Why electric vehicles aren’t cost-free environmental saviours

A new book finds the shift to Teslas and their competitors, financed by tens of billions of dollars of subsidies, also involves significant environmental and geopolitical damage.

Bob Davis

Sep 7, 2022 – 8.00am

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Clean cars drive some very dirty businesses and grubby regimes. That’s the main takeaway from Henry Sanderson’s fine new book Volt Rush: The Winners and Losers in the Race to Go Green.

Among the winners he describes are copper miners exploiting child labour, nickel miners dumping tonnes of waste into the sea, corrupt businesspeople paying off venomous African politicians, and a host of Chinese billionaires. It’s a far cry from the sanitised vision sold to Tesla owners.

Foreign Policy