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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

#131

Post by Recurecur »

FrojoS wrote: post #127
Recurecur wrote: post #124

Well, this topic went south really fast! I'm surprised the new Goodenough battery design hasn't come up! Getting back to an actual discussion of lithium , it'll be very interesting to see if the Goodenough solid electrolyte batter works well enough with sodium. If so, a lot of expensive lithium mines will be worth a lot less over time! The Goodenough battery (he invented LiON batteries for those who don't know) looks…

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

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

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

Count me in!

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

#132

Post by clouddrover »

ianai wrote: post #115
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…

People HATE the maintenance requirements of cars. If Tesla can establish their cars as almost never needing service with a usable life of something closer to 1 million miles and decades of use then suddenly paying a premium for their models can be spread over much greater periods of time. Personally, I wish they would decouple the platform from the comfort center. Have chassis form factors for various purposes (singl…

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

Teslas have quite poor reliability so far:

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

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

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

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

#133

Post by mabbo »

This seems like a bit of hype over very little.

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

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

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

#134

Post by clouddrover »

Recurecur wrote: post #124

Well, this topic went south really fast! I'm surprised the new Goodenough battery design hasn't come up! Getting back to an actual discussion of lithium , it'll be very interesting to see if the Goodenough solid electrolyte batter works well enough with sodium. If so, a lot of expensive lithium mines will be worth a lot less over time! The Goodenough battery (he invented LiON batteries for those who don't know) looks…

> Apparently 89 companies are evaluating the patents for production

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

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

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

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

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

#135

Post by AgloeDreams »

want2know wrote: post #114
AgloeDreams wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is hilariously misguided with little real truth to it. Are electric Cars heavier? Yes...but not really by much. Sure a Model S is heavy, but it is a full size car designed to compare with other 4000-pound range cars and a side effect of the platform's age meanwhile a Model 3 is less than 10% heavier than a BMW 3 series. The traction idea is just absurd. The real reason why Norway wants to raise the road tax is b…

Well maybe this is different in the US but in Europe electric cars are easily 20% heavier than similar models. The traction idea is not absurd. Tesla owners claim the tires last around 25000 kilometers instead of 60000 when the drive 'insane' all the time. Takeshi Uchiyamanda was always talking about the environment when he talked about hydrogen. And even now he sees that battey cars are taking off he still stand by…

The first two points don't really apply to future electric cars however.

Euro Electric car models (like the e-golf or such) are generally adapted gasoline models that require additional hardware to make the design work, this is obviously inefficient. To make it clear, the current non-tesla/Jag/Audi EVs are almost all examples of designs that will not be seen in the future so I don't think they are fair to compare. The VW ID3 would probably be the best example of a future euro electric car.

The traction idea is absurd for a few reasons: 1: fast cars exist currently. 2: There is no proof to the idea that accelerating hard has any effect at all on roads. 3: Tesla's Performance is incredible, sure...but that's a $100K car, it is not what will be sold mass market or bought mass market. It's priced near that of a Porsche 911 turbo, which accelerates somewhat near to the level of the Model S and has never been this kind of issue.

As for hydrogen, look at this Toyota-press chart: https://insideevs.com/news/353600/toyota-six-global-bevs/

1: they are not all in on FCEV 2: Their own chart shows them believing that BEVs will eventually outsell Fuel Cell (but of course not before FC takes off..which it hasn't. )

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

#136

Post by neltnerb »

ianai wrote: post #111
rudolph9 wrote: post #108

It seems like people often forget how applicable EVs are to in city heavy commercial vehicles such as garbage truck, buses, service vehicles The high torque nature and predicable nature (at least in the case of garbage trucks and buses) make them ideal candidates for EV. Arguably much more viable use case (at least initially) than household vehicles.

EVs are a clear winner for jobs like that. Has the prediction of EVs being low on maintenance bore out? If so, its further incentive for commercial and public use. Municipalities benefit greatly from predictable, constant expenses. I know Leafs have had their service lives (at least for their batteries) revised up recently. Solid state is where it’s at.

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

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

#137

Post by eigenvalue »

mabbo wrote: post #133

This seems like a bit of hype over very little. Look at the graph in the article. Lithium cost $5000/ton 4 years ago. Now it costs more than $11,000/ton. The only difference is the period in between where the price of lithium was almost $21,000/ton. Presumably the mines operation 4 years ago were profitable. Now there's all these additional mines, and demand still has the price doubled in 4 years. And yet somehow the…

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

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

#138

Post by FrojoS »

want2know wrote: post #96

There are other problems arising for electric cars: road tax. Electric cars are way havier than most cars and have so much traction that road maintenance will be much more expensive when everybody has an electric car. This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles. I also think this is why brands like Toyota are still thinking about hydrogen cars. T…

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

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

#139

Post by glogla »

neltnerb wrote: post #136
ianai wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs are a clear winner for jobs like that. Has the prediction of EVs being low on maintenance bore out? If so, its further incentive for commercial and public use. Municipalities benefit greatly from predictable, constant expenses. I know Leafs have had their service lives (at least for their batteries) revised up recently. Solid state is where it’s at.

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

Depends on the location. In cities that have trams, metro and electric trains, the infrastructure shouldn't be that far out.

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

#140

Post by pi-rat »

rudolph9 wrote: post #108

It seems like people often forget how applicable EVs are to in city heavy commercial vehicles such as garbage truck, buses, service vehicles The high torque nature and predicable nature (at least in the case of garbage trucks and buses) make them ideal candidates for EV. Arguably much more viable use case (at least initially) than household vehicles.

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

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

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

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