21–30 of 261 posts
The story with cobalt is the same as with REEs and Lithium - they are everywhere, but few big companies dare to mine them expecting the business to go bust the moment China or Congo resort to further dumping
For Nickel, global supply is being dominated by a price cartel, doing the same thing.
This is supposing that we want big cars with big batteries, In the cities the mobility is moving toward small personal vehicles, and if you have bigger commuter needs, I hope that in the future the highways can be electrified and the cars would only need the battery to get from the highway to your home. There are not enough minerals to make batteries to replace all the current cars with their current autonomy, but a…
Obligatory remark: Let's also put the cars on metal rails instead of on asphalt to reduce rolling friction. And maybe instead of small cars, we could use large wagons or chains of those that could transport a lot of people at the same time.
As one of my favorite comedians once put it: „Analysts are people who tell you what the world will look like in 15 years if nothing changes. Now do you REALLY want to know how long your toenails get if you don‘t cut them?!“ Movement here will come from a number of factors: - Demand increases, which will: - open up more mines (nicely summarized in the long commentary in this thread) - incentivize better extraction tec…
I noticed at the bottom of the page this disclosure:
"Competing Financial Interests
G.Y. is a co-founder, chief technology officer, a board member and a shareholder of Sila Nanotechnologies, the company commercializing silicon-based anode materials mentioned in this Comment article."
Referring to co-author Gleb Yushin, "a professor of materials science at the School of Materials Science & Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA."
The other three authors are:
Kostiantyn Turcheniuk, "a research scientist at the School of Materials Science & Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA."
Dmitry Bondarev, "an undergraduate student at the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA."
Vinod Singhal, "a professor of business at the Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA."
As one of my favorite comedians once put it: „Analysts are people who tell you what the world will look like in 15 years if nothing changes. Now do you REALLY want to know how long your toenails get if you don‘t cut them?!“ Movement here will come from a number of factors: - Demand increases, which will: - open up more mines (nicely summarized in the long commentary in this thread) - incentivize better extraction tec…
As one of my favorite comedians once put it: „Analysts are people who tell you what the world will look like in 15 years if nothing changes. Now do you REALLY want to know how long your toenails get if you don‘t cut them?!“ Movement here will come from a number of factors: - Demand increases, which will: - open up more mines (nicely summarized in the long commentary in this thread) - incentivize better extraction tec…
I don't like over confidence in any resource access, that's probably what oil digger thought 100 years ago.
This is supposing that we want big cars with big batteries, In the cities the mobility is moving toward small personal vehicles, and if you have bigger commuter needs, I hope that in the future the highways can be electrified and the cars would only need the battery to get from the highway to your home. There are not enough minerals to make batteries to replace all the current cars with their current autonomy, but a…
> I hope that in the future the highways can be electrified Obligatory remark: Let's also put the cars on metal rails instead of on asphalt to reduce rolling friction. And maybe instead of small cars, we could use large wagons or chains of those that could transport a lot of people at the same time.
> We use less than 3% cobalt in our batteries & will use none in next gen - Elon Musk https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1006968985760366592
TL;DR: Battery demand grows. Best current tech uses nickel and cobalt. Their prices grow and at the current growth trends demand outstrips supply within 20 years. We should fund research (in the author's area) to find better alternatives (e.g., using iron and silicon). This is valid but not surprising and hardly catastrophic. This is not "10 years left to find an alternative". But what turned me off is scaremongering…