The claim

The wheel loader in the photo burns about 1,000 liters of fuel and moves 250 tons of earth in 12 hours to extract the materials needed to make a single Tesla battery.

Our conclusion

The amount of material that a CAT 994K would have to move for a battery can easily be done within a few minutes. The wheel loader consumes less than 12 liters of diesel. The 250 tons of material excavated and other figures are exaggerated.

The energy and transport transition is necessary, even if many people don't want to admit it. Pictures of Caterpillar wheel loaders are circulating on social media channels in different versions, including false claims: in different languages, with slightly different numbers and different photos. But the message remains the same: an electric car battery uses too many resources to be truly environmentally friendly. The current version looks like this:

To make a battery you need: – 12 tons of brine for lithium, – 15 tons of ore for cobalt, – 3 tons…

Posted by Inform farmers at the Monday, December 12, 2022

We asked ourselves four questions for this posting:

  1. Is that the claimed wheel loader in the picture?
  2. Can the stated consumption data for the wheel loader be correct?
  3. Are the numbers correct for a typical Tesla electric car battery?
  4. Is the resource consumption for production realistic?

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

The Caterpillar wheel loader

Two labels can be seen in the photo: CAT and 994. This is a wheel loader from the US company Caterpillar of the 994 series. These have been manufactured since 1992, the current model is the CAT 994K . Over the years, the size and specifications of the CAT 994 models have changed several times. However, many components from newer models can still be used in older ones. The plate at the back does not yet show the model letter, which is common on later models (from the 994D).

Wheel loader
Illustration from the CAT 994D from 2001

We didn't find any data online for a B model. The picture must be a 994C (built around 1996) or really the original model. news.italy24.press also assumes the latter .

The consumption of a CAT 994

The German AFP Fact Check sharepic in May . You have contacted the Caterpillar sales partner in Germany. The press spokesman for Zeppelin Baumaschinen GmbH stated that the current model, the CAT 994K wheel loader, consumes between 96 and 217 liters of diesel per hour. In a 12-hour shift that would be 1,150 to 2,600 liters of diesel. In the older Sharepic it was claimed that the wheel loader would consume 1800 gallons (in US gallons: the equivalent of around 6800 liters) of fuel, which is definitely way too high.

There is no longer any data online about the performance and consumption of the A model, but the CAT 994A was definitely a little smaller and lighter than the current K model . The 1000 liters of the current Sharepic would be correct in terms of magnitude. 250 tons of earth are to be moved during the 12-hour shift to obtain enough materials for a Tesla battery. According to the Caterpillar partner , the wheel loader can move up to 4,800 tons , nineteen times more. Or vice versa: the CAT 994K would only need around 38 minutes for the 250 tons of material.

Update December 17, 2022

Thank you for the tips from the community! Some people with real experience of such giant machines have disputed the figures, noting that 250 tons can be loaded in a matter of minutes. We therefore recalculated again.

A wheel loader moves the manufacturer's specified amount of up to 4800 tons in 1 hour, not in a 12-hour shift. The calculation on Sharepic is off by a factor of 230. Or to put it another way: A CAT 994K can handle 250 tons in just over 3 minutes and consumes less than 12 liters of diesel .

Raw materials for electric car batteries

The question naturally arises: Which Tesla battery is meant here? The specific battery installed can be very different. “If we look at Tesla’s almost 20-year history, the secret seems to lie not in a specific battery, but in the approach – very pragmatic, flexible, focused on constant development and adaptation and looking for new opportunities,” writes Mark Kane for insideEVs . Elon Musk's electric vehicles use four different types of batteries that differ in power and chemical composition.

Although all the batteries used are lithium-ion batteries, they are not the same because different materials are used as cathodes. New, reversible chemical processes were discovered and the necessary technology refined. According to the types, a distinction is made between: (lithium)nickel-cobalt-aluminum (NCA), (lithium)nickel-cobalt-manganese (NCM) and lithium iron phosphate (LFP). The one Tesla battery that is mentioned in the sharepic does not exist.

Lithium and water consumption

But let’s look at an example. According to Tesla, the S model with an 86 kWh battery requires 12 kilograms of lithium. e-on looked at exactly how lithium is extracted. This can happen through open-pit mining of ores, as in Australia. Or through the evaporation of water from underground salt lakes containing lithium, such as in South America. Depending on the salt lake, the amount of lithium varies greatly; for one ton of lithium from the Salar de Uyuni, around 2 million liters of water would have to evaporate.

At other deposits the concentration is significantly higher; at the Chilean Salar de Atacama that would be 0.4 million liters of water. But the calculation is not entirely correct. “This water is not completely lost. “Because the lithium is already extracted from the wet brine and the remaining water is pumped back into the ground,” writes e-on. According to the annual report of the operator SQM, such a system “produces up to 130 tons a day, which ultimately turns into around 23 tons of pure lithium.” The water consumption during lithium extraction can therefore vary greatly and can be massively reduced by pumping back the residual water.

Amounts of lithium and cobalt in the batteries

AutoBild looked at how many raw materials there are in a 50 kWh battery . Namely approximately: 6 kg lithium, 10 kg manganese, 11 kg cobalt, 32 kg nickel and between 50 and 100 kg graphite. The housings are mainly made of aluminum, steel and plastics, which can be easily recycled. efahrer.chip.de comes to slightly different quantities:

A normal electric car battery with 90 kilowatt hours requires around 13.5 kilograms of cobalt. It contains just as much lithium. This corresponds to 150 grams per kilowatt hour (kWh). Accordingly, 7.5 kilograms are still required for a 50 kw/h battery.  

Lithium and cobalt in electric car batteries: All information , from August 2019 (sic)

The Frauenhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research keeps an eye on current developments in electric car batteries:

The weight proportion of lithium in high-energy batteries will therefore not be significantly reduced (around 72 grams of lithium per kilogram of cells), but the weight proportion of cobalt will very likely be reduced drastically (from 200 grams per kilogram of cells for NMC 111 to 60 grams per kilogram cell for NMC 811). The increased demand for nickel could, for example, be counteracted by a transition to high-energy NMC (lithium-rich materials with a high manganese content), which is still in the development stage today.

From: Batteries for electric cars: Fact check and need for action

Conclusion raw material consumption

How heavy is an electric car battery actually? Usually between 200 and 700 kilograms, writes AutoBild . The battery of the Tesla Model 3 with 75 kWh, for example, weighs 478 kg. The Facebook post claims that a battery is made up of 12kg lithium, 30kg nickel, 22kg manganese, 15kg cobalt, 100kg copper and 200kg aluminum, steel and plastic. In total, that would be slightly lighter (379 kg) than the battery of the Tesla Model 3. As mentioned, the 86 kWh battery of the Model S contains 12 kilograms of lithium.

The magnitude of the quantities of these raw materials according to the Facebook posting is approximately the same. Especially when you take into account that the different types of electric car batteries differ greatly in their chemical composition. 12 tons of brine for 12 kg of lithium is also within the huge range as we showed above. What happens to the quantities of ore and the total amount of earth moved is a completely different matter.

AFP and dpa fact checkers asked various research institutes, but the experts were unable to provide any specific figures on the excavation. However, significantly smaller quantities are assumed, “especially since the mined metallic raw materials would be used to produce not only batteries for electric cars, but also numerous other products. In addition, the cobalt used in Tesla batteries is produced through the mining of other metals.”

CONCLUSION

A CAT 994K wheel loader moves far more than 250 tons, namely around 58,000 tons of earth in a 12-hour shift. It consumes an impressive 1,150 to 2,600 liters of diesel. The previous model CAT 994A was slightly smaller, but the numbers shouldn't be much lower.

How much ore and earth needs to be moved for a Tesla battery cannot be said exactly, even with expert help. 250 tons of earth and 15 tons of ore for cobalt are definitely way too high. The consumption of 12 tons of brine for the lithium is within the realm of possibility, even if water-saving work could be done or lithium ore from open-cast mining could be used.

Depending on the specific model and the chemical reactions of the electric car battery, the metals used vary greatly. Even if there is no such thing as a Tesla battery, the specified kilo quantities are at least conceivable; e.g. B. in the Tesla Model S, 12 kilograms of lithium are installed in the 86 kWh battery.

The amount of material that a CAT 994K would have to move for a battery can easily be done within a few minutes. The wheel loader consumes less than 12 liters of diesel (based on maximum consumption).

This is also the most important statement of this fact check: The central claim of the posting and the sharepic are FALSE. The comparison with exaggerated figures primarily serves to create public opinion against the urgently needed energy and transport transition.

Electric cars are significantly more energy-intensive to produce than models with diesel or gasoline engines. According to the life cycle analysis, electric cars start production with a significantly higher CO₂ burden. “With the Austrian electricity mix [made primarily from renewable energies], the electric car leaves the other drive variants behind as the operating time increases,” explains the ÖAMTC .


Sources: Caterpillar , Frauenhofer ISI , insideEVs.com , specs.lectura.de , AFP-Faktencheck , dpa-Faktencheck , news.italy24.press , ÖAMTC , AutoBild , efahrer.chip.de , e-on.de

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