Podcast

Electric Cars
&
Rare Earth Elements

6 June 2015

Electric cars hold the promise of helping society conserve energy and wean us away from fossil fuel. But it’s more complicated than that. On our show today is Dr. Callie Babbitt, and Assistant Professor of Sustainability at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She’s going to tell us why we need to consider the materials we use to build car batteries, and how we’ll reuse those materials when the batteries reach the end of their useful life. In our second half, we’ll talk about the rare earth elements used in batteries, where these materials come from, and where they can be found in space.