Green Options

Norfolk Southern unveiled an all-electric locomotive this week at its Juniata Locomotive Shop in Altoona, PA The 1,500 horsepower locomotive gets its power from 1,080 12-volt lead-acid batteries, the same kind found under the hoods of most cars.

No diesel motor here, just all electric baby.

As much as I love the coming onslaught of electric cars, they use lots of materials that currently have almost no recycling infrastructure — especially when it comes to their batteries. The numbers vary by the type of lithium-ion battery used, but on average, for every 100 miles of pure-electric range, a lithium-ion battery needs to contain about 15 pounds of lithium.

Although the developed world has had robust systems in place for a long time to deal with the recycling of lead-acid batteries (in the U.S. more than 95% of battery lead gets recycled), the lithium-ion battery has a long way to go to catch up. Granted, lithium-ion batteries are not nearly as toxic as lead-acid batteries and so the urgency of developing a recycling infrastructure is virtually non-existent. In fact, lithium-ion batteries are classified by the U.S. government as non-toxic and “safe” to throw away in the regular trash.

A company based in California has announced that starting in February, they can convert your 2004-2009 model Prius into a plug-in hybrid electric car that can go 40 miles on battery power alone, or get 100+ miles per gallon when driven in “enhanced Prius” mode.

Jungle Motors is already the largest electric vehicle conversion shop in Orange County, California. They can take virtually any car and convert it to all-electric, but specialize in converting old Porsches and PT Cruisers. They’ve actually been converting Priuses into plug-in hybrids for a while using lead-acid batteries. That’s old hat at this point.