Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles? • Hacker News Board

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#361

Post by bertil » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 9:34 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #235

bertil wrote: post #10

This 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…

People like cars and find them useful. Otherwise they wouldn’t spend inordinate amounts of money on them.

People find the car they are in great because they are isolated from the people outside. People outside typically aren’t fans of the noise, the pollution, the million and a half deaths per year, the entitlement, and having most of our shared habitat dedicated to parking.

It’s a classic case of not taking into account enormous externalities.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#362

Post by bertil » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

Gordonjcp wrote: post #188

bertil wrote: post #10

This 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…

> trains (and last-mile delivery on cargo bikes) are a lot more economical in both energy, accident risk and individual time This works if you live in a perfectly flat country with completely contiguous landmass and no islands.

I use Norwegian trains whenever I try to go to a different city.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#363

Post by bertil » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

scythe wrote: post #159

bertil wrote: post #92

Earlier 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.

Heat and rain are bigger barriers to bicycles than cold. You could make a case for ice, but you can address that at the infrastructure level. You can make a case for hills, but again, infrastructure (namely, minimizing grade and going around whenever possible). It's a lot easier to wear a coat than it is to wear an air conditioner; if Tw > 30, you are risking heat stroke by pedaling. California, except the far southe…

The biggest barrier to bikes is deadly cars.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#364

Post by rsj_hn » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #361

whiddershins wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like cars and find them useful. Otherwise they wouldn’t spend inordinate amounts of money on them.

People find the car they are in great because they are isolated from the people outside. People outside typically aren’t fans of the noise, the pollution, the million and a half deaths per year, the entitlement, and having most of our shared habitat dedicated to parking. It’s a classic case of not taking into account enormous externalities.

People also like when they can go to a coffee shop and the barista shows up, even when it's raining, and that the bags of coffee are delivered on time, and that their Amazon packages are delivered and that their local grocery is staffed by workers who may live far away and can commute to work and sell them tomatoes grown in South America delivered right to their local neighborhood, which were carried on trucks to the local port in Brazil before loaded onto ship, sailing to a nearby port, loaded onto a train, and then shipped by a truck to the grocery. They take it for granted that when their plumbing goes out, someone can quickly drive to their location and provide the necessary work to restore service. They take it all for granted that they are living in a modern industrial economy that is made possible by cars and trucks (and yes, also trains, ships, and planes).

It's a classic case of not taking into account enormous externalities.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#365

Post by CalRobert » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #258

CalRobert wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is profoundly distorted by single use zoning, parking minimums, density maximums, wide (and high speed) stroads, and other urban design choices that force long journeys. It's also not safe to be on an ebike surrounded by electric Hummers, F-350 super duties, and your normal "whole kindergarten class in the blind spot" Escalades. Having just spent a week in Utrecht it's very clear that "the market" can cert…

> Utrecht is not representative of common reality. It is also not much representative of "market forces", cars have to respect very strict "Urban Access Regulations" (similarly across Europe, but in Holland in particular) Not that it is bad in general, but Utrecht is not a good example of what will happen around the World and actually make a difference. China + India will soon be inhabited by 3 billion people combine…

Small note - Utrecht is not in Holland.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#366

Post by option » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #355

option wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, cars plus planes are much more convenient for travel than bikes and trains. That is definitely not to say that there is no place for bikes and trains. US certainly needs more of both. But please stop pretending that a family of 4 can go anywhere on bikes in the weather. Or even going to the beach with all gear in perfect weather. Just not going to happen.

I can assure that anyone in a traffic jam disagrees with you–violently so. More roads aren’t a solution.

I lived in European capital and I live in Bay Area, California now.

I would take sitting in traffic jam in my car in comfort with audiobook and AC anytime over being in freaking people jam in subway.

Especially during flu and covid waves.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#367

Post by wilg » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

olivermarks wrote: post #331

wilg wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claim is that tire pollution is a more serious problem than exhaust. These articles do not support this claim. They state that more particles come off tires than exhaust. That's not the same thing. Does tire pollution contribute to global warming as much as fossil fuel exhaust? I haven't seen anything to indicate that. I'd like to see a number on the difference in particulate production from tires on EVs – I sus…

Read up on it. There is so much mumbo jumbo about 'global warming' that makes little sense. Tire pollution is a very serious tangible problem.

So your theory is global warming is not a serious tangible problem but tire particulates are?

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#368

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 10:13 PM UTC

frickenhamster wrote: post #283

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #246

I reject the premise of the question, because you don't need lithium for electric vehicles. We could get by with shitty low-range batteries the way other EVs have. We would just need to standardize battery-swapping at the equivalent of gas stations. Drive 100 miles, drive into a battery-swapping station, service technician swaps the battery, you're back on the road in less than 5 minutes. We did it 100 years ago, we…

This will never work. Components in cars are engineered to be organized as efficiently as possible. The overhead from having replaceable batteries will kill the amount of storage you can have. There is no way you can have generic attendants swap out batteries in 5 minutes. Working with EVs is a dangerous job that you can't just pay an uneducated minimum wage worker to change. The batteries are extremely heavy and are…

> Components in cars are engineered to be organized as efficiently as possible

Ever heard of an SUV? Cars are not designed to be efficient, they are designed to meet product goals. Sometimes those goals are efficiency, such as meeting an emissions or efficiency regulation. But most of the goals are "what do we think some schmuck will pay $30K for?"

If 100 years ago, replaceable batteries were not a barrier to storage space, they certainly shouldn't be now, unless we're just admitting that we suck so much at building cars now that we can't even make them like we did 100 years ago. Battery swapping services existed for 20 years. It only stopped because the market decided gas would rule instead.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#369

Post by Gordonjcp » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 10:16 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #362

Gordonjcp wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trains (and last-mile delivery on cargo bikes) are a lot more economical in both energy, accident risk and individual time This works if you live in a perfectly flat country with completely contiguous landmass and no islands.

I use Norwegian trains whenever I try to go to a different city.

Great if all you ever need to do is go to cities.

Re: Does the world have enough lithium to move to electric vehicles?

#370

Post by frobozz » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 10:27 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #326

sangnoir wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The odds of the US or Britain improving their rail systems in order for them to be more efficient/usable are vanishingly slim, to the point that we should likely bake their crappy nature into our assumptions of requirements. It's a matter of time: the political polar-opposite states of Texas and California are both working on high-speed rail projects, though they are rather unambitious in scope. I'm curious if the…

> I'm curious if the dysfunction of British Rail is also related to the patchwork privatization like it is in the US. Is that still a thing? last I read, parts of the network - and/or trains - were owned or operated by a Virgin subsidiary. Patchwork privatization hasn't helped matters and allows some companies to extract a bit of monopoly profit from a subsidised industry (the infrastructure remains nationalised, fra…

> the infrastructure remains nationalised,

Slight correction. Renationalised, rather than remains nationalised.

The infrastructure was renationalised, because Railtrack preferred handing out dividends over maintaining tracks, eventually leading to a derailment that killed 4 people and injured 70, and led to trains being restricted to 20MPH across the country for months afterwards, because they had no idea how fucked any of the rest of the rails were.