The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-28/the-lithium-mine-buildup-is-outpacing-the-electric-car-boom

by situational87 • 7 years ago

148 235 7 years ago

crb002• 7 years ago

Industrial battery will eat it.

taneq• 7 years ago

Exactly. The potential market for grid storage for renewables will be similar in size to the market for EV batteries once the cost of battery-backed renewables falls below the cost of a grid connection. And once that does happen, power grids worldwide are going to rapidly enter a death spiral as their fixed costs are spread between fewer and fewer users.

dTal3• 7 years ago

Why? The role of the grid will still be arbitrage between power generation and power consumption. A flat in a high-rise in a city doesn't have anywhere to put solar panels; a factory couldn't possibly sustain its power consumption with on-site renewables, and no amount of on-site battery storage will change that. Somebody needs to buy power from net producers, and sell it to consumers.

ninju• 7 years ago

So first the SKY IS FALLING because demand is greater than supply and now the SKY IS FALLING because supply is (forecasted) to catch up to demand.

Sensationalist media articles win both ways :-)

CriticalCathed• 7 years ago

Is it sensationalist? Seems factual.

dang• 7 years ago

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Causality12• 7 years ago

I would've been very excited about this back in the halcyon days of being able to carry spare batteries for my phone and laptop.

et2o• 7 years ago

You actually. They are just external.

xxpor2• 7 years ago

I bought a laptop with a replaceable battery, RAM, and HDD this year. A Lenovo T480. Most people don't have to buy a MacBook (outside of iOS dev).

Causality12• 7 years ago

Good choice, since it's the last one which had the feature. The T490 drops support for removable batteries.

Tade0• 7 years ago

I think you can still charge a MacBook via a pedestrian power bank, provided it has a USB-C and enough output power.

natch• 7 years ago

The electric car boom is in such early days now, I don’t know that anyone can even discern the shape of the curve yet.

rcMgD2BwE72F• 7 years ago

I don’t know that anyone can even discern the shape of the curve yet.

Now, you have: https://assets.weforum.org/editor/large_opfwi0Tq43oLA-yv3bAv...

One a country tells its population to go electric and put the infrastructure in place to support that, people adopt EVs at a pretty fast pace and end up pretty happy about it.

dsfyu404ed• 7 years ago

This is no big deal. Prices will tank and an equilibrium will be reached. This kind of stuff happens all the time when supply lags demand and then catches up and you have a little bit too much supply.

yarg• 7 years ago

You also have to consider the percentage of the market controlled by China.

Look at what they've done with their control of rare earth metals.

Artificial scarcity and resource hoarding is something that needs to be considered.

Sabinus3• 7 years ago

But China doesn't have control of the lithium market.

sjwright12• 7 years ago

The electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed. Electric cars are still deeply strangled by two key factors: industry inertia and the cost/supply of lithium batteries. Once those two factors are solved (and a build-up of lithium mines is key to that) electric cars will go from being a niche within a niche to utterly dominating the market very, very quickly.

Within the next decade we might see companies like Hyundai/Kia, Toyota and Honda selling more EVs than ICE. Take the Kia Niro EV as an example: if the cost of batteries halved and the supply was unconstrained, there is little stopping that kind of product from dominating the market—starting with two-car households with off-street parking.

With their lithium cell investments, Telsa are well positioned to benefit from this boom, but they need to think carefully about their positioning. Right now they're a luxury brand with no serious competitors; when Telsa's drivetrain advantage is substantially neutralised, their mind share is likely to stagnate.

In my opinion Tesla needs to prepare to be in the budget space. They need to partner with an external manufacturer to sell a product with normal door handles that competes with Hyundai and Toyota. Because once the cost of batteries falls, I predict a substantial slice of their market will simply disappear to the economy manufacturers. I suspect that many people who love Telsa really just love the idea of electric vehicles and they'll be buying something more like the Kia Niro EV.

ajross• 7 years ago

The electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed.

Plug-in electric sales in 2018 were up 61% over 2017, which was 51% higher than 2016 (via quick wikipedia check).

What numbers would you want to see before calling that a "boom"? How much higher than 60% growth does something have to have before it's not "strangled"?

I think that's silly. Clearly these things are going somewhere. Production at all levels is adapting to compete, and that means some areas (like Li production in the linked articles) are going to outstrip the field which remains limited by other things. But even right now they're clearly out of the "niche within a niche" category and growing very well.

sjwright12• 7 years ago

Of course EVs are booming in relative terms. Things boom all the time in relative terms. That's not remarkable.

The pure EV market will eventually dominate vehicle sales in most segments, and most of the rest will be PHEV. Have EVs even hit 1% of worldwide vehicle sales yet? Call me back when it passes 10% and we'll talk about an EV boom.

sinistersnare• 7 years ago

Your argument reminds me of this (relevant) XKCD comic. https://xkcd.com/1102/

m0zg2• 7 years ago

Last month you ate one doughnut, this month you ate two, so month-to-month growth is 100%. Is your consumption of doughnuts booming? To say that it is, I'd need to see doughnuts replace a significant portion of your calorie intake first.

Toyota RAV4 alone sold more than all plug-in cars combined.

bryanrasmussen2• 7 years ago

yesterday I had a dollar in my pocket, today I have 2 dollars. Dollars in my pocket is booming right now. But relative to amount of dollars I have or that in the world, not so much. So I think other statistics would be more useful to determine quality of boom.

Iv• 7 years ago

2 million of the 70 million cars produced annually in the world are electric. It went from fringe to industrial, talking about a boom is acceptable IMO.

It still have a 35x potential growth, so it can "boom" again, but the EV industry now is huge

Marsymars• 7 years ago

It still have a 35x potential growth, so it can "boom" again, but the EV industry now is huge

One of the hyped upsides of electric cars is decreased maintenance costs leading to a decrease in per-km capital costs of driving. If this is true, unless induced demand from this causes people to drive more, EVs effectively will shrink the total car industry pie, leaving something less than 35x potential growth.

threeseed• 7 years ago

with no serious competitors

Seems to be a different story in the US versus Europe.

In Europe they have a lot more competitors either with cars now or coming soon e.g. VW ID3, VW Polestar 2, BMW i3, Honda e, Peuegot e-208, Renault Zoe, Nissan Leaf, Hyundai Kona EV, Mercedes EQC400/EQS, Audi eTron, Jaguar I-PACE etc.

Tesla has largely had the market to itself but now you are seeing much higher quality cars with only slightly less range.

shiftpgdn• 7 years ago

You can buy almost all of those cars in the US. My experience has been however that dealers have little to no interest in selling them to you.

sjwright12• 7 years ago

Most of those are either quirky and compromised or simply not (yet) available in serious quantities.

I'm personally looking forward to the Hyundai/Kia models, as they seem to be closest to getting the formula right—enough range, enough power, enough fit and finish. Once the cost and supply of batteries is "solved" they could dominate the economy segment for a while.

varjag• 7 years ago

In higher end they are marginal next to Tesla share. Low end, Nissan, VW and BMW gained some foothold simply by entering it earlier than Tesla with model 3.

ineedasername• 7 years ago

They have booked relative to prior production and future estimates for production are on the rise. Volkswagen for example is near the release of a car based on a new platform for mass production of a more affordable (than Tesla) option that falls at the lower end of the Tesla in terms of range. Many other examples abound. The very near future will show tremendous year over year growth in the EV sector. Seems like a boom to me.

joe-collins• 7 years ago

I think a robust charging network is a third dependency. You need to have a garage, or commute to someplace with or near a charger. Down here in San Diego (East County), I don't see a lot of the latter.

sjwright12• 7 years ago

It's a dependency for dominating the entire vehicle market, but it's not a dependency for the substantial slice of the market with access to off-street parking at home. That's probably at least 10–20% of the market right there.

Add to that the slice of the market with access to off-street parking at work which can be retrofitted for charging. As EV sales grow, car parking will adapt and recharging will be bundled into the cost of parking. That's another 10–20%.

Once you've sold to those markets, the "robust charging network" will solve itself.

richardw• 7 years ago

20k in US

https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/electrek.co/2019/07/09/us-ele...

400k in China

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2019/07/the-nu...

I'd bet that's where the shift comes from.

clouddrover20• 7 years ago

Or go solar and charge anywhere you have daylight:

- Experimental Toyota Prius: https://newatlas.com/toyota-prius-solar-roof/60461/

- Sono Sion: https://sonomotors.com/en/sion/

- Lightyear One: https://lightyear.one/

Even if you're only getting a small amount of range from solar in Winter, that's still less charging that has to come from the grid.

snarfy• 7 years ago

You need a garage, and a circuit with 60A capacity. Most houses built today have 200A total capacity, older homes are 100A. At some point the electric grid will need updated.

WorldMaker8• 7 years ago

The electric grid is really well built out at this point. Every street lamp, every electronic parking meter, every exterior wall outlet on a building is a possible Level 1 "trickle" charge. We have the ubiquity of power everywhere, just not the access in most current situations (street lamps and parking meters don't currently have outlets; exterior building outlets are intentionally hidden away from parking lot usage; places that do have those don't have processes for clearing access to them / may want ways to bill the extra electric usage).

Cars spend most of their day sitting somewhere and most of that often less than a meter from any sort of electric grid connection (just most of those can't be hooked into today). (I like to play a game of spot the nearest electrical object from wherever I park. It's rarely hard.)

Fancier, higher voltage/current Level 2+ chargers are great, but it should be incredibly easy to very quickly up the number of Level 1 charging spots on the electric grid: aka add more traditional wall outlets in parking lots/garages/streets. That sort of bootstrap should be something we talk about more, because it really is hard to beat the ubiquity of our electric grid build-out already. We can take advantage of that.

vvanders• 7 years ago

Tesla still doesn't have a rival in charging network or software.

Having arrived at more than a few broken chargers the former is going to give them a lead for a good while.

clouddrover20• 7 years ago

Tesla still doesn't have a rival in charging network

Depends where you are I suppose. In addition to Tesla's network, Europe has:

- Ionity: https://ionity.eu/

- FastNed: https://fastnedcharging.com/en/

- Allego: https://www.allego.eu/

- GIREVE: https://www.gireve.com/en/

And more. All standardized on CCS type 2 plugs which is another plus.

Sabinus3• 7 years ago

How exclusive is the Tesla charging network? Is it available to use for other brands of electric car?

6934712• 7 years ago

You people are so obsessed over door handles. It's a hysteria.

They're fine.

F_r_k• 7 years ago

They're expensive

lettergram• 7 years ago

I suspect Tesla knows their space fairly well. Until there is a car that can go 400 miles on a single charge and recharge in 2 minutes, with cheap repairs and work well in all weather conditions for a decade or two, you won’t see the masses jump on EV. You may see people in cities (often these are more affluence).

I don’t really see EV becoming wide spread (I.e. ~50% of the market) for at least 10-15 years. Even then, power prices will spike at homes. I don’t even want to imagine what that’ll cost.

russdill2• 7 years ago

With an ev, you only need to wait on charging it you are taking a long trip. With an ICE you need to stop at a gas station pretty much every week.

sq_• 7 years ago

Even if people's home power bills spike, they'll still save plenty of money by not paying for gas. In parts of the US, a decent commute will cost one $200 to $300 in gas a month, and charging an EV off the grid for the same range will cost a lot less.

muzika2• 7 years ago

For most people 300 miles of range is plenty. Longer range and quick charge time only matters when you are taking a long trip - and I would say 10min charge time will be sufficient to make it moot point when comparing to ICE cars.

tonyedgecombe2• 7 years ago

My wife car rarely does more than 30 miles in a day. I don't think we have ever driven it 400 miles in a day.

nardi• 7 years ago

In my opinion Tesla needs to prepare to be in the budget space. They need to partner with an external manufacturer to sell a product with normal door handles that competes with Hyundai and Toyota. Because once the cost of batteries falls, I predict a substantial slice of their market will simply disappear to the economy manufacturers. I suspect that many people who love Telsa really just love the idea of electric vehicles and they'll be buying something more like the Kia Niro EV.

In my opinion Apple needs to prepare to be in the budget space. They need to partner with an external manufacturer to sell a product with a physical keyboard that competes with Blackberry and Palm. Because once the cost of touchscreens falls, I predict a substantial slice of their market will simply disappear to the economy manufacturers. I suspect that many people who love Apple really just love the idea of smartphones and they'll be buying something more like the Blackberry Curve 8300.

-sjwright, maybe, circa 2008

Brometheus• 7 years ago

http://www.wimjellema.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Global-...

cjblomqvist• 7 years ago

This feels a little unwarranted (almost rude?) and without considering the differences. So let's do some proper analysis of your statement and comparison of the car market and the phone market.

1. Smartphones provided a new type of utility and a very significant leap of value to the user (I bet most people do other stuff than calling for the vast majority of time spent with their phones, which was not the case with feature phones or generally before the iPhone). Electric cars provide a minor difference in new utility and probably also value. It's more a difference in the means rather than a difference of the end result.

2. Phones are significantly cheaper than cars. Thus, there's a much larger market unit wise than cars (there are probably a similar number of units in use at any point in time, but cars don't get thrown away after 2 years...)

Apple did something similar which is pretty well known in disruption theory. They moved up the market and became a truly premium phone company. That's also why they have a quite small portion of the market unit wise (less than 10%?). They are actually not dominating the industry, they are a niche player (but very successful at that, as seen profit wise, especially compared to their competitors). They are also really good at being a premium phone maker, and have leveraged a lot of other core competencies (look up on Wikipedia for more about that concept) well such as their software competencies and their ecosystem thinking (locking their users into their ecosystem and providing most key parts of that ecosystem).

So what about Tesla? They are hardly as good as Apple premium wise. The market for premium is also a lot smaller for cars, especially if you move upwards from where Tesla is right now. It's also very hard to make a profit in that market, and most make a profit by combining a mass scale operation (more or less all premium car brands are owned by one of the big car companies). So is (more) premium a great direction for Tesla? I doubt it. It will hinder economies of scale which have proven difficult to not have.

So, unless Tesla partner up, don't believe electric car engines/drive trains will become commoditized in the near future and/or have some significant premium/lock-in/ecosystem stuff up their sleeve, it looks like budget is the way to go... They might stay in the premium but not luxury segment, but it's cut throat with lots of competition. To me that sounds like a lost opportunity and waste of some significant base innovation.

And... I guess above is why Tesla seems to desperately try to find additional competitive barriers; self driving, fully automated manufacturing, quick charge network, etc. But, they are long shots so far. It's difficult to innovate one area, very much so multiple areas simultaneously.

thekyle2• 7 years ago

I know this comment was made in jest but it's completely correct. When the iPhone launched it was the smartphone market. It had 100% market share.

Apple didn't build products for the budget market and as a result they lost about 90% of their global market share to Android.

muzika2• 7 years ago

Most people who buy Teslas don’t want “just” an EV, they want a TESLA.

saagarjha• 7 years ago

I guess it's good for Tesla that they've managed to make an EV that attractive.

sjwright12• 7 years ago

Given that Tesla are currently one of few compelling EVs available in volume, that's an unproven thesis. Get back to me when there's direct competition from BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Genesis etc with comparable products at comparable volumes. I think more than a few Tesla customers would be just as happy to be driving a G70 or C-Class EV.

Don't get me wrong—I think the Model 3 is a (mostly) stellar product and I'd love nothing more than to see Tesla come to dominate American car manufacturing. But for that to happen they'll need to swallow their design egos and offer simpler cars with normal door handles and widely available parts for inexpensive repairs. Until that happens they'll find their growth ceiling very soon.

Theodores• 7 years ago

normal door handles

The business plan always was to start at the high end with the Roadster, then the deluxe sedan and then the affordable Model 3. The Model 3 has cheaper door handles than the Model S.

Tesla is about building car factories rather than cars. Once you have the robots doing as they are told then you can make whatever you want.

If you had to recycle a Lamborghini and a Dacia Sandero then you would probably end up with near equal piles of raw materials for both vehicles, give or take a bit of steel.

The other input is energy. The cylinder head on the Lamborghini takes a bit more work to make than the lump of iron that comes with the Dacia. But, if you have built out lots of renewable power then you can get those CNC machines and other robots doing overtime.

Tesla with their vertical integration business model are finding customers at their price point and they can't make cars quick enough. Despite the sceptics, it is working.

Personally I think the budget space will be filled with an electric version of a 'Dacia Sandero' but made in China. EVs are more pleasant to be in as there is not the vibration and noise from the engine, or the local cloud of pollution.

Because of this and the realities of driving in city/town areas there really is a need for a vehicle far simpler than a Model 3, something without the bells and whistles. Honda have something in the works that is nearer the brief. They are going with a low range EV that is not going to pretend to do hundreds of miles on a charge. This is for the two car family where car two just needs to do the shopping, pick the kids up and get into congestion charging zones. In China there are plenty of BYD fit for purpose EVs that are budget and will be making their way to Western markets in due course.

The legacy brands in Europe and the USA are stuck with having to do things the old way with existing supply chains. To make an EV all they need is to buy the bits from Bosch and shove them in to final assembly but they aren't doing it.

atq2119• 7 years ago

Taking about legacy brands, most of them do have exactly those low range fully electric models available that you're talking about, e.g. the VW e-up, which is a great choice for a daily commute.

They aren't very aggressive about growing the market though.

sjwright12• 7 years ago

All true, but I still disagree that the Model 3 is affordable. It's still in the luxury space in terms of pricing.

Bombthecat• 7 years ago

Uhhhhh I still have no idea where I get the power from? I don't think I will see a power plug in the next ten years near my house (street)

audunw3• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure there's still 5 years worth of exponential growth potential from people who do have garages or otherwise will have the ability to pay for getting a plug somehow, and from new construction that's already set up for charging plugs (I believe it's required in some places like California now?)

Then what will happen in the 5-10 year time frame is that EVs will be significantly cheaper than ICE vehicles (maybe not purchase price at first, but certainly TCO).

Is there electricity anywhere near where you park? Think about what it would cost to set up a plug. It might be quite a bit, but unless electricity is really far away, it's not a crazy amount either.

If buying an EV would save you a significant amount of money over a 10 year period, it's likely that you'd be willing to use some of that savings to pay to have a plug set up. Maybe you can't set up that plug yourself, but as long as you're willing to pay a bit extra over the cost of electricity, there's going to be companies willing to set up plugs along the street. Once investors see that the transition to EVs is guaranteed, I'm certain there will be a rush to put up chargers, since the company that gets a street is likely to keep a monopoly on that street for a long time.

The other way to get street side charging is simply to get governments to do it. That's what Oslo has done. They started out being free, but now there's a reasonable fee on them, and I think that's much more sustainable. With some luck in the elections I could see something like that happening in several areas of the US. It'll be much easier to sell this policy once EVs are a bit cheaper, so I think it's possible if democrats gain some control, especially if they gain some support for some kind of Green New Deal. It's a great investment to boost the economy long term. Generates lots of decent work in the short term, and massive benefits to the public in the long term since it'll guarantee them cheap charging, leading to big savings to operate their vehicles.

There's another way to think about it: setting up a plug for your car is a very tiny fraction of the work/infrastructure required for your apartment, which somehow you found the way to pay for (either directly, or through renting). This kind of work is relatively easy to finance if the demand is there, since it's an investment that's likely to last a very long time and generate a lot of value.

There's also the fast charging model, which can be OK if you have a car with a fairly large battery and don't drive too much. You might be able to get by with charging once a week, and you could probably do it at a location where you'd spend some time anyway, such as a supermarket, near a restaurant or exercise studio. It causes some extra wear on the battery, but not an unreasonable amount.

Tepix• 7 years ago

In Europe, cities are adding car chargers to street lamps. Other option such as supermarkets and employee parking are also catching on.

Gravityloss• 7 years ago

But lithium is only a medium sized part of the battery by weight and cost.

cletus• 7 years ago

What about the constraints of what the power grid can support in terms of mass EV rollout?

What about the charging infrastructure itself?

The first point in particular doesn't seem to get the attention it deserves.

As an example some places (try to) ban crypto mining because the extra power load effectively makes power more expensive for everyone.

The residential grid is built with a particular established demand for power. EV charging would significantly change that in many places.

wongarsu2• 7 years ago

The power grid is built to handle peak demand. Residential charging is likely to peak at night, when domestic demand is at its lowest.

If natural charging patterns are not advantageous enough it's fairly straight forward to install smart meters that charge a different electricity price depending on time of day. The options range from simple off-peak pricing already offered in many places all the way up to live updating prices based on electricity spot prices and transmission capacity (this would also go a long way towards using solar and wind more efficiently).

The big problems are likely shops offering EV charging and industrial facilities with fairly constant power requirements charging trucks and heavy equipment. But those are comparatively easy to scale.

benj1116• 7 years ago

It seems like EVs would add 25% to electricity demand.

The big question is how you deal with the peaks. Ideally all cars would be able to charge overnight, so you could potentially spread that demand over 12 hours or more.

https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDes...

ianai4• 7 years ago

People HATE the maintenance requirements of cars. If Tesla can establish their cars as almost never needing service with a usable life of something closer to 1 million miles and decades of use then suddenly paying a premium for their models can be spread over much greater periods of time.

Personally, I wish they would decouple the platform from the comfort center. Have chassis form factors for various purposes (single person/roadster, crossover, truck, utility, etc) and branded “comfort centers” housing the human interface stuff. Make it so the comfort center can be changed out when ever and keeping the same underlying platform.

jamesmadison66• 7 years ago

is 1mil miles and low service reqs the actual current specs for Teslas?

clouddrover20• 7 years ago

If Tesla can establish their cars as almost never needing service

Teslas have quite poor reliability so far:

- https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27725/tesla-fleet-company-stru...

- https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...

I'm sure Tesla will improve with time but they're not going to out-Toyota Toyota any time soon.

benj1116• 7 years ago

As the saying goes, ask people what they want and they'll ask for a faster horse.

It isn't obvious to me people are asking for vehicles to last a million miles, people aren't clamouring for current vehicles that have done a million miles or are old enough to have done. That million mile car is also going to be a 20+ year old car, with 20 year old safety features, and 20 year old phone integration, and its also going to take 20 years for Tesla to establish that reputation.

That's not to say you're wrong, but it will take a fundamental change in peoples understanding of car ownership closer to how they own houses, that will take time, longer than Tesla has.

rootusrootus3• 7 years ago

That is a seriously high bar, and extremely unlikely (there are lots and lots of things on a car that break that have nothing to do with the drivetrain). I think a better first goal is to get the reliability up on par with the other domestic manufacturers, and get the repair time down to something comparable as well.

I got pretty close a few weeks ago to picking up a Model 3P but the maintenance stories spooked me. I am just not enough of an EV/Tesla enthusiast to deal with that on my commuter car.

intrasight2• 7 years ago

If Tesla can establish their cars as almost never needing service...

I drive a 15 year old Volvo wagon that almost never needs service :)

Of course I exaggerate - I probably average $150/month in maintenance. Sorry, but the chances of Tesla doing the same over 15 years is zero.

whenchamenia• 7 years ago

Reduced maint on ecars is a meme. They still have brakes, axles, tires, coolant, etc.

adrianmonk• 7 years ago

The one thing I actually truly care about is the financial risk of large repairs. (For example, I had an issue which unexpectedly forced me to spend $3-4K on camshaft-related major engine work.)

Maintenance itself (oil changes, minor repairs) is something I'd like to eliminate, but that's a lower priority. Electric cars score better here, but it's not my top concern.

The real, key issue (to me) is whether the drivetrain is expensive. If it's expensive to build, and if it can fail in a way that something needs to be replaced, then it's going to be expensive to repair if/when needed.

And both gas cars and electric cars have expensive drivetrains, just for different reasons. On a gas car, major engine and transmission work is expensive. On an electric car, battery pack replacement is expensive.

Maybe one is less expensive than the other, so there could still be a net win here, but I definitely don't think electric cars have completely escaped the problem.

Zigurd• 7 years ago

Re " In my opinion Tesla needs to prepare to be in the budget space." There are entire large traditional car companies that build no, or very few, budget cars.

To make electric cars cheaply, it will take several changes, some of which look promising, but should not be underestimated for time and difficulty:

It will take widespread adoption of level 4 autonomy to make crashes rare

Scaled-down lightweight EVs will have to become available and accepted, especially w.r.t. safety

It will take finding the sweet spot for some markets: E.g. on-demand scooters, privately owned semi-enclosed trikes with light-enough removable battery packs for apartment dwellers, etc. Vehicles will need a "Cambrian explosion" of variety.

It will take regulatory changes to support the above

WorldMaker8• 7 years ago

Autonomy is a red herring to cheap.

Other form factors are nice, but also indirectly related.

On the other hand it may only take one tiny disruption in ICE engine supply chains, or one large production ramp up to an order of scale efficiency boost to drop EVs below ICE vehicle costs on a like-model for like-model basis. With all of the major German automakers now on an "electrify everything by 2023" plan, one or both of those disruptions may exactly happen within the next five years.

martythemaniak• 7 years ago

I mostly agree. I see the lengths to which people go to save a few cents on gas (like $1.20 vs $1.13/litre around here) and I can't help but think that once the "gas" price of EVs starts to permeate the mass consciousness, ICE vehicles are done for (outside of some specific niches). I pay ~$1.25 in electricity to go 100km in my EV (overnight charging at home), someone in a comparable car would be paying about 10x as much. People, by and large, have not understood this.

As for Tesla, they don't have any intent on being in the proper budget space, ie $15k mini cars. They've stated they will release a compact car in 3-5 years (no other info), but I doubt it'll ever cost less than $25k, probably more like $30k. And that's probably just fine and dandy with Tesla, as Apple has shown capturing a high-end clientele and their fat profits is a great place to be.

Their plan for the "budget" space is robotaxis, which of course depends on their FSD program. We'll see how that goes.

WorldMaker8• 7 years ago

Yeah, I think the tipping point for gas price sensitivity to cede to a (much) faster boom in EVs is likely a lot closer than many analysts currently expect. Because that tipping point is also concomitant with the "range anxiety" switchover point. Once gas prices hit certain peaks, station shutdowns will snowball (as evidenced from previous events such as the 70s oil crisis, 00s recession, et al), and long range price volatility (rural/interstate gas prices versus daily driver city gas prices) will change the economics of a lot of long term trip planning quickly to ICE trips (back to) being as range sensitive or more than comparable EV trips. Gas logistics may be a lot easier to disrupt than a lot of people expect right now.

SECProto• 7 years ago

I pay ~$1.25 in electricity to go 100km in my EV (overnight charging at home), someone in a comparable car would be paying about 10x as much. People, by and large, have not understood this.

I understand this, but the numbers are incredibly location dependent. Where I am, there is no time of day metering, and electricity is $0.15/kWh. Gas is $1.16/litre.

As an example, to drive 100km in a model 3 (20kWh) is about $3, vs my current fuel efficient Yaris (I get 5.9l/100km) is $6.85. At that price difference of $3.85/100km, I have to drive 500,000km for the fuel to break even with the purchase price difference. Different cars and target markets, of course, as you mention.

I really want a large carbon tax placed on fuel, to make the calculation work for me to go electric. A $30k (Canadian) car would help the calculation, as well.

bluescrn• 7 years ago

Charging infrastructure seems likely to be a bottleneck, too. Not everyone can charge at home (on-street parking, apartments, etc). And then there’s the demands on the grid as an increasing number of people get home in the evening and start to charge their cars

namlem• 7 years ago

In terms of production, Tesla is definitely making moves to get to a mass production position. With their recent price drops, the Model 3 is actually pretty affordable. Tesla's big problem now is with marketing. Making money selling the Model S by word of mouth alone was easy, but that's not going to be possible with the Model 3,and Tesla still hasn't caught on despite weak sales. They need to start buying ads ASAP.

woodandsteel• 7 years ago

The boom is going to come pretty soon. According to the experts around 2023 dropping battery prices (they went down 35% in 2018 alone) means BEV's will reach sticker price parity with many comparable ICE's.

Many of the big manufacturers have realized this in the last year or so, and are scrambling like crazy to get into EV's. The best example is VW, which in the last year has signed contracts for 48 billion dollars worth of batteries, and is building three big EV manufacturing plants and partially converting 4 old ICE plants, and has a couple of dozen models coming out in the next 5 years.

If you want to follow these developments, a good source is cleantechnica.com. Another is electrek.co

Mengkudulangsat• 7 years ago

Do people really build mines with a 5-year horizon? Of course it's going to outpace demand... initially.

The great thing about mines is that you can just leave the lithium in the ground if the current prices aren't right.

barry-cotter• 7 years ago

If you try and time the market at horizons greater than five years when that’s your startup time from planning to production sometimes you’ll win big and sometimes you’ll discover you’ve made a genuinely awful investment. With a ten year turnaround time you could easily have the technical, social or economic environment just destroy the viability of your investment. Imagine you’re investing in a new city somewhere in Malaysia or Pakistan and the government falls or there’s a war. Imagine you’re going to build a new auto manufacturing hub in Nigeria and the entire West African economy tanks because Ebola goes pandemic. Timing the marker is fantastic if your bet pays off but nothing is guaranteed.

throwawaycert• 7 years ago

The point is more to not try timing the market. There are all sorts of things one could reasonably say about what would be right or wrong for these unstable areas, but fundamentally the most long term good would be if they could engage in slow but steady development of both their natural resources and their infrastructure. I'm quite confident lithium will continue to be quite valuable for at least a generation. Remember, we still use NiMH and even NiCad batteries in some cases. Even if science has already discovered the magic new battery chemistry that will replace lithium ion, you're most likely looking at 5-10 years before the very first commercial applications come about.

I don't remember exact context, but I recall a long time ago someone was talking about shipping medicine and such to a particularly poor area of Africa, and the reply was basically "There are no roads here to ship the medicine on."

rmm5• 7 years ago

Yeah we always do. Mining is incredibly cyclical boom/bust In Australia for this reason.

Also it’s just as difficult to leave it in the ground. Any decent mining operation takes at minimum 2-3 from construction to production so you still need to take that into account (unless you lock down some offtake agreements to hedge the risk)

iguy2• 7 years ago

How financialized are mines, for want of a better term? i.e. Are people buying the mining company's shares assumed to be taking the gamble on what prices will be in 5 or 10 years, or do mining companied buy a ton of futures to try to even things out?

bluGill5• 7 years ago

The problem is you need to buy land and equipment and pay for it. 5 years is a good time to plan for to ensure that you can make your payments. If you are not breaking even on the startup costs after 5 years the investment will probably never pay off.

Eventually you pay off the land and your costs go down. You can keep equipment running for a long time, but it wears out. You are risking all the time though that the mineral demand might drop and now you have a worthless mine (which you need to do environmental cleanup). With equipment you risk a new process making your old equipment unable to produce what the market demands so you have to replace it.

Of course everybody understands you plan on mining for longer than 5 years. However you have a 5 year plan to get the mine operating and prove it can make money.

ironfootnz• 7 years ago

Kinda useless build up. More material are been used to build dense battery and they don’t use only lithium as major source for these new types of batteries.

russdill2• 7 years ago

Citation needed. Lithium is used in dense batteries due to its atomic number

Sabinus3• 7 years ago

No competing battery chemistry has been proven to work at scale. Plenty of research in the pipline, but no breakthroughs that scale so far.

Animats• 7 years ago

OK, another worry out of the way.

rmm5• 7 years ago

This was so evident 2-3 years ago it’s ridiculous.

I worked on a bunch of projects in 16/17 and what I told all my clients is get to production and lock down offtake agreements ASAP as the amount of projects coming online was huge for the short term (with regards to hard rock lithium) and even worse long term (salars etc).

Even the most optimistic of ev adoption rates showed oversupply by 2023.

Some other facts I remember just as points of interest:

* lithium market is opaque. No open market and all contract based so very difficult to price.

* one major unknown that will further add to supply is recycling, with some tech I remember showing cost effective recycling of up to 80% of lithium.

* major bottleneck in short to medium term are the converters ability to refine. Premium will be placed on higher % Li product to increase recovery rates.

So yeah no surprising at all. (Am a mining/mechanical engineer)

yread2• 7 years ago

If you had to guess what will be the price of lithium once those big mines come online? 5000/ton Li2CO3 (at 99%) or even lower? And do you think there will ever be an open market with future contracts?

rmm5• 7 years ago

On the first question it’s been a while so haven’t really followed too closely, but once the salars come online depending on the agreements they have in place they really will have the ability to set the price to whatever they want (as they have been doing for past 3-4 decades). These hard rock mines are making serious money on the fact that the big 3/4 missed the boat (somehow) on the lithium/ev boom. I reckon they will be they will set production/prices to a point just below the number where hard rock equivalents are commercial.

With regard to opening the market I personally don’t think so. If the market didn’t have big players in it then yes it probably would have by now. That being said there were/are a lot of mid stage converters coming online that are disrupting the old guard and taking whatever is out there and not being secretive on pricing so maybe?

iguy2• 7 years ago

* lithium market is opaque. No open market and all contract based

Interesting, I didn't know this. Do you know why? Are other metals mostly open (like gold) or mostly like this?

rmm5• 7 years ago

Most markets are open, it’s the more exotic/specialist metals that are closed. With lithium it’s just the way it’s always been. Historically the market for lithium was industrial uses (lubrication etc) and there were only 3-4 big players that produced it (and often as byproduct of other processes). The big 3/4 companies would produce and often even refine it internally so no need to publish prices. The ev boom is obviously changing that, and they missed it somehow, hence the hard rock miners filling in the demand gap these next few years

Erlich_Bachman• 7 years ago

Aren't other metals like Nickel and whatnot are the main bottleneck for the vast numbers of batteries required for the electric car boom? Didn't we already know for the long time that lithium is very abundant, but it's those other metals (which are required much less by mass, but still required) that might be a problem, and this is why different companies are betting on different lithium chemical processes, because they don't know for sure which secondary metal will become the bottleneck?

hwillis2• 7 years ago

Cobalt yes, kind of. Nickel absolutely not. Every single car, globally, could be electrified without making a big dent in nickel demand. Stainless steel is FAR more demanding of nickel.

Cobalt is tricky because in most places it's a byproduct of nickel mining, and it is only mined on its own in a couple places (notably the DRC). Despite that it's fairly likely that it will scale well, and it also becomes less and less relevant as electrodes reduce the amount of cobalt they use.

Virgin spheroidal graphite is another possibly-constrained supply, as it's a very particular kind of hard coal. Luckily it can be produced artificially- batteries use a roughly 40-60 mix and it costs roughly the same. IIRC natural graphite has a slightly higher power output and synthetic graphite has higher capacity, due to the nanoscale patterning of the graphite grains. As coal mining decreases graphite will probably just become more artificially produced, since it can be made from essentially anything.

davidhyde• 7 years ago

I think that a lot of people (including the authors) think that electric vehicles are only cars. You only need to walk around the streets of Beijing to notice that far more electric vehicles are scooters and busses. Not the Bird kind of scooters but the scooters that you see in very congested cities as well as the chaps who deliver your pizzas. They are completely silent, it’s surreal. They also omitted obvious other uses of lithium batteries like electronic gadgets and solar farms.

S_A_P• 7 years ago

Hey. That looks like what happens with crude/natural gas/agriculture/any commodity. While it is worth being reported, this is Econ 101 supply and demand. Price volatility is part of the market.

want2know2• 7 years ago

There are other problems arising for electric cars: road tax.

Electric cars are way havier than most cars and have so much traction that road maintenance will be much more expensive when everybody has an electric car.

This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles.

I also think this is why brands like Toyota are still thinking about hydrogen cars. They still don't believe 100% in electric battery cars.

AgloeDreams4• 7 years ago

This is hilariously misguided with little real truth to it.

Are electric Cars heavier? Yes...but not really by much. Sure a Model S is heavy, but it is a full size car designed to compare with other 4000-pound range cars and a side effect of the platform's age meanwhile a Model 3 is less than 10% heavier than a BMW 3 series.

The traction idea is just absurd.

The real reason why Norway wants to raise the road tax is because the taxes they use on gas cars and gas itself is used to pay for road repair and if there are no gas cars then there is no road upkeep budget.

Also, Toyota wants to do hydrogen because they are materials-cheap, offer specific marketable advantages, and easy to build under current architectures enabling larger profits.

want2know2• 7 years ago

Well maybe this is different in the US but in Europe electric cars are easily 20% heavier than similar models.

The traction idea is not absurd. Tesla owners claim the tires last around 25000 kilometers instead of 60000 when the drive 'insane' all the time.

Takeshi Uchiyamanda was always talking about the environment when he talked about hydrogen. And even now he sees that battey cars are taking off he still stand by his point.

But that is all marketing talk?

rootusrootus3• 7 years ago

Well, to be fair, a Model S weighs more than some F-150s, and a Model 3 can weigh more than 4000 pounds, which is pretty porky for such a small car.

But ... I don't see what that really has to do with paying for roads. We will replace the gas tax, and in fact most places are already talking about how to do it. Doesn't seem like an intractable problem at all, and will probably be fixed well before EV adoption gets into the double digits.

WorldMaker8• 7 years ago

Toyota is also probably stuck in a weird version of the sunk costs fallacy at this point, having spent R&D money continuously on hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles since the 1990s. Luckily for them, a good hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is just a good EV with a really weird "refillable battery", so their sunk costs aren't likely to sink the company because the rest of the "drive train" is the roughly the same for HFC and battery EV.

audunw3• 7 years ago

".. that road maintenance will be much more expensive when everybody has an electric car."

Not really. As far as I've read, road wear grows exponentially with weight. Ah, you think, so EVs WILL make it much worse. No. What it means is that road wear is heavily dominated by heavy duty vehicles. Big trucks and such. Not personal cars. What EVs would add is a drop in the bucket.

The traction thing depends on the vehicle. My EV (Kia Soul EV) defaults to an "Eco" mode where traction is limited. The range you get is heavily dependent on driving style, so EV owners do have incentive to drive smoothly. It also increases tire wear. Most people don't like to throw away money. Yeah, you get some Tesla owners that will use "insane" mode all the time.. but that's probably a minority.

"This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles."

Norway is pretty damn far away from making EVs pay more than ICE. There's still a lot of financial incentives for EVs, and pretty much everyone is on board with phasing them out slowly and keeping with the target of 100% of new cars being zero emission in the 2025-2030 time frame.

They just added toll fees for EVs in Oslo, but it's still much less than what ICEs pay.

pi-rat3• 7 years ago

That's been debunked here in Norway. The major factor to road wear and tear is and has always been trucks and other heavy vehicles.

- It does not matter how many passenger cars drive on the roads. Only heavy transport wears it down, says Arild Ragnøy at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration.
- All the analyzes I have seen show that all wear and tear comes from the heavy trucks, zero from private cars, says Harald Tune Larsen at the Department of Transport Economics.

Source: https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/nxE5/Bare-de-tunge-kjoret...

(Also by current law, EVs will never pay more than 50% of ICE taxes and fees, for toll roads, public parking, etc.)

chrisjc• 7 years ago

The major factor to road wear and tear is and has always been trucks and other heavy vehicles.

What about electric trucks and other heavy vehicles? Or is there little difference since these vehicles would probably have been diesel with a lot of potential torque anyways?

FrojoS2• 7 years ago

Its an interesting point that might be relevant for heavy BEV likes semi trucks, busses etc., not for personal cars though.

rudolph9• 7 years ago

It seems like people often forget how applicable EVs are to in city heavy commercial vehicles such as garbage truck, buses, service vehicles

The high torque nature and predicable nature (at least in the case of garbage trucks and buses) make them ideal candidates for EV. Arguably much more viable use case (at least initially) than household vehicles.

ianai4• 7 years ago

EVs are a clear winner for jobs like that. Has the prediction of EVs being low on maintenance bore out? If so, its further incentive for commercial and public use. Municipalities benefit greatly from predictable, constant expenses.

I know Leafs have had their service lives (at least for their batteries) revised up recently. Solid state is where it’s at.

neltnerb2• 7 years ago

Although I agree, I was interested in the article about how poorly planned EV city owned equipment was a huge strain on the power grid that city planners didn't seem to understand how to do right. I look forward to what I expect to be the near future where cities start sharing best practices on this and collectively we do this right.

clouddrover20• 7 years ago

Maybe. Some electric buses have poor range and stall on hills:

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-buses-201...

drcross• 7 years ago

That's a problem of poor engineering and not a first principles issue.

pi-rat3• 7 years ago

We're seeing more and more of these here in Norway now. My garbage is picked up by an electric truck :)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/De7IXxoW4AASSm5.jpg

The postal service here got 4-5 tiers of electric vehicles too, from large vans, to tiny trucks, to "golf-carts", to electric cargo trikes, to a sidewalk friendly electric trolly.

Recurecur2• 7 years ago

Well, this topic went south really fast! I'm surprised the new Goodenough battery design hasn't come up!

Getting back to an actual discussion of lithium, it'll be very interesting to see if the Goodenough solid electrolyte batter works well enough with sodium. If so, a lot of expensive lithium mines will be worth a lot less over time!

The Goodenough battery (he invented LiON batteries for those who don't know) looks to improve on LiON in most important areas:

  - higher energy density (~2x)
  - not flammable
  - faster charge rates
  - many more charge cycles (~100x more)
  - better performance in cold conditions
  - either lithium or *sodium* based glass electrolyte

Apparently 89 companies are evaluating the patents for production:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/all-charged-up-john-good...

FrojoS2• 7 years ago

It took me a while to get, that Goodenough is the name of the inventor (John Goodenough) and not a tacky brand name.

Recurecur2• 7 years ago

His name should already be famous, but it sure will be if this new battery works out.

Phones that fully charge in five minutes, then last twice as long...and can go for many thousands of charge cycles?

Count me in!

clouddrover20• 7 years ago

Apparently 89 companies are evaluating the patents for production

That article is from the October, 2017 issue. What have they found after two years? Progress, no progress?

Here's another interesting battery from a company called XNRGI:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/xnrgi-develops-ev-ba...

We'll have to wait and see if it lives up to XNRGI's claims.

hwillis2• 7 years ago

Goodenough didn't invent li-ion, he invented the cobalt oxide cathode that dominated the industry until nickel and iron cathodes came along.

Goodenough is 97 years old and while he is still apparently sharp, he is not leading the lab that gets publicity under his name. From what I've seen he's more of a mentor. I, and many others[1], are extremely skeptical of the claims coming from that group. At best, they have been putting out very misleading papers that gloss over key factors or lie by omission to make their research look like they're making massive breakthroughs. At worst, many of their claims break basic rules of conservation of energy.

Either way they haven't given much evidence they have a better battery. One of the ways they produce these claims is by creating several cells, each optimized for maximum performance in one area while totally sacrificing every other metric. Then they put every good metric in the abstract and conclusion, while if the battery was balanced for lifespan, power, and capacity it would perform poorly in all ways. Beyond that they also make some absurdly high ion mobility claims in mundane materials, and nonsensical energy balances. Honestly, it has a lot of signs of bunk science... but it does seem mixed in with good (but routine) work, so it's kind of perplexing.

[1] http://lacey.se/2018/07/05/glass-battery-part-2/

mabbo• 7 years ago

This seems like a bit of hype over very little.

Look at the graph in the article. Lithium cost $5000/ton 4 years ago. Now it costs more than $11,000/ton. The only difference is the period in between where the price of lithium was almost $21,000/ton.

Presumably the mines operation 4 years ago were profitable. Now there's all these additional mines, and demand still has the price doubled in 4 years. And yet somehow the story is that EVs aren't succeeding? I see just the opposite- EVs are succeeding so much that the industry supporting them is growing and profiting very nicely.

eigenvalue• 7 years ago

Note that this is the spot price of lithium, which no large consumer of lithium pays. All the big users of lithium (like Panasonic) buy it based on long term contracts with companies like Albemarle (which bought Rockwood Lithium just before the recent boom). Thus it's very misleading to look at spot prices for reaching any determinations about the prospective returns from lithium mine investments.

duckymcduckface3• 7 years ago

Fun fact, there is no spot market for lithium. Lithium is sold on a contract by contract basis and there isn't an equivalent of the London Metal Exchange price.

endorphone2• 7 years ago

"And yet somehow the story is that EVs aren't succeeding"

That isn't the story. Even the headline calls it an "electric-car boom". The story is that there is a rush to build lithium mines to get ahead of the demand, which seems eminently reasonable.

aurizon• 7 years ago

There is already a backing up of IC car production in the luxury car markets as large numbers of people are delaying the purchase of new IC based cars in anticipation of a new EV supplanting it based on lower running costs, lower maintenance costs et al. In addition, these longevity factors are making EV buyers move up-market. This has gutted Mercedes and BMW sales, among others. https://electrek.co/2019/07/24/tesla-model-3-outsellin-gas-p...

api• 7 years ago

Something incredible just happened.

After a half century of jaw-boning about the need for renewable "green" energy, we now have a repeatable scalable tech template similar to the [oil well + refinery + piston engine] or [coal mine + pulverizer + furnace + turbine] tech templates that scaled fossil fuel energy. It is: [wind turbines and/or solar PV panels + lithium ion cells].

By repeatable and scalable tech template I mean something that no longer requires non-incremental forms of R&D. We no longer have to think that deeply about it. It's now in the realm of "see that stuff? Build more stuff like that."

The solar/wind+li-ion template can, if scaled, power almost all current human industrial activity with the exception of long-haul heavy vehicles (land, sea, or air) and rockets. Those are important things but they're collectively less than a quarter of all fossil fuel use.

The key is "if scaled." We are going to need more lithium. Good news is that it's not really all that rare. Bad news is that until quite recently there hasn't been serious investment in getting it. Look at what we invest in getting oil vs. lithium.

That's because until quite recently there hasn't been the demand to justify that investment. Now there is. Lithium prices have exploded, signaling the need for more. The price signals are working. Good.

It's normal during this kind of scaling to have periods where it looks like investment is outpacing demand and vice versa. Demand and supply don't scale at the same rate so you get price spikes in both directions. This doesn't change the underlying reality now in effect.

nrev• 7 years ago

There’s so much energy waste in electric cars from the greater number of times energy must be transferred specifically where it’s changing form. I don’t really see how this can be minimized or changed enough to make and electric car world (or even hybrid electric) scalable in a way that isn’t problematically energy-inefficient. So, I’m at least a little tired of the idea that electric cars are such a groundbreaking solution.

I have nothing against them/people who use them but I’m not convinced that it’s the solution to the looming crisis/possibly explosive break up in our love affair with crude oil. Plus, I’m a little afraid that here in the US we’re about a minute away from destroying Appalachia even moreso—I.e. due to particularly destructive coal mining practices and mountain topping, etc. So I’m apprehensive about increased strain on the power grid. (And I’m not keen on nuclear power either). But I welcome some kind of paradigm shift/future work that reveals I am wrong in this regard. It would be awesome if someone re-engineered and improved some aspects of these things rendering them more effective and less destructive.

(Edited at 2:24EST for typos)

The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

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