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Gunnar's GI Tesla Assignment

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2 views

Gunnar's GI Tesla Assignment

Uploaded by

rollertoaster
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Environmentally Sustainable Practices: 2

Paragraphs about Tesla


An assignment by Gunnar Widdicombe for THJ2O-SR

While Tesla is loved as an eco-friendly electric car brand all across the
world, stretching from here in Canada all the way to even Japan, there may
or may not be some problems with it below the surface, which contradicts
the whole purpose of making an eco-friendly electric car. While it is a green
industry, in particular, one for manufacturing electric cars, it has problems
such as lithium mining, making the cars themselves in factories, electricity
use which ramps up power plants, and, ironically, greenhouse gas
emissions. Let’s also not forget, their cars’ batteries, when exposed to
water, explode catastrophically.

Tesla’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions

It’s ironic for an electric car manufacturer to have greenhouse gas


emissions, being a company that makes cars that don’t emit any gasses
whatsoever. But this doesn’t concern when the cars are driving themselves,
but the building and charging process. My friend Matt once calculated that
a single Tesla along its entire lifespan, is 7 times more harmful to the
environment than a well-fired steam locomotive. Anyway, onto the info. In
Tesla’s supply chains, while Elon Musk and the company said it was much
less, the supply chains came out to emit 30.7 million tons of carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere in 2022. This is from their Scope 3 data, which
companies don’t often release to the public to make them seem like they’re
emitting less carbon. Tesla’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions were only 610,000
tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. These two handle the emissions from
factories, offices, cars, electricity use, heating, and finally, cooling. And
while other companies like Ford have emitted 337 million tons of carbon in
2022, it still goes to show that EV cars may not be as EV as they seem.
Especially since Tesla’s pollution is growing, trying to get an electric car for
every person on Earth.
How would they go about fixing this?

Well, fixing an issue like making car production more viable and more
green is quite a tough topic, especially when it comes to lithium mining and
making frames out of steel, and that sort of thing. But, according to the
Climate Adaptation Platform, there are more sustainable ways of extracting
lithium. Directly extracting it, resulting in no water to extract the lithium,
using underground natural steam to extract it, instead of water shipped in,
and finally, reusable ion-exchange beads, to dissolve the metal from the
salty brines in which lithium occurs. All 3 of these could result in much less
harmful creation of Tesla’s, and maybe then the company might be able to
live up to its name of an eco-friendly car brand. Although, in my opinion, I’m
still not sold on Tesla, as Toyota have developed a hydrogen engine, which
I think is the future.
References

APA Citation Generator: MyBib Contributors. (2019, May 26). APA Citation
Generator – FREE & Fast – (6th Edition, 2019). MyBib.
https://www.mybib.com/tools/apa-citation-generator

‌Tesla logo: Tesla Logo, history, meaning, symbol, PNG. (n.d.).


Logos-World.net. https://logos-world.net/tesla-logo/

‌ esla top-down photo and greenhouse gas emission information: Calma, J.


T
(2023, April 26). Tesla’s carbon footprint is finally coming into focus, and it’s
bigger than the company let on in the past. The Verge.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/26/23697746/tesla-climate-pollution-carb
on-footprint-supply-chain-report

Sustainable lithium mining info and photo: Admin. (2022, February 22).
Sustainable Extraction of Lithium. Climate Adaptation Platform.
https://climateadaptationplatform.com/sustainable-extraction-of-lithium/

See you on the flipside, and I hope you found it useful.

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