Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 238 posts

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

#81

Post by varjag »

threeseed wrote: post #15
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…

> 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…

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.

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

#82

Post by foxylad »

londons_explore wrote: post #71
Marsymars wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 muc…

Disagree with maintenance: electric motors are enormously simpler than ICE, and really well understood. Removing high temperatures, fuel, lubrication and exhaust from the system is a huge advantage.

Agree on digital scrapheap, although this applies to a lesser extent to ICE vehicle too. We should be demanding open sourcing of car code after warranty expires.

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

#83

Post by sjwright »

clouddrover wrote: post #37
sjwright wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Volkswagen will likely soon overtake Hyundai with their MEB platform cars. The initial MEB models are: - Volkswagen ID.3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8cHHNPRg-c - SEAT el-Born: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZI7WFtwc8g - Skoda Vision iV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f1g9xl6W_E - Audi Q4 e-tron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiwevzHsCbU Hyundai may also have some battery problems to deal with at the momen…

Volkswagen might do well in electrics, but that remains to be seen. Personally it'll take a while for the dieselgate stench to leave that company, at least for me. (I don't care so much about the actual emissions, for me it showed the contempt they have for their customers.)

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

#84

Post by 0x964 »

londons_explore wrote: post #71
Marsymars wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 muc…

Your second point equally applies to ICE cars and EVs.

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

#85

Post by IshKebab »

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.

Depends what you care about. If you're writing apps it shouldn't.

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

#86

Post by ecpottinger »

dTal wrote: post #76
taneq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A factory may put in batteries to prevent the cost of demand/surge power.

An apartment depending of where it is may put in batteries if it is in a location where power sagging/failures happen often.

Remember the entire world is not North America or Europe.

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

#87

Post by sokoloff »

londons_explore wrote: post #71
Marsymars wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 muc…

I realize it's only one anecdotal datapoint, but my 4.5 year old electric LEAF has literally never the dealership or any other mechanic since delivery and all I've had to do is charge it, add washer fluid, plug a tire leak, and change the wiper blades once.

I think that a fleet of 10 electric cars owned over 10 years is likely to cost less than half in maintenance costs than a comparable fleet of 10 ICE cars over 10 years.

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

#88

Post by sokoloff »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #16
threeseed wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Dealers make most of their profits in the service bays, not on the sales floor. It's much better for them to make a few hundred dollars profit selling a car that will (statistically) regularly return to the service bays than to make a thousand or more on a car that will not darken their service bays nearly as often.

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

#89

Post by sjwright »

muzika wrote: post #62
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…

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

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.

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

#90

Post by sjwright »

sp332 wrote: post #80
ThomPete wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And I'm genuinely impressed that it's that high. I expected the Toyota Camrys and low cost Indian scooters to dwarf EV sales more than that—but I had forgotten about the Chinese manufacturers!
Post reply on HN