 metric tons of lithium to 10,000 metric tons. This expansion plan is part of a larger scheme which includes reopening an abandoned lithium mine in North Carolina (Domonoske, 2022). Another U.S. based company, Lithium Americas, is developing the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine Project, a mine in Nevada projected to hold some of the largest reserves of lithium in North America (Solis, 2024).

U.S. based company Lithium Americas' ongoing attempt to open a hard rock lithium mine in Nevada highlights the environmental and territorial disputes this method of resource extraction elicits. The mine will require blasting and digging a massive pit on leased, federal land, and its proposal has already met significant regional opposition (Solis, 2024). Two lawsuits are attempting to block the project in federal court. One lawsuit comes from ranch owner Edward Bartell, whose ranch could sit just several miles away from the mine (Alonzo, 2025). Bartell's lawsuit claims the mine's substantial disturbance area of 5000 acres imminently threatens his own private land, water rights, and federal grazing permit as well as fish, wildlife, wetlands, and the endangered Cutthroat Trout's habitat (Bahouth, 2021). The second suit was filed by the Western Watersheds Project (WWP) and other environmental watch groups who accuse the Department of the Interior of irresponsibly expediting the mine's environmental review and sweeping under the rug serious its discovered impacts (Bahouth, 2021).

Bartell's and WWP's respective lawsuits defer to the mine's environmental impact statement as evidence of their claims. The mine will require 3,230 gallons of water per minute which Bartell says could dangerously drop his water table and harm his livestock (Lisenbee, 2025). The plaintiffs are also concerned the mine could cause groundwater contamination with toxic mining byproducts (Bahouth, 2021).

Native tribes on the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation are also battling the project. Though the reservation is over 50 miles away from the proposed mine site, many tribe members worry about the possibility of water contamination. Participating in protests and petitions, tribal members form the language and identity of their opposition around land stewardship. At a protest outside of land management offices in Nevada, tribal members held up signs saying, "land protectors," "do not scar our mother Earth," "we are here to protect," expressions evocative of their relationship with the land (Penn & Lipton, 2021). In response, Lithium Americas has offered jobs and economic incentives to tribal members in place of environmental engagement.

Similarly, the European Union's plans to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035 will place further strain on global lithium supply chains (European Parliament, 2022). In fact, the worldwide demand for lithium is predicted to rise over 40 times by 2040 and consequently spur an aggressive expansion of lithium extraction (Lakhani, 2023).

These present day and anticipated lithium demands are concentrating the negative environmental impacts of EVs in lithium mining countries that lack robust, protective regulations, most of which reside in the low- to middle-income states. In Europe, for instance, permitting mines is extremely expensive and difficult because the social and environmental costs of mining are translated into stringent regulations (The Economist, 2025). Most countries export those costs to the "lithium triangle," a region covering parts of Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile that contains half of the world's lithium supply (Giglio, 2021; Pacheco, 2024; Sanchez-Lopez, 2023).

While leaders of the triangle countries hope that their lithium supplies can create domestic industrial growth, raw materials are distinct from their beneficiary technologies and products, and most people in these countries do not have EVs (Barandiarán, 2019; Jerez et al., 2021). In Chile, lithium mining is done via brine evaporation – the most water intensive mining method. Chile's mining in its Atacama Region is leading to increased water scarcity, Indigenous culture erasure, and destroyed quality of life and ecosystems (Greenfield, 2022). Impacted communities in Argentina are also protesting the destruction of their local ecosystems (Chambers, 2023). The Argentina government is aggressively pushing for the creation of new mines and an extractivist economy all while present mining practices pollute water supplies and exacerbate droughts, largely for Indigenous populations (Chambers, 2023).

The environmental impacts of EVs will also be felt in countries which adopt large scale EV deployment. While transitioning from gas to electric cars will help reduce carbon emissions in the transportation sector, the transition will increase pollution at the electricity generation stage (Sharma et al., 2023). EV energy demands will concentrate impacts in power plant host communities, which are often home to marginalized populations (Cranmer et al., 2023).

Relevance to Advanced Nuclear Energy

We chose EVs as an analogous case of a "green" technology responding to the climate crisis and energy transitions, but reliant on extractive activities. Just as the lithium mining needed to make batteries for EVs wreaks environmental harm in low-income and often largely Indigenous global communities, uranium mining poses similar risks in the name of carbon-free energy production. In both the EV and advanced nuclear cases, the communities where extraction occurs rarely see the benefits of related "green" technology, placing the brunt of environmental burdens in these communities in the name of sustainability for wealthier consumers/states.

Key References

Cowan, R. & Hultén, S. (1996). Escaping lock-in: The case of the electric vehicle. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 53(1), 61–79.

Greenfield, N. (2022, April 26). Lithium mining is leaving Chile's indigenous communities high and dry (literally). NRDC.

Penn, I. & Lipton, E. (2021, May 6). The Lithium gold rush: Inside the race to power electric vehicles. The New York Times.

References

Alonzo, A. (2025, August 15). Settlement reached in messy Thacker Pass water dispute. The Nevada Independent.

Bahouth, B. (2021, February 26). Second lawsuit filed over Thacker Pass lithium mine. Sierra Nevada Ally.

Barandiarán, J. (2019). Lithium and development imaginaries in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. World Development, 113, 381–391.

California Air Resources Board. (n.d.-a). Cars and light-trucks are going zero: Frequently asked questions.

California Air Resources Board. (n.d.-b). History.

Chambers, B. (2023, January 11). Environmental defenders join forces across Argentina to stop mining boom. Waging Nonviolence.

Coltura. (n.d.). Gasoline vehicle phaseout advances around the world.

Cone, M. (1996, March 30). State air board repeals mandate for electric cars. Los Angeles Times.

Cowan, R. & Hultén, S. (1996). Escaping lock-in: The case of the electric vehicle. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 53(1), 61–79.

Cranmer, Z., Steinfield, L., Miranda, J. & Stohler, T. (2023). Energy distributive injustices: Assessing the demographics of communities surrounding renewable and fossil fuel power plants in the United States. Energy Research & Social Science, 100.

Domonoske, C. (2022, November 23). High demand and prices for lithium send mines into overdrive. NPR.

Electrification Coalition. (n.d.). Inflation Reduction Act impacts on electric vehicles.

European Parliament. (2022, March 11). EU ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035 explained.

Ewing, J. (2021, August 5). President Biden sets a goal of 50 percent electric vehicle sales by 2030. The New York Times.

Ewing, J. (2022, August 8). Electric cars too costly for many, even with aid in climate bill. The New York Times.

Giglio, E. (2021). Extractivism and its socio-environmental impact in South America: Overview of the "lithium triangle". América Crítica, 5(1), 47–53.

Graham, T. & Avery, D. (n.d.). 12 US states are planning to ban the sale of gas-powered cars. CNET.

Green Party of California. (n.d.). Transportation.

Greenfield, N. (2022, April 26). Lithium mining is leaving Chile's indigenous communities high and dry (literally). NRDC.

Inflation Reduction Act. (2022). Pub. L. No. 117-169, 136 Stat. 1818.

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. (2021). Pub. L. No. 117-58, 135 Stat. 429.

Jerez, B., Garcés, I. & Torres, R. (2021). Lithium extractivism and water injustices in the Salar de Atacama, Chile: The colonial shadow of green electromobility. Political Geography, 87.

Lakhani, N. (2023, January 24). Revealed: How US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc. The Guardian.

Lisenbee, K. (2025, October 10). Americans now own a stake in the Thacker Pass Mine: What can we learn from its flawed permitting? Earthworks.

Osaka, S. (2024, March 28). Biden's $7.5 billion investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years. The Washington Post.

Pacheco, M. (2024, September 5). Why is lithium crucial to the EU's green and digital transition? Euronews.

Penn, I. & Lipton, E. (2021, May 6). The Lithium gold rush: Inside the race to power electric vehicles. The New York Times.

Sanchez-Lopez, M. D. (2023). Geopolitics of the Li-ion battery value chain and the Lithium Triangle in South America. Latin American Policy, 14(1), 22–45.

Sharma, A., Shiwang, J., Lee, A. & Peng, W. (2023). Equity implications of electric vehicles: A systematic review on the spatial distribution of emissions, air pollution and health impacts. Environmental Research Letters, 18(5), 053001.

Solis, J. (2024, March 15). Lithium Americas to get massive federal loan to develop Thacker Pass mine. Nevada Current.

The Economist. (2025, January 9). Europe has lots of lithium, but struggles to get it out of the ground.

U.S. Department of Energy. (n.d.). Timeline: History of the electric car.

U.S. Department of Energy. (2021, March 18). DOE announces $30 million for research to secure domestic supply chain of critical elements and minerals.

U.S. Department of Transportation. (n.d.). Implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act by the Federal Highway Administration.

Photo: Lithium mine at Bolivia's Uyuni Salt Flat. Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr