Wasn’t lithium or something that’s used in electric car batteries actually worse?

Lithium and cobalt.

Whether it’s actually worse is way more nuanced. Electric cars basically can’t justify their existence any more than gasoline cars, but in certain applications, battery electric busses and trains very much can. There’s a whole thing about in what applications direct electrification is better than batteries and vice versa, and what role hybrid battery electrification can play in your system where you direct electrify parts of your line and battery power other parts of it, where the vehicles can directly run on the wire while using it to charge its batteries, and keep running when the wire ends. But batteries can genuinely be more efficient and more eco friendly than direct electrification in some cases, since direct electrification consumes resources too, namely in the form of infrastructure, the physical wires and gantries you have to build and maintain.

But the magic thing here is scalability. The environmental impact of a bus or train battery (which is often not that much bigger than the battery in a Tesla) is spread out between all the people it can carry and therefore the individual impact becomes very small. Same with fossil fuels for conventional non electric transit mind you, which is why taking diesel busses are still better for the environment than driving a Tesla. I always say to people not to feel bad if they only have fossil fuel powered trains and busses where they are, because you’re still doing a lot better for the environment riding that than getting an EV, and the best part is transit systems are much, much easier and collectively cheaper to build electrification onto than car-based transportation.

We need to change our lifestyle to be one that is more communal and collective oriented if we’re to survive the climate crisis. Changing the individualist elements for slightly more efficient individualist elements does bugger all.