The hidden toll of electric cars, Part 3
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2023
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The world is moving toward electric vehicles. In Part 3 of our series on the hidden toll of this historic transition, business reporter Evan Halper breaks down this industrial shift and the concerns it brings over human and environmental costs.
Read more:
States such as California and New York are moving to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars over the next decade. Meanwhile, President Biden wants at least half of new car sales to be electric by 2030.
But the race to reduce our carbon footprint has hidden tolls. Workers in South Africa mining for manganese – an essential mineral for electric car batteries – are experiencing serious health problems. There are also geopolitical ramifications, with tensions in Afghanistan, where an untapped trove of lithium ore is beginning to garner interest from both the Taliban and Chinese prospectors.
Today on “Post Reports,” Halper tells us how regulators, advocates and companies are responding to growing concerns over electric vehicle manufacturing.
More from The Post’s bigger series, “Clean Cars, Hidden Toll”:
- In the scramble for EV metals, a health threat to workers often goes unaddressed.
- In the race for lithium, Afghanistan is of interest to the Taliban and Chinese prospectors.
- To meet EV demand, industry turns to technology long-deemed hazardous.
- Despite reforms, mining for EV metals in Congo exacts steep cost on workers.
- On the frontier of new “gold rush,” the quest for coveted EV metals yields misery.
- Minerals are crucial for electric cars and wind turbines. Some worry whether we have enough.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | When you have one and you're driving one, they're actually better for the consumer, not |
| 0:07.0 | just for the climate impacts, but you don't have to bring it to the mechanic all the time. |
| 0:11.7 | These are just easier to use their quieter, but the process of making them is really complex. |
| 0:17.2 | This is Evan Halper, a business reporter at the Post, and he's here to help us make sense |
| 0:22.5 | of this historic move toward electric cars. |
| 0:26.0 | This is a major transition. |
| 0:28.4 | It's hard in history to find a transition that is this big and happening this quickly. |
| 0:33.4 | You have one of the biggest industries in the world that needs to pivot off the same |
| 0:38.5 | technology it's been using for decades and is moving into an entirely different technology. |
| 0:45.5 | The ripple effect of this industrial shift is massive and global. |
| 0:51.9 | Consider what goes into making the heart of the electric car, the battery. |
| 0:56.6 | It just takes so many resources to make one of these batteries. |
| 0:59.6 | I mean, you're talking about dozens of minerals, all kinds of materials that are tricky to source |
| 1:07.1 | and then it's not just getting those materials, but then they have to be processed. |
| 1:10.4 | There's refineries. |
| 1:12.1 | It's just a huge, messy industrial network. |
| 1:15.3 | And this major undertaking can have some surprising consequences. |
| 1:23.6 | And if it's not done carefully with oversight, with accountability, it's like any other |
| 1:30.1 | big pivot in industrial history where you're talking about there can be a real serious |
| 1:34.7 | human and environmental toll. |
| 1:38.3 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. |
| 1:42.6 | I'm Chris Velasco, your guest host. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Washington Post, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Washington Post and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.