AFAIK the mineral reserve bottlenecks are cobalt and manganese, not lithium!
Cobalt isn’t essential in the way lithium is. We already have working cobalt-free chemistries in EVs, e.g. LFP.
Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
111–120 of 413 posts
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck selling that idea (in America, at least).
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.
how exactly would this work if you have multiple small children, or are disabled, or a variety of other things.
Why is there this insistence that Americans are just 'big dumb'
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hah! I've been to Oulu. These people are hardy. Riding bikes in winter near the Arctic Circle is tough work. Yet the bike racks were full in January when I visited a few years ago.
It's not tougher than dressing up for going outside.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#114Can 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 lik…
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.
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).
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
To be sure many Americans will worry about the danger of being in the smallest vehicle on the road — having to contend with SUVs, full-size pickup trucks. But just as the Japanese found a foothold in the U.S. auto market in the 70's, if there were an electric car for under $10K I suspect a lot of people would find that their fears could be somewhat tempered.
> if there were an electric car for under $10K
We are very close to finding out, at least for the moment. In Oregon the combined federal & state tax incentives make a Chevy Bolt a $10.6K car.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#116This 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 shine…
Good luck selling that idea (in America, at least).
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.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
how exactly would this work if you have multiple small children, or are disabled, or a variety of other things. Why is there this insistence that Americans are just 'big dumb'
You're replying to the wrong person.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#118Can 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 lik…
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.
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.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 shou…
vast majority of their tickets (Sparpreis and Super Sparpreis) in the 9,90 / 14,90 to 49,90 If you are flexible and plan ahead. If I decide now to go visit my sister tomorrow (~4 hours by the fastest train route), want to get there not much slower than by car, and travel at a time that is convenient for me, then I'll end up paying a lot more if I go by train, even if I'm traveling alone.
Yes, that's necessary to provide incentives for people to spread the load over the whole day. Otherwise everyone would pile into the same trains during the middle of the day instead.
Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck selling that idea (in America, at least).
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.
Our cities are designed for cars. Hell, most of our society is designed around owning a car. It is horrendously impractical in a lot of places to go without a car.
Our public transit systems are largely garbage, if they exist at all. Bike lanes are extremely rare, and are really just used as free car parking.
Take my commute to work for instance. It's about 3 miles, but it would be impossible to bike, as there are huge and dangerous hills. Likewise, walking would be very difficult. It takes about 10 minutes to drive to work, and a bus would be over 40 minutes.
We have major infrastructural failures that make it very impractical to exist without a car in most cases.