Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles

by bpierre • 4 years ago

175 401 4 years ago

hannahritchie.substack.com

Is Lithium the only barrier to EV's? Are there any global supply chain logistical issues that may arise should ongoing conflicts escalate? Do the same supply chain issues affect ICE and EV's equally? I honestly do not know but I see this get brought up when people discuss EV's more so than Lithium.

Could the existing coal mining companies transition or relocate to locations rich in Lithium, possibly offering their employees relocation bonuses? Some of the coal mining companies are in the process of shutting down and it seems like money could be saved by repurposing some of the equipment and utilizing some of the coal mining team experience. Could states offer financial incentives to relocate and switch to mining Lithium?

Are we still reliant on Cobalt as part of the Lithium battery? There is an interview with Siddharth Kara that suggests all lithium batteries contain cobalt and thusly depend on child slave labor. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIWvk3gJ_7E [video][14 mins]

theshrike79• 4 years ago

Yes, the Lithium and Cobalt sources we have currently running wouldn't be enough to turn every single vehicle in the world to an EV.

But we don't need to do that.

New mines for both Lithium and Cobalt are being started, new battery chemistries are being investigated (including ones based on _wood_ [0]), there is also the option of ethanol/biogas/biodiesel for existing ICEs and maybe even green hydrogen if someone manages to optimise the process about 5x to make it cost-effective.

And the main thing people tend to forget: EV batteries are highly recyclable. We're up to 90% now, closing up on 95%. The biggest thing keeping it from being a huge industry is lack of batteries to recycle.

Like the article says, reuse of old EV batteries is a hugely valid option, more so than recycling. A 50kWh battery with 50% capacity loss is till a 25kWh battery, which will run a full American McMansion for a few days easily.

Compare that to ICEs where the fuel is literally burned up in smoke and is exactly 0% recyclable.

[0] https://www.storaenso.com/en/newsroom/regulatory-and-investo...

rapsey• 4 years ago

Lithium iron phosphate (lifepo4) do not contain cobalt

rootusrootus16• 4 years ago

There is an interview with Siddharth Kara that suggests all lithium batteries contain cobalt and thusly depend on child slave labor

That is demonstrably not true. AFAIK the majority of EVs use LFP batteries that have no cobalt. The current RWD Model 3 in the US also uses LFP. That's the direction most EVs will probably head over the next few years.

bryanlarsen3• 4 years ago

It's not just LFP batteries that don't use cobalt. Tesla's medium density batteries use a "high nickel" cathode rather than a nickel-manganese-cobalt cathode.

Manuel_D2• 4 years ago

Lithium iron phosphate are not widely used in EVs. They gave poorer energy density, so lithium ion is preferred. I think electric golf carts use LiFePo batteries, to keep costs low and because range is less of an issue.

bryanlarsen3• 4 years ago

Lithium is the only major mineral in an EV that does not have a significant use elsewhere. Steel, aluminum, manganese, nickel, iron, phosphate, cobalt, rare earths, et cetera have significant industrial uses outside of EV's. So while EV's can put a lot of pressure on those supply chains, the effect is on a different scale.

Traditionally Lithium isn't mined, it's concentrated out of a brine. Some miners are setting up hard-rock Lithium mines, but those are on a vastly different scale than a coal mine, so there would likely be very little equipment overlap.

A significant number of batteries still use cobalt, although the percentage of batteries that are cobalt-free is increasing.

jacknews• 4 years ago

"It’s easy to imagine that decades from now, the chemistry of batteries will have changed so much that they will use two, three, or four times less than today."

It's easy to imagine, but is it even possible? My understanding is that the lithium is the charge carrier, and while there is some room to improve efficiency, less lithium means less capacity.

OTOH, it's quite possible that, eg, sodium batteries become viable, and the whole debate becomes moot.

Manuel_D2• 4 years ago

This is correct. It's like saying do "in the future we'll have gasoline that contains 2, 3, or 4 times as much energy." Sure, different gasoline chemistries have different energy densities. But there's thermodynamic limits to it, unless you're switching to an entirely different chemistry.

IIRC, we're already at ~40% the thermodynamic limits of lithium, so tripling or quadrupling are out of the question.

consp• 4 years ago

How do lithium-sulfur batteries weight in on this? They have the (theoretical) 2-3 times the wh/kg capacity compared to li-ion.

tuatoru3• 4 years ago

is it even possible?

I believe so. As I understand it, in current cell designs, only a fraction of the lithium leaves the anode. This limit is deliberately imposed to preserve the integrity of the physical structure of the anode. Increasing the deintercalation fraction (the percentage of lithium that moves in the electrolyte) is being actively researched. So are other cell types where the whole problem is avoided.

And yes, lithium isn't the only possible choice.

SigmundA4• 4 years ago

See Lithium-Sulphur which has a theoretical limit of ~2500 wh/kg vs ~250 wh/kg of todays lithium batteries. So you're looking at up 10x improvement, if we can get to 1000 wh/kg that's your 4x.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium–sulfur_battery

snarfy• 4 years ago

Sodium ion batteries work just as well and should be arriving this year [1].

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinas-top-ev-battery-mak...

imachine1980_• 4 years ago

Sodium ion batteries are less dense than lithium have a third of the range, I'm live in argentine and see the destruction of open mining for rare metals for cents, make me wish this happens, but for now dense electric cars of not low range will probably use lithium and smartphones and notebook probably will continue to use lithium for long time, maybe be replaced by graphen but in the long game.

DLwdTxdU6smHQA3• 4 years ago

Sodium ion batteries are less dense than lithium have a third of the range

Got a source for the "one third" part? According to [1] and [2] lithium ion is up to 265 Wh/kg and sodium ion has 160 Wh/kg.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/07/30/catl-reveals-sodium-ion...

edited for clarity

powerbroker4• 4 years ago

If I'm not mistaken, aren't the Argentine mines brine-based? These aren't your typical 'pit' mines. Furthermore, isn't the location of these mines in the arid high plateau near the Andes?

zackmorris• 4 years ago

Looks like lithium ion battery density has tripled since 2010 from about 100 Wh/kg to 300 Wh/kg:

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/19/bloombergnef-lithium-io...

160 Wh/kg for sodium ion would be higher than the ~105 Wh/kg LMO cathode and about in line with LCO, LMO/LNO and NMC cathodes up through 2012.

I think LMO is lithium manganese oxide, which might be the same type of battery as in my 2013 Nissan Leaf. Mine's 24 kWh, but they're up to 62 kWh now:

https://www.batterydesign.net/nissan-leaf/

They use AESC cells, which are 80% nickel with a Ni-Mn-Co mix:

https://insideevs.com/news/348513/envision-aesc-ncm-811-batt...

Perhaps better cathodes could double sodium ion battery density over the next decade?

AtlasBarfed2• 4 years ago

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/10/catl-will-mass-produce...

In mass production this year in China will be 160 wh/kg Sodium Ion and the company claims it can be 90-95% density cell-to-pack because sodium ion is like LFP: doesn't require as much safety stuff as the nickel-cobalt chemistries (which reduces pack density to only 60-70% of the cell density).

That's (based on current reputed pack densities of Tesla Model 3 SRs) good enough for the 300 mile consumer BEV. As in, the city car for a huge percentage of the world population.

I believe the roadmap is to get sodium ion to 200 wh/kg in a couple years, with good CTP yield means 400 mile cars like Model S. NO LITHIUM. NO NICKEL. NO COBALT.

Sodium Sulfur will probably happen in another 10 years based on papers. That may offer 400-500 wh/kg IIRC.

SketchySeaBeast3• 4 years ago

Given that they still have lower energy density and fewer charge-discharge cycles, I'd say we can be optimistic for the future but we can't currently claim that they work "just as well".

Communitivity2• 4 years ago

Sodium ion batteries are even better in one respect, they are not as easy to catch on fire, they do not produce the kind of fires lithium batteries do, or give off the same poisonous (and sometimes explosive) gases. It can take over 3000 gallons of water to put out a Li ion car fire (and that fire can re-ignite weeks after due to the chemicals and stored energy) [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWq-Mq1Uqpw

amelius• 4 years ago

Here they discuss what would happen if you dump a ton of sodium in a large pool of water:

https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-you-were-to-dump-... into-the-middle-of-an-ocean-sized-pool-of-water

And here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNWTpfHovHM

scythe2• 4 years ago

If they're really arriving this year, I would expect an update that is more recent than Q3 2021.

Lithium-ion batteries have existed for many decades. It's not like nobody ever thought about using sodium, which is the most obvious substitution. The problem is that sodium has a much larger ionic radius, which means that inserting and removing it from the cathode tends to wear that out a lot quicker. As a result, most sodium-ion cathodes are doped manganese oxides, which is basically ignored for lithium batteries since its energy density is low. Even with this, the lifetimes are not ideal.

PNNL announced a breakthrough this July in a nickel-based sodium-ion cathode, but the cycle life (90% at 300, suggesting 80% at ~650) is still significantly shorter than what we expect from lithium (80% at >1000), and any NiO2-based cathode is going to carry an exothermic decomposition risk, electrolyte (Na or Li) notwithstanding. PNNL claims they are competitive with the state of the art in longevity for all Na-ion batteries. Also, the PNNL battery uses 10% cobalt to achieve this.

https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/longer-lasting-sodium-ion-ba...

I expect CATL to release Na-ion batteries for the very-low-cost vehicle market in China, which is not what Americans have come to expect from cars.

LatteLazy2• 4 years ago

One of the core problems with environmentalists, intelligent people and anyone left wing really is that we insist on doing nothing until we have a perfect solution. Instead of trading climate change for a lithium shortage, we will fail to push these cars because there might be some imperfection for someone somewhere someday. And a massive serious issue is better than a tiny possible future issue we didn't foresee.

Hence the world is run by stupid, selfish, shorttermists who "just do it".

rootusrootus16• 4 years ago

I don't think most of the folks suddenly apprehensive about lithium & cobalt mining are left wing.

LatteLazy2• 4 years ago

I don't think anyone on the right wing cares at all either way. So even if it's only a small part of the left wing, it's composed on 100% left wingers...

syntaxing3• 4 years ago

I’ll take the troll bait, if that’s true then why are “left wing” people the main driver of EVs? Criticizing a technology is one thing. Willing to adopt it is another.

saiya-jin• 4 years ago

Its pointless to make everything a political topic, with you being the righteous one and everybody else wrong (or worse). Ie am neither on any scale, agree with some aspects of each and reject some other stuff, its easier not being in US where society seems extremely polarized and the other group is always to blame for all one's misfortunes.

EVs generally currently don't make that much sense, we just fuck up environment in a different way. Maybe you don't see those open pit mines in 3rd world, child slaving for that cobalt in your batteries but I do and I do mind. This isn't some potential issue in far future, but right here right now. Any tesla is running a bit on child labor, now everybody can please get off their high horses for a while? EVs being charged by electricity from coal power plants - sure its transitory, so lets start having a discussion when its about to stop being so.

What is an actual solution is very good and cheap public transport. Some less smart part of population in less developed places like US get knee jerk reaction to even suggesting it, but simple fact is - as long as everybody will want to drive in their own ever more massive block of metal and chemistry, we will have numerous issues and will keep shooting ourselves in our own feet long term. No EV is going to fix that, not this century.

bertil17• 4 years ago

This article and the IEA sources that they rely on assumes that an EV is a car. That’s not a good assumption: electric bicycles and trikes like the Aptera are much better direction for the vast majority of individual transport.

At that size, you can rely on smaller batteries and solar panels for many journeys (it isn’t fully sufficient for an Aptera but an e-bicycle with a small roof can ride as long as the Sun shines).

Using three tons vehicles for long-distance journeys or for the transport of goods isn’t efficient: trains (and last-mile delivery on cargo bikes) are a lot more economical in both energy, accident risk and individual time (or vehicle investment if you assume an autonomous future).

If we don’t use the energy transition to shift away from the domination of heavy, polluting, deadly cars, we would have lost an opportunity.

stby• 4 years ago

I agree with anything you said. At this point I'm already happy when the media doesn't try to praise drones (Volocopter, Lilium, Joby, ...) as the ultimate solution to our traffic problems, unfortunately.

malfist4• 4 years ago

Aptera is a thing again? I remember reading about it when I was in high school over a decade ago. I thought they smashed their prototypes and went bankrupt?

apocalyptic0n3• 4 years ago

Their homepage is claiming up to "40 miles of solar powered driving per day" and "1,000 miles on a single charge". Even given the size and layout of the vehicle, that seems impressive as heck if true. It's in reservation stages for ~$26k, which is also not bad.

dagw2• 4 years ago

The original Aptera went bankrupt a decade ago. However couple of the original cofounders managed to get some funding to buy back the name and some of the original IP and restarted the company a couple of years ago.

trabant00• 4 years ago

Using three tons vehicles for long-distance journeys or for the transport of goods isn’t efficient: trains (and last-mile delivery on cargo bikes) are a lot more economical

That sounds intuitive to me but the fact that train tickets are so expensive on long distances (more than twice than if you travel alone in a car) makes me think it's not the case.

bertil17• 4 years ago

The price difference is because the vast majority of costs for car transport (direct, like road maintenance and indirect, like millions of people dying because of pollution) are handled by the state. Trains can easily be much cheaper as most costs are fixed and they can handle orders of magnitude more traffic without congestion.

qudat• 4 years ago

That sounds intuitive to me but the fact that train tickets are so expensive on long distances (more than twice than if you travel alone in a car) makes me think it's not the case.

Have you factored in all the costs associated with owning a vehicle (e.g. cost of purchase, maintenance, etc)?

kuschku3• 4 years ago

Train tickets include track maintenace, but if you travel by car, you usually don't include road maintenance, car purchase, etc in the travel price (as they're often hidden and include many subsidies and tax breaks).

Additionally, a train always costs the same amount to run, no matter the number of passengers, so in countries where trains don't see much use (like the US), they'll be much more expensive than they should be.

If you look at how DB sells the vast majority of their tickets (Sparpreis and Super Sparpreis) in the 9,90 / 14,90 to 49,90 price range (including for 1000km long distance journeys), train travel can be relatively affordable (but obviously still more expensive than car travel if you travel short journeys, fill the car with 7 adults and don't include the road maintenance paid for by regular taxes)

Closi• 4 years ago

Using three tons vehicles for long-distance journeys or for the transport of goods isn’t efficient: trains (and last-mile delivery on cargo bikes) are a lot more economical

You are right - Rail freight is extremely expensive (typically more expensive than road except for very long routes) and cargo bikes have a tiny payload.

Think about container ships - massive vehicle and much lower cost vs rail freight (dependent on distance).

ZeroGravitas• 4 years ago

Related, recent Electrek video discussing the next moves for countries that have phased out ICE for EV, such as Norway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F6Bz-0EKA0

logifail• 4 years ago

the next moves for countries that have phased out ICE for EV, such as Norway

"Phasing", perhaps. "Phased", not yet...

Approximately 19% of passenger cars in use in Norway are (pure) EV, with 7% plug-in hybrid and 5% conventional hybrid. That leaves 40% diesel and 30% petrol.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicles_in_N...

rootusrootus16• 4 years ago

Norway has the luxury of exporting pollution the rest of the planet as a means of financing their pivot to green technology at home. Not every country can do that.

Taken in isolation, it's an interesting case study in EVs, but I'd be careful about extrapolating too much.

munchler2• 4 years ago

Good luck selling that idea (in America, at least).

rootusrootus16• 4 years ago

There isn't any reason people in America couldn't choose such things. They just don't. If the selling of the idea is failing, maybe the idea is the problem and not the people you're selling it to.

zppln• 4 years ago

You'll have great trouble selling that idea in many parts of Europe as well.

EntropyIsAHoax• 4 years ago

At least in large cities, lots of (mostly young) people are already fully on board with a largely car-free future. It's increasingly common to dream of not owning a car at all, instead of having a dream car. All of my american friends my age have some resentment that they're practically forced to own a car even in dense cities. So urban planners just need to enable a car-free lifestyle, and the shift will happen on its own.

Contrast in European and Asian cities, it is already extremely common to not own a car. In my city, even the people I know who own cars only use them for long journeys or when public transit is insufficient. And these bike/trike EVs are the dominant method for deliveries (mail, packages, food, etc... all use electric bikes) since they're cheaper to drive and maintain, drivers don't need a special commercial license, and they can be faster than traffic a lot of the time.

It's a lifestyle shift, but it's definitely doable to sell this idea.

TeeMassive2• 4 years ago

As I like to point out in most of these threads, not everyone live in a Californian-like climate.

dabeeeenster• 4 years ago

Wait until you discover the dutch.

bertil17• 4 years ago

Bicycles are the most common form of transport where I live in Umeå, and in the two nearest cities, Oulu and Vaasa. I’ll let you check what the weather is like today.

I’m not advocating bicycles to transport wood (the most common industry here) to the train.

vidarh2• 4 years ago

Oslo was so littered with ebikes they had to put a limit on them and introduce a licensing system, pushing huge numbers further out.

Even if they're not as useful during winter, they're still everywhere.

jgilias3• 4 years ago

In theory.

In practice the market has spoken as to what kind of a form-factor people find the most useful for personal transportation in different climates and economic development scenarios. There’s no reason why ICEs couldn’t have supported the kind of vehicles some people imagine other people need.

The market has spoken, EVs only started gaining traction when they started resembling actual cars in form and function. Think of it as parallel evolution. Dolphins and fish.

CalRobert7• 4 years ago

The market is profoundly distorted by single use zoning, parking minimums, density maximums, wide (and high speed) stroads, and other urban design choices that force long journeys. It's also not safe to be on an ebike surrounded by electric Hummers, F-350 super duties, and your normal "whole kindergarten class in the blind spot" Escalades.

Having just spent a week in Utrecht it's very clear that "the market" can certainly show a preference for ebikes over cars.

bertil17• 4 years ago

“The market” spoke twice, during the oil crisis of 1975. It was made very clear to said market that if oil was priced at competitive levels, people who made that decisions would be bombed out of existence and the memory of men. Horrors are committed every day, including today, in Yemen, in your name. Starvation, genocide, rapes…

There is nothing more shockingly unethical and disgusting to pretend that killing millions of people every year and destroying entire countries is somehow moral because of “the market”.

zozbot234• 4 years ago

Streetcars are "EV's". They've been gaining traction for a 100 years and more.

778hbff5• 4 years ago

In practice the market has spoken as to what kind of a form-factor people find the most useful for personal transportation

That market contains the heavy lobbying by oil firms and car industry to keep trains at the sorry state they are in.

ambientenv• 4 years ago

What if the market, often times a manifestation of social and cultural greed and ignorance (and acquiescence and conformity and manipulation), is wrong? What if the market, which has fundamentally brought us to the brink upon which we find our collective selves and is driven by short term profit motives, cannot be trusted to do the right thing for the sake of the future rather than the immediate or even near term? What if the market, the deity that capitaism worships, is only interested in self preservation and not at all concerned with sanctity of all life on the planet.

I do believe it is both interesting and frustrating that people (in general) fail to challenge the validity and utility of their own beliefs, even when those beliefs have been shown to not hold up under the scrutiny of others. Then, there is also normacy bias.

hannob• 4 years ago

"Let's build bike lanes that are so scary only the bavest will dare to use them - and also subsidise cars in any way we can." - "The market has spoken, people want cars!"

ldh00114• 4 years ago

I don't think it follows from the fact that most people drive (buy) cars in the US that they actually prefer it. Corporate lobbying and politics have ensured that you can't function in the vast majority of the US without a car. People in cities in Europe that support and/or prioritize bike/pedestrian traffic see many to most people preferring it. I went through childhood, uni, and the first year of my professional life living in car-dependent (but still nice) places. I moved to a city where I can (and do) live without a car and I vastly prefer not having to drive. I suspect many who say they prefer cars haven't even had the opportunity to live somewhere where they aren't a necessity.

saint_fiasco• 4 years ago

Those other kinds of ICE vehicles are supported in poorer markets. In the Third World people use motorcycles and scooters and so on all the time, for all sorts of things.

If lithium becomes scarce, electric vehicles become more expensive. An increase in the price of vehicles produces a similar effect to a decrease in people's incomes, so the market would push people towards smaller vehicles just like in the Third World now.

As a concrete example, tiny electric cars are common in China. Amusingly, the government doesn't like tiny cars because they are hard to regulate. It really is the market that has spoken. https://restofworld.org/2021/tesla-vs-tiny-cars/

jgilias3• 4 years ago

Answering to my own comment to answer the broader discussion.

- I’m not from the US and I’m not talking about the US market;

- I don’t believe “the market” provides some value judgement. Rather, it’s just the aggregate behavior of people under their existing realities. We can and should aim to change those realities, but ignoring them because “they’re wrong” will not yield workable solutions.

mikem1704• 4 years ago

I wish the market did a better job of ensuring that car owners pay all the related infrastructure costs for their vehicles, as opposed to some things that are paid for by other taxpayers.

Gas might cost more without subsidies. Car ownership in cities would cost more to pay for parking. Roads outside of cities would be paid for from local taxes. Trucks would pay more because they damage roads much more than cars, which would encourage rail and boat transport. Etc.

It's not a free market if these things are being paid for by all taxpayers, including those who don't drive, or don't drive as much.

otabdeveloper4• 4 years ago

I guarantee you 100 percent that there are orders of magnitude more electric scooters in the world that electric car-shaped vehicles.

You are simply wrong.

ssharp• 4 years ago

The Aptera is going to cost $30,000 (more than entry-level cars) and will only seat two people. I'm not really sure the appeal over an electric bike or motorcycle for an individual given the huge gulf in cost. This is not a good solution for most people who do not earn enough to justify an expense like that, even more so given the product is new and has a higher potential for being unreliable.

There is also the problem of solving family transport, which has no good answer other than EVs. Although, for a lot of people, work-from-home has reduced their annual mileage several fold.

pjmlp4• 4 years ago

Sure, if one likes to enjoy cold, snow and arrive wet at work during Winter, or sharing body odors during Summertime, also assuming healthy enough to stay on a bicycles or trikes.

And yes I know plenty of people do endure weather conditions for their two wheel drive, most never will unless forced to do so.

goda90• 4 years ago

There are enclosed pedal assist vehicles out there that can keep you dry. A bit harder to park than regular bikes but that's not a hard problem to solve, just convert some car parking spots into something smaller.

bertil17• 4 years ago

I live in Umeå, Sweden. Most people here bike.

I’m not entirely sure what your point is.

nsonha2• 4 years ago

bicycles and trikes like the <who cares> are much better direction for the vast majority of individual transport

in your opinion? Better in what way? Does everyone think like you?

Between your and their assumption, I personally think theirs sounds more realistic, they just assume the norm continues to be the norm.

bertil17• 4 years ago

Thank you so much for your helpful contribution to a debate about how the world is changing its transport infrastructure.

irrational• 4 years ago

In theory, but that would also require changing how/where many people live (which would require a lot of construction which would require energy and concrete - both bad things for the environment). I’m thinking over my schedule today and needing to drive the kids places, often many miles away in different directions, plus going to work, running errands with multiple people, etc. Both a bike and a trike would be wildly inappropriate. Especially where I live where it rains steadily for 9 months of the year. A car is the only practical way to move around without somehow either having fewer people to move around, moving the places we need to go closer together, changing the weather or moving to a drier climate, etc.

Frankly I would love it if that was a reality and everything was within easy walking or biking distance, but it simply doesn’t match reality as things are currently built.

micromacrofoot5• 4 years ago

A cargo ebike is a game changer for all of this. I can bring 2 kids to school and do a full grocery trip without even breaking a sweat. I do 6 miles each way and since I avoid traffic it's just as fast as driving.

Plenty of people bike all 4 seasons, the Netherlands is the go-to example... it rains a lot there. Driving to work under-dressed in a heated box is a luxury that's kind of harmed a lot of people's ability to know how to dress for the weather. It's not particularly difficult.

sh1mmer• 4 years ago

With that logic you could also argue that much more will be needed for trucks and heavy equipment. I don’t know if it averages out, but I don’t think you can assume that less is needed not more, or the same as the article.

notahacker4• 4 years ago

The form factor of a motorbike has been around and more affordable than a car for a century now. I don't think it's the type of engine that makes the majority of people in the developed world prefer to spend substantially more money on vehicles which are considerably more stable and crash resistant, enclosed from the weather and with room for passengers and cargo. If they get e-bikes, they tend to get them as well which might reduce electricity use but requires even more batteries.

And I say that as someone that's managed 18 years of adult life without owning a car or motorised bike living in a country with one of the densest (but still entirely unsuitable for most long distance journeys) rail networks around...

prottog• 4 years ago

living in a country with one of the densest (but still entirely unsuitable for most long distance journeys) rail networks

I'm very curious, what country has such a dense rail network that isn't very good for long distance journeys? Is it because it's in a hub-and-spoke system with the capital/largest city as the hub, and if you want to go from spoke to spoke it sucks?

Gordonjcp2• 4 years ago

trains (and last-mile delivery on cargo bikes) are a lot more economical in both energy, accident risk and individual time

This works if you live in a perfectly flat country with completely contiguous landmass and no islands.

bertil17• 4 years ago

I use Norwegian trains whenever I try to go to a different city.

fallingknife• 4 years ago

electric bicycles and trikes like the Aptera are much better direction for the vast majority of individual transport.

If it doesn't ever get hot or cold where you live, or ever really rain, then yes. If an ebike works 90% of the time, then I'm getting the car. Might still get the bike, but I also have to have the car, and that will take just as much battery material as if I drive it 100% of the time.

bertil17• 4 years ago

I live in Umeå, Sweden.

It was -15ºC today. Most people I saw outside were on bicycles.

jgust2• 4 years ago

e-bicycle with a small roof can ride as long as the Sun shines

Is this true? I can go through a 630Wh battery in 2-3 hours of riding and I can't imagine current solar being able to keep up with that. I think you might get an extra ~30 minutes of riding, but not ~forever~ unless you mean pedal power.

bertil17• 4 years ago

Your mileage will vary, but the order of magnitude works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EyRqQhuwio

roamerz2• 4 years ago

electric bicycles and trikes like the Aptera are much better direction for the vast majority of individual transport.

I think a vast majority of people in the United States that choose to drive cars, suvs and pickups would disagree your assumption.

bertil17• 4 years ago

I don’t think we should focus on 4% of the world.

whiddershins• 4 years ago

People like cars and find them useful. Otherwise they wouldn’t spend inordinate amounts of money on them.

bertil17• 4 years ago

People find the car they are in great because they are isolated from the people outside. People outside typically aren’t fans of the noise, the pollution, the million and a half deaths per year, the entitlement, and having most of our shared habitat dedicated to parking.

It’s a classic case of not taking into account enormous externalities.

gdcbe• 4 years ago

Only thing they I would counteract is that at least for those living in cities you aren’t necessary right.

I used to own a car. More then a year ago we moved to a cargo bike (electric) which is enough for most of our needs. It can even have an extra trailer, so we can do all groceries and bring our kids with us, in safety and all weather conditions. Even visits to the recycling park are possible with it.

When we do need a car we use a car sharing service for which i have a subscription and can take any type of car available at any time within walk or cycle distance from my house.

As such i think city families probably are fine just owning a cargo bike (or two) and for long distance trips make use of a shared car (or train).

option2• 4 years ago

No, cars plus planes are much more convenient for travel than bikes and trains.

That is definitely not to say that there is no place for bikes and trains. US certainly needs more of both.

But please stop pretending that a family of 4 can go anywhere on bikes in the weather. Or even going to the beach with all gear in perfect weather. Just not going to happen.

bertil17• 4 years ago

I can assure that anyone in a traffic jam disagrees with you–violently so.

More roads aren’t a solution.

moonchrome4• 4 years ago

The electric bike people really need to shut up with the activism.

Electric bikes are more unsafe than motorcycles ! This is irregardless of infrastructure (eg. I checked stats in Netherlands which is cyclist utopia according to HN).

I used to ride a motorcycle but I would never actively encourage someone to start it - it's just irresponsibly risky. If you chose to do it regardless (like I did) that's your choice - but me advocating it is like promoting smoking or alcoholism/drug abuse.

bertil17• 4 years ago

The unsafe part of an e-bike is the cars running people over.

I agree with you: we should get rid of that part.

brundolf• 4 years ago

I think this is wishful thinking. People's preferences aren't going to change overnight (I don't see a reason this one would change at all), and manufacturers are already making a tough sell with EVs themselves, so they'll cater extra hard to other familiar things people already want

The only way I see this changing is regulation, and that would be political suicide for whoever pushed it in the US (the main place where it would be relevant)

bertil17• 4 years ago

Put people on an e-bike and tell me how they react.

mansoor_• 4 years ago

AFAIK the mineral reserve bottlenecks are cobalt and manganese, not lithium!

pfdietz3• 4 years ago

Manganese is not a problem from resource availability. World reserves are 1.5 billion tonnes, and up to a trillion tonnes of manganese are available from seafloor nodules.

JumpCrisscross6• 4 years ago

Cobalt isn’t essential in the way lithium is. We already have working cobalt-free chemistries in EVs, e.g. LFP.

dwheeler2• 4 years ago

Even if we have more electric vehicles, that doesn't decarbonize anything unless the source of the energy doesn't generate carbon dioxide. In many places you're just moving the source of carbon dioxide (often with a total increase). I think that part is often overlooked.

YPCrumble• 4 years ago

I find it hard to believe that pulling electricity from the grid would increase carbon emissions vs. a vehicle burning gas in its own engine. How is that possible?

bombcar• 4 years ago

And even if it were (I suppose a very clean natural gas car vs the worst coal plant ever made) the electric still has the advantage of regenerating braking.

matsemann12• 4 years ago

An EV is much heavier, thus you need more energy to move it. But I think in total it should still be a net win for EVs.

But the real problem is that we move 2000+ kgs around to move a human of 80 kgs around. EVs don't fix that. EVs are mostly to save the car industry, the solution is to drive less by creating a society where people don't need to own a car and drive everywhere.

malfist4• 4 years ago

It's not, GP is wrong and making a deceptive argument.

The energy grid is already lower carbon than gasoline powered ICE vehicles, especially with natural gas taking over a lot of the energy production. But it's only going to get even better as more and more renewables come online.

It's easier for your giant utility company to have the capital to build out a solar farm to power your car/house/etc than it is for you and I to have the capital to build personal solar production to do the same thing. Even more so, some things only make sense at scale, like large scale wind energy. Placing a giant turbine in my backyard, even if the HOA and city allowed it, would work for me, but not my neighbor, and if they built one too we'd be competing with each other. Better to do it on farms leased or ran by utilities.

Besides, how is the renter going to de carbonize their electric car unless the grid does it?

BadBadJellyBean• 4 years ago

AFAIK powering a BEV from electricity generated by fossile fuel has a higher efficiency than an internal combustion engine. Especially if you factor in the refining steps for car fuel.

syntaxing3• 4 years ago

Let’s put aside the fact that a state of the art gasoline engine is about 20% efficient and an EV is about 50% efficient if you include power delivery deficiencies if we use non renewable fuel sources. What you’re stating is an infrastructure problem, not a specific EV problem. Genuinely would love to see literature how a EV increases the total carbon increase compared to a ICE vehicle.

bob_theslob646• 4 years ago

You don't need an academic paper to see how much carbon is used to actually manufacture a lithium ion battery that is mined versus recycled domestically in the country the car is produced. Just follow the supply chain in how the mining process works for typical batteries today.

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-co2-emitted-manufac...!

SigmundA4• 4 years ago

No its not overlooked, its called wheel to well efficiency and EV's are more efficient than ICE even if run off fossil fuels at a power plant, which it won't completely since even the US has a renewable/carbon free mix of about 20% currently on the grid.

Multi-stage heat recovery power plants are more efficient than even the best ICE engines in cars, there is no need to worry about space or weight so you can have very complicated heat recovery and emissions gear maintained by dedicated staff rather than being in my vehicle.

Power plants can run off less refined or even unrefined fuel, the efficiency of refining is often overlooked along with physically shipping refined fuel to fueling stations.

Finally it decouples the power source from the vehicle. Even if it where no more efficient to run EV's off fossil fuels burned at power plants, your vehicle can get upgraded to run off solar or nuclear or wind or whatever in the future while you get to keep the same vehicle. Any programmer should recognize the value of separating concerns for easier migration.

Where I am we have a garbage incinerator power plant with an elaborated scrubber system, EV around here are technically running partially off garbage. This is not carbon free by any means, but effective at reducing landfill use and getting power out of it.

pfdietz3• 4 years ago

In the US, even the power plants that run on fossil fuels tend to run on natural gas, which produces roughly half the CO2 of a coal fired plant.

rootusrootus16• 4 years ago

I think that part is often overlooked.

On the contrary, it is one of the most popular bad faith arguments against EVs.

Fortunately, science has long since come to the rescue. In the dirtiest coal-burning power generating region of the US, an EV is still ~20% less polluting than a car that burns gasoline directly. That is your worst case. Most US power generation is far cleaner.

powerbroker4• 4 years ago

Wind provided 25% of electricity in Texas in 2021 [1]. A decade ago, it was close to 12%. A decade from now, it will be 45-50%. Even now, by selecting only the nights with strong winds, an EV driver can tap the grid when 50% of the electricity comes from nuclear and wind turbines.

Carbon sources aren't moved. They are decommissioned.

[1] https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2021/10/13/ERCOT_Fact_Sheet...

stcredzero4• 4 years ago

Even if we have more electric vehicles, that doesn't decarbonize anything unless the source of the energy doesn't generate carbon dioxide.

The point of EVs, is that it liberates that energy use, allowing it to be decarbonized. If the energy storage is in the form of fossil fuels, then this is a significant blocker!

k__• 4 years ago

Probably depends on the vehicles, right?

If we'd use more public transport like trains and busses, we might be very well off.

dumbfounder3• 4 years ago

Can batteries be created to make the process of reclaiming the lithium orders of magnitude easier?

A completely different topic: Politics tends to focus on forcing consumer vehicles to go electric, is this really the right move? Most cars are not driven a lot in a day. But cars that are used for work (fleet, uber/deliveries) are used much more, so the benefit to them being electric is far greater. Trucks too most likely. Shouldn't this be where we focus our attention to get the best bang for the buck? And also make sure we don't drive the price up making it more expensive for the vehicles that are driven much more? Imagine the scenario where lithium prices are driven up by legislation-borne demand, we would instead have more cars with less lithium, and thus less range. Maybe that's ok, I dunno. That said, more electric cars means more and better infra and tech that will be created. So obviously some good stuff. Life is so complicated.

matsemann12• 4 years ago

Most people shouldn't need to own a car. I don't mean that in a "self driving will save us" way. But that a personal car is parked 95% of the day. In a city huge areas are used for storing these blocks of metal not in use. More accessible car sharing could make less people feel the need to own a car.

SketchySeaBeast3• 4 years ago

Isn't the problem that the car's that are parked 95% of the day are all moving at the same time in the last 5%? It feels like building a carless society is a lot more deliberate effort and requires a lot more public good will than electrifying what we have. That being said, it's probably the better long term goal.

cm2187• 4 years ago

Self driving cars can park themselves far away, clearing the streets for traffic. For commutting, people need to own the car for the same reason farmers own their equipment: they all need it at the same time so it isn't economical to rent it.

fragmede• 4 years ago

More useful bus and train, and other mass-transit options, along with densification would go a long way towards that too. Unfortunately though, there's no getting around the fact that driving is convenient as shit. It's a luxury that most Americans have become accustomed to and won't want to give up.

I live in a city but the pandemic meant that I was able to park my car for short grocery trips where previously I would have taken a bus.

TeeMassive2• 4 years ago

Unless you have a family. It has to be there when you need it.

Here in Québec we had an elected official who used to preach against cars and then once she got elected bought a SUV because, like everyone else with kids, she needed it for her family.

The "you shouldn't need to own a car" attitude is arrogant and authoritarian in nature.

albertopv• 4 years ago

I live in Italy, millions of people don't live in huge cities, but in small villages where you need to take a car for a lot of activies.

samastur• 4 years ago

I use my kitchen not more than 1.5 hours a day on average. Not to mention toilet and bathroom which I use even less. I guess we should all live in two room "apartments" and rest be communal ;)

I actually agree with you about better support for car sharing, but low usage by itself is not a particularly strong argument.

moffkalast• 4 years ago

Those electric cars that aren't being used could theoretically be used as renewable grid load balancers, but in reality I doubt many people would degrade their battery longevity for a few bucks a month they'd likely get from it from the power company.

powerbroker4• 4 years ago

At a miniumum, the electric cars could be scheduled to take power only when high proportions of wind energy are on the grid -- thereby causing steep declines in demand, sufficient enough that a few coal and gas plants go offline earlier in the evening (for want of demand).

BlueTemplar4• 4 years ago

The main reason it's not worth it is because renewables are still negligible. This is likely to change once they aren't and the demand for storage becomes much higher.

ecshafer2• 4 years ago

The reality is that electric vehicles are a fools errand. The real winning strategy is one that overall reduces dependency on vehicles, and moves more to walking, biking, and mass transit. This would mean actually making hard decisions and having policy changes though. You lower the CO2 produced by orders of magnitude compared to even electric vehicles.

tuatoru3• 4 years ago

That would be a great place to live, and several decades from now, it may exist.

Several decades from now is too long to wait for an energy transition.

2devnull2• 4 years ago

No cars for poor people. I think that’s the obvious direction we’re heading. Congestion pricing. The private jets will still fly off to Davos every spring.

nickspicer19935• 4 years ago

Governments will need to subsidise EVs and create better mass-transit for those that cannot make the switch, but this is really a personal decision based on their own pros and cons. In a fully renewable grid how is using public transport over your EV orders of magnitude lower?

tomrod• 4 years ago

Indeed, and my push Jevon's paradox.

Really, its one arrow in a portfolio of changes needed.

nickspicer19935• 4 years ago

All cars need to be EV for net zero and < 2 degree global warming to be achieved not just a subset, there can't be any fossil fuel powered cars on the road by 2050. As hinted below though you could hit 2 birds with one stone and focus on a great EV ride sharing network, guess it depends on how well EV prices can come down and whether cars owned outright will become out of reach for the average person.

samwillis• 4 years ago

Something that I think needs to be considered more is the now dominant thought that Electric Vehicles = Lithium BEVs. We should not be putting all eggs in that one basket.

Obviously they are the most widely developed, and hydrogen fuel cell technology isn't anywhere near the point where it is ready. But we shouldn't stop developing it. Then there's the fascinating "aluminium air" battery [0] concept which could work so well for people away from traditional infrastructure, or even in small city cars where you can't easily charge at the side of the road in a parking bay.

I want to see a future where there are 10s of different types of electric and zero carbon vehicles on the roads. Each tailored to a different market and vehicle type.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium–air_battery

rootusrootus16• 4 years ago

hydrogen fuel cell technology isn't anywhere near the point where it is ready. But we shouldn't stop developing it.

Scientific development on the technology should continue, but the focus on FCEVs as a use case is misplaced. The idea has been worked on for decades, but we're just about as far away from practical hydrogen infrastructure as we've ever been. It's still only available in any meaningful way in two metro areas in California. There are far more practical solutions to fast EV fueling than hydrogen.

hcurtiss4• 4 years ago

Is that true? The Tesla semi presentation cracked me up with the huge container of batteries prepared to charge a single semi. The grid load for charging any meaningful number of EVs simultaneously is hilariously out of reach (even if we could build the generation capacity, NIMBY-Americans will never accomodate the transmission). It seems to me that hydrogen is a relatively elegant solution to this problem. We are good at transporting and storing compressed gases today. It seems to me that building out that infrastructure is more likely than the gigantic power delivery infrastructure necessary to charge lithium batteries.

JumpCrisscross6• 4 years ago

the now dominant thought that Electric Vehicles = Lithium BEVs

In popular media, perhaps. Research, including industrial R&D, continued on other fronts.

That said, the periodic table seems to limit us to hydrogen, lithium, sodium and perhaps potassium. Life chose hydrogen (with carbon). We’re transitioning from hydrocarbons to lithium (with carbon; some are trying silicon). Sodium is close to being a viable contender, but it’s heavier than lithium, which barring a chemistry breakthrough will relegate it below lithium.

jstummbillig• 4 years ago

I don't think anyone is stopping anything, really. It's just functions doing work: If one thing get's easier and cheaper and safer and is building a track record, all at the same time and without signs of stopping or running into any obvious issues, we are increasingly less incentivized to think up alternatives. I don't think that's unreasonable. In the end, the issue is mostly a very, very small number of people in all of existence, who are capable of meaningfully developing new technologies (and always at the cost of not advancing something else, because they would all be capable of working on something else).

We have been good about increasing the number of capable people, so it will not be one or the other, but even so, right now, it's harder to imagine a world with an abundance of top engineers making new technologies actually possible, than it is to imagine new techologies.

Gwypaas• 4 years ago

Always liked the USGS take on mineral reserves.

Reserves data are dynamic. They may be reduced as ore is mined and (or) the feasibility of extraction diminishes, or more commonly, they may continue to increase as additional deposits (known or recently discovered) are developed, or currently exploited deposits are more thoroughly explored and (or) new technology or economic variables improve their economic feasibility. Reserves may be considered a working inventory of mining companies’ supplies of an economically extractable mineral commodity. As such, the magnitude of that inventory is necessarily limited by many considerations, including cost of drilling, taxes, price of the mineral commodity being mined, and the demand for it. Reserves will be developed to the point of business needs and geologic limitations of economic ore grade and tonnage. For example, in 1970, identified and undiscovered world copper resources were estimated to contain 1.6 billion metric tons of copper, with reserves of about 280 million tons of copper. Since then, about 600 million tons of copper have been produced worldwide, but world copper reserves in 2021 were estimated to be 880 million tons of copper, more than triple those in 1970, despite the depletion by mining of much more than the 1970 estimated reserves.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2022/mcs2022-appendixes...

Appendix C to 2022 Lithium Statistics and Information.

https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-c...

JKCalhoun2• 4 years ago

I'm reminded of the Hunt brothers attempt to corner the silver market in 1980 [1].

But as the high prices persisted, new silver began to come out of the woodwork.
“In the U.S., people rifled their dresser drawers and sofa cushions to find dimes and quarters with silver content and had them melted down,” says Pirrong, from the University of Houston. “Silver is a classic part of a bride’s trousseau in India, and when prices got high, women sold silver out of their trousseaus.” [2]

Price seems to be able to make material availability very elastic. If there is a huge demand for lithium and our collective resources are bent toward obtaining it (or finding a substitute) I think you can trust "The Market" to find a way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday

[2] https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-...

pfdietz3• 4 years ago

There's a geothermal well near the Salton Sea in California where the scale that builds up in the pipes is high grade silver ore. The wells there are also being targeted as lithium sources. I've wondered if storage of heat in underground rocks (a cheap form of long term energy storage) could be combined with drilling into promising formations to extract traces of useful elements.

benaadams• 4 years ago

I feel the article violated Betteridge's law of headlines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

HPsquared• 4 years ago

A better formulation would be "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the null hypothesis.".

That is, instead of "no", say "it's nothing".

Kiro• 4 years ago

And many people here comment like it wouldn't. I guess you're so used to Betteridge's being true that you presume the answer in the article is "no".

sgraaf• 4 years ago

If you have a spare 17 minutes, this great, informative video by Wendover Productions [1] goes more in-depth about the various problems with Lithium-ion batteries.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dnN82DsQ2k

naasking• 4 years ago

For everyone? No. Fortunately we don't need lithium for everyone's EV. Other battery chemistries and designs are already coming to market, like sodium batteries, solid state batteries, and more.

kkfx• 4 years ago

IMVHO

How much lithium does the world have? We don’t really know for sure.

That's the simple main point. The rest are speculation. Oh, sure "not being sure" is not a reason not to try, but is a reason to have some backups. SO far we lack them. And that's the main issue.

The secondary issue is recycling of metals, so far we have many experimental procedures, more or less doable at a not-just-lab scale, but nothing usable on scale.

The corollary issue is that we do not have just cars, we also have airplanes and ships. So far some eVTOL have popped up but also prove they are not much more than very-short-range cars replacers for certain use cases. We also have some battery-electrical ship (and modern sub), but nothing really usable on large scale.

Long story short: the road is very long and looking for alternatives is a MUST. A company can fail, it's perfectly normal, a society should NOT FAIL by all means and when happen it hurt much.

rootusrootus16• 4 years ago

nothing usable on scale

There are many battery recyclers in China that grind up lithium ion batteries all day every day and recover the metals.

slow_typist3• 4 years ago

Even if you can do it on scale and with a very high recovery rate of 90%, after 7 cycles half of the lithium is gone. Given the massive environmental effects of the mining and the relatively scarce reserves we need to allocate the metal very carefully. It should not be used to maintain a broken business model IMO.

404mm• 4 years ago

Isn’t this article quite pointless considering everyone is aware of the current Lithium resource limitations and new technologies targeted to replace lithium are already emerging? For example the Sodium Ion batteries hit the news recently.

Similar to oil, we can all speculate what is the remaining capacity we haven’t extracted but eventually it all comes down to - can we get it cheaper somewhere else and preferably using own resources instead of paying 3rd party (country)?

ag315• 4 years ago

It's not just lithium that's the problem; copper is also a major component, and we don't have nearly enough of that either.

A full transition to electric vehicles is not viable with current technologies. If we can make a big leap in solid state battery technology then that could make all the difference, but the viability of those is being continuously postponed.

stcredzero4• 4 years ago

In one of his most recent videos, Peter Zeihan cites some things, which actually make me question his objectivity in this matter.

    - He claims that graphite will be a problem. I'm not sure if this will
      be if we divert coal and petroleum away from energy to graphite, which
      would sequester that carbon.
    - He's not aware that the aluminum industry has made plans to become 
      carbon neutral. I'm not sure if they really mean it, but they've
      made plans.
    - He claims that at no point in history, has the world doubled the 
      availability of a resource by a factor of 2 in 10 years. This just
      strikes me as fishy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf85EuQKWeQ

nickspicer19935• 4 years ago

I have dug into this rabbit hole recently and haven't seen any studies indicating Copper is going to be a problem, do you have a source? Cheers

dgudkov2• 4 years ago

A full transition to electric vehicles is not viable with current technologies.

So maybe, just maybe, Toyota wasn't that wrong by not going full gung-ho about EVs.

cainxinth• 4 years ago

I had a friend ask me a few years back about investing heavily in some ETFs that were connected to lithium mining and other minerals used for tech products. I cautioned them against it. Not because I don't think the need for these materials will continue to grow, but because I worry that increased demand will spur new innovation in finding, extracting, and processing them -- which would drive down prices in the long run. I don't have a crystal ball, but that seems to be a common pattern in the history of our exploitation of this planet's resources.

bischofs• 4 years ago

This is such a dumb analysis - Lithium batteries are used in everything - tools, consumer electronics, medical devices, home and grid storage and all of the sectors that will be using it soon. Not to mention if you want to push larger transport sectors and grid de-carbonization you will need massive GwH batteries with 100kg+ of lithium. We clearly need more solutions, stop pushing lithium batteries like they can solve all the world's energy problems.

hutzlibu• 4 years ago

"We clearly need more solutions, stop pushing lithium batteries like they can solve all the world's energy problems."

That's right. We need to push natrium based batteries for stationary use cases, like grid storage and reserve the lithium based for mobile use.

kingastachura• 4 years ago

watching all the drama happening lately around climate change issues, this is very much interesting and needed read, thanks!

pmayrgundter• 4 years ago

Musk said in a Q&A recently that Tesla will need to start its own mining and refining ops to support battery production

https://youtu.be/KeEmVxMFM4Q?t=3063

dieselgate• 4 years ago

Good topic but the tldr wasn't super inspiring for me "Yes, the world has enough lithium for our electric vehicles, decades into the future": decades isn't really sufficient for this imo. It would ideally be.. multiple centuries at the very least? Then the author says something like "we have no idea how much lithium there is" so guess nobody knows this answer, but fair enough as it's quite early stage...

Zigurd• 4 years ago

Without knowing the scale of secondary uses of batteries built for cars, or the economics of recycling, I doubt the answer is knowable beyond that horizon.

wilg6• 4 years ago

Here's a video on the former Tesla CTO's battery recycling company: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLr0GStrnwQ

j0li0t• 4 years ago

Volume is not the only issue. How about the moral aspect of mining in underdeveloped countries with poor working conditions...

Julien_r2• 4 years ago

This is definitely an issue which is well underestimated!

Portugal (e.g in Covas de Barroso) [1] and Spain (e.g. in Cáceres) [2] are facing huge pressure to settle for lithium mines, without much consideration for the social and ecological impacts on those regions...

It is still considered as a green energy, simply because we decide to forget about part of the process. Just as we did for gas, and plastic.

Energy price should take in account all the impacts (recycling included), the avoid being considered as a magical solution, and rush blindly toward the next crisis..

[1] https://www.portugalresident.com/lithium-wars-step-up-in-cov...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/459191d9-774d-4a2b-8ec6-ba472017b...

sroussey2• 4 years ago

We won’t be using Lithium by 2050 anyhow. If not aluminum ion batteries, then some other substitute.

dgudkov2• 4 years ago

Without strong supporting facts for viability of that "some other substitute" it sounds like "Full self-driving is just around the corner".

sroussey2• 4 years ago

2050 is almost 3 decades away. There are at least two public companies that are in testing phase for such batteries today. Starting at coin sized (they last 2x longer). Then AA and then larger scale. I’d guess 5yr out which means 10.

fwungy• 4 years ago

1. Lithium isn't the only mineral to be concerned about.

2. "The technology will improve" is not always a reliable strategy. Fusion is perpetually almost here, for example.

3. Without a federal money printer propping up the EV market it would not exist.

4. Just because a lifestyle works great for you, e.g. walkable cities and ebikes, doesnt mean it will work for everyone.

5. How far into a dictatorial, command economy, are we capable of going into to effect a massive energy transition, i.e. how much do we force changes a substantial number of people have serious problems with?

yakak• 4 years ago

All of these concerns, even #1, have applied to communist car driving America and its 25% theft of everything..

I would tax the beejesus out of energy use and personal road use and invert most income tax to make something closer to a free market than the US is.

0xbadcafebee2• 4 years ago

I reject the premise of the question, because you don't need lithium for electric vehicles. We could get by with shitty low-range batteries the way other EVs have. We would just need to standardize battery-swapping at the equivalent of gas stations. Drive 100 miles, drive into a battery-swapping station, service technician swaps the battery, you're back on the road in less than 5 minutes. We did it 100 years ago, we can do it again. So lithium isn't a blocker.

I also think we shouldn't own as many personal vehicles as we do, and should start to move legislation toward more funding of better (and faster, and more efficient) public transit, and more taxing of private vehicles. We don't need to have so many private vehicles, we are just addicted to them.

frickenhamster2• 4 years ago

This will never work. Components in cars are engineered to be organized as efficiently as possible. The overhead from having replaceable batteries will kill the amount of storage you can have. There is no way you can have generic attendants swap out batteries in 5 minutes. Working with EVs is a dangerous job that you can't just pay an uneducated minimum wage worker to change. The batteries are extremely heavy and are placed in locations that you need a car lift to get to. Plus theres all sort of liability and safety issues from potentially messing up a battery swap or getting a bad battery and blowing up your car.

DLwdTxdU6smHQA3• 4 years ago

I dont know how scalable this is, but Nio (electric car maker from China) are building automatic battery swap stations. See e.g. here (video is in German): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv7OQofChbg

edit: I think it takes more than five minutes though, especially when you have to wait in line.

0xbadcafebee2• 4 years ago

Components in cars are engineered to be organized as efficiently as possible

Ever heard of an SUV? Cars are not designed to be efficient, they are designed to meet product goals. Sometimes those goals are efficiency, such as meeting an emissions or efficiency regulation. But most of the goals are "what do we think some schmuck will pay $30K for?"

If 100 years ago, replaceable batteries were not a barrier to storage space, they certainly shouldn't be now, unless we're just admitting that we suck so much at building cars now that we can't even make them like we did 100 years ago. Battery swapping services existed for 20 years. It only stopped because the market decided gas would rule instead.

1970-01-01• 4 years ago

Once again, Afghanistan has it. China is getting it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.htm...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-24/chinese-f...

olivermarks8• 4 years ago

We cannot afford to ransack places like Chile to extract lithium for 'electric vehicles', which plumb new depths of pollution and third world degredation. The extraction of rare earth minerals for our electronically surveilled and controlled future comes at a terrible cost, as Siddharth Kara's new book "Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives" outlines in excruciating detail.

https://read.macmillan.com/lp/cobalt-red/

No one wins in this race to the bottom. If you are contemplating a BEV I would urge you to read up on just how ecologically appalling the batteries are for our planet and people.

ok_dad2• 4 years ago

Oil ain't a picnic either, so what's the answer?

elefantastisch• 4 years ago

Grid-powered public transit replacing 80% of trips by personal vehicle.

gnopgnip• 4 years ago

Lithium isn't a rare earth mineral or metal, it is the 33rd most common element on earth.

There is a substantial cost to doing nothing and continuing the status quo

olivermarks8• 4 years ago

There is a very substantial cost to destroying the planet chasing after a toxic, highly inefficient and polluting alternative to ICE vehicles. Hybrid vehicles are clearly the answer. Tire pollution is a far more serious problem than tailpipe emissions.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electr...

This scene is absolute madness https://twitter.com/siddharthkara/status/1611042107871080449

FatActor2• 4 years ago

I agree with your sentiment and also understand that this won't stop the world's thirst for a commodity (see: dole bananas, hersey chocolate, all mined gemstones, and dinosaur juice). If we really are a global economy I would like to see proactive protections for these countries (like fair trade agreements) that guarantee environmental regulations are imposed and observed and that workers are fairly compensated and not exploited ... i actually think that might be possible if the the US and EU lead and lithium-block operations from more authoritarian companies with similar interests like china who have already taken over large parts of africa's mining operations through truly nefarious (IMHO) belt and road investment.

olivermarks8• 4 years ago

It's over. The Chinese control the world's rare earth minerals. Along with India they also produce the vast majority of global pollution, while the western world self destructs in an orgy of self flagellation over various junk science climate dramas. https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/94-o....

FatActor2• 4 years ago

This article is a great example of how to draw conclusions from changing data, and how to call out the sources of uncertainty at every turn. I think a few were missed based on the comments below but I don't think that was done out of nefarious agenda but rather an attempt to keep the essay short as the author seems to have done enough research that i trust they didn't overlook these second order implications.

cjensen• 4 years ago

Much of the issue here is from using, in my opinion, terms that are misleading.

The article defines resources as all known mineral deposits. It defines reserves as resources which are economically extractible.

Here's the issue: when you already have plenty of reserves, you don't go looking for more. None of the charts which detail existing resources and reserves tell you anything about the quantity of lithium which exists on the planet. These numbers are only really useful when mining companies ask themselves "should I prospect for more?"

If mining companies are actively prospecting and not finding enough to fill anticipated needs, then you have a problem. Not before.

airbreather• 4 years ago

It doesn't matter because there is only around a quarter of the copper needed in the world, so unless there's space mining the lithium wont be the problem any time soon.

markeibes• 4 years ago

If the vehicles are trains then yes.

daniel1969• 4 years ago

There might be enough lithium for EVs, but lithium is needed not only for EV batteries. Overall, there is no enough lithium to phase out fossil fuels. Not even for the first generation of technology devices. Here is the presentation given by prof. Simon Michaux where the problem is explained in more detail and supported with data:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc

Lithium is not the only problem, other minerals are too. And, just like the original article says - the pace of extraction.

tdiff• 4 years ago

Are not people who make examples of the Netherlands or Norway as bike coutries missing that it is possibly just prohibitively expensive to own a car there, not that most people actually prefer bikes?

timbit42• 4 years ago

If we have a looming lithium shortage, instead of pushing EVs, we should be pushing PHEVs which use 1/10th the batteries and require 1/10th the energy and time to charge. Over 90% of most driver's daily use is less than 1/10th the range (40 km) of a typical EV (400 km) so a PHEV with 1/10th the battery means they will rarely need gasoline. For longer trips, you can use gas so there is no range anxiety.

One EV reduces one driver's gasoline usage by 100%. With the same amount of batteries we could build 10 PHEVs and reduce 10 drivers' gasoline by 90%. This is a 9 times greater reduction in gasoline usage than building EVs.

If we're really serious about lowering CO2, we should be pushing PHEVs, not EVs that we don't have enough batteries for.

Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

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