“Just to meet business-as-usual trends, 115% more copper must be mined in the next 30 years than has been mined historically until now,” the study said.

    • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Aluminum coil transformers produce more waste heat and are more susceptible to vibration than copper coil.

      Ev motors are big coils.

      It’s gotta be copper.

      • werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        As an example:

        By weight (mass) aluminum is about twice as good a conductor as copper. This is important when they are hanging high-voltage wires from towers

        Not my words. You’re wrong. The problem is 1) enamel coating research. 2) the strength of the material. Aluminum that is formable into wire is just darn soft and can easily fracture from bending. 3) I would say is the issue with not being able to solder to it. It has to be crimped connections which may fail due to corrosion. But all these are fixable problems. Aluminum is a conductor that is on par with copper for usability, and it is way more abundant.

        • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          I mean, you’re right, but we can’t use braided aluminum wire to make the coils in transformers and motors, so aluminums greater conductivity by mass is undercut by not being able to take advantage of that property because the engineering for motors and transformers dictates solid wire of a specific diameter.

          Also an aluminum winding transformer or motor needs a bigger slug to deal with the more than double resistivity and at some point the benefits of aluminums cheapness and lightness disappear when you gotta have more heavy iron in the core, more heat and more winding failure due to vibration.

          I don’t think that means we’re not gonna see ev motors with aluminum windings, just that they’ll be in shitty cheap vehicles for poor people.

    • FireRetardant@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Either way they’d have to rip out new ore, probably burning carbon to dig it up. Then smelt it, using more carbon, then transport the metal and turn it into an EV. Seems like developing more effecient forms of transportation would be a lot more green than selling everyone a new “green” electric vehicle.