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The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

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Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#71

Post by londons_explore »

Marsymars wrote: post #54
Iv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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.

I don't think the decreased maintenance costs will actually happen initially.

Big design changes like the shift to EV require lots of new parts to be designed, and every new part has a non-zero chance of a reliability issue. 5 years time, we'll be talking about the motor mount point which rusts through and causes a chunk of EV cars to fail.

A 2nd effect is as cars get more computerized, 3rd party repairs will get much harder, and manufacturers will drop support for first party repairs when it no longer makes financial sense, so a lot of otherwise good cars will get sent to the scrapheap because they couldn't get some firmware update etc. That will overall increase the cost of motoring.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#72

Post by davidhyde »

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.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#73

Post by dTal »

sq_ wrote: post #46
lettergram wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Is this really a good thing for the environment? Grid power is still mostly fossil. Even if we posit that fossil -> power station -> grid -> battery -> motors is, say, twice as efficient as fossil -> fueling station -> combustion engine, it's a lot more than twice as cheap. So wouldn't we expect the shift to EVs to cause energy consumption to rise, and hence also emissions?

I understand the argument that it's easier to upgrade centralized power generation to green technologies than the entire fleet of vehicles, but the timing is critical if that is to be a net win for emissions, a nuance which seems to be swept under the rug as everyone's keen to avoid fuel taxes by switching to EVs.

Of course, if everyone switches to EV electricity demand will spike and prices will rise, and governments will be eager to reclaim lost fuel tax revenue with other automobile focused taxes. It might not stay cheaper.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#74

Post by beaner »

Brometheus wrote: post #68
nardi wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 v…

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

Wrong chart, it should be split by manufacturer.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#76

Post by dTal »

taneq wrote: post #23
crb002 wrote: post #2

Industrial battery will eat it.

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.

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.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#77

Post by tonyedgecombe »

lettergram wrote: post #27
sjwright wrote: post #10

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…

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…

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.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#78

Post by tonyedgecombe »

dTal wrote: post #73
sq_ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is this really a good thing for the environment? Grid power is still mostly fossil. Even if we posit that fossil -> power station -> grid -> battery -> motors is, say, twice as efficient as fossil -> fueling station -> combustion engine, it's a lot more than twice as cheap. So wouldn't we expect the shift to EVs to cause energy consumption to rise, and hence also emissions? I understand the argument that it's easier…

Even with coal fired power stations it's still better. One of the reasons is people don't consider the vast amount of energy used to refine petrol.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#79

Post by amelius »

beaner wrote: post #74
Brometheus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wrong chart, it should be split by manufacturer.

And the areas should represent revenue, not number of users.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#80

Post by sp332 »

ThomPete wrote: post #69
Retric wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are well past that 1%. Global EV Sales In May 2019: Over 179,000 At 2.3% Market Share https://insideevs.com/news/357198/global-ev-sales-in-may-201... The current trend is under 4 years until EV’s are 10% of global car sales. It’s likely adoption will slow down at some point, but 50% of all new car sales being EV could happen within 10 years. Though it would take much longer for EV’s to represent 1/2 of all cars on…

Pretty sure that's relative to the sales not to how many cars are EV of the entire car fleet , also probably a bunch of hybrids in that too.

Yeah sjwright asked about sales and got an answer about sales.
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