The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by clouddrover » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #150

bluGill wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The ICE car after 10 years will have seen less maintenance costs after 10 years. The electric car will have had the battery replaced, which will eat up all the cost of oil changes. Of course batteries are coming down in price. Time will tell how this plays out.

EV batteries should last much longer than 10 years. Ideally, they should last the lifetime of the vehicle. Most manufacturers, including Tesla, provide an 8 year warranty on battery and drivetrain.

Tesla's warranty is 8 years at 70% original capacity for the Model 3. For the X and S they don't warrant the capacity at all:

https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty

You'll be getting less range over time as the battery degrades. Eventually you'll have to replace the battery to get the range back.

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

#192

Post by duckymcduckface » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

intrasight wrote: post #158

duckymcduckface wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, there is no spot market for lithium. Lithium is sold on a contract by contract basis and there isn't an equivalent of the London Metal Exchange price.

Any idea why that is?

Predominantly market size, it was considered a speciality metal and we didn't need nearly as much of it in the past. More on the lines of going to a specialty store than Walmart so you'd either go to a broker to get what you need or buy it directly from a mine if you needed a very large supply.

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

#193

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

clouddrover wrote: post #40

vvanders wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla still doesn't have a rival in charging network or software. Having arrived at more than a few broken chargers the former is going to give them a lead for a good while.

> Tesla still doesn't have a rival in charging network Depends where you are I suppose. In addition to Tesla's network, Europe has: - Ionity: https://ionity.eu/ - FastNed: https://fastnedcharging.com/en/ - Allego: https://www.allego.eu/ - GIREVE: https://www.gireve.com/en/ And more. All standardized on CCS type 2 plugs which is another plus.

It's the US where there currently isn't a strong "second place" to Tesla yet. There are a lot of competitors depending on region, but that's also the problem is that there are so many competitors that quality is a very broad spectrum and margins are low. VW's (US EPA mandated) Electrify America (and its alliance in turn with players like ChargePoint) is probably the one to watch for up-and-coming national second place competitor to Tesla's charging network, but they are years behind in build out right now.

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

#194

Post by LarryDarrell » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

intrasight wrote: post #162

ianai wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... I drive a 15 year old Volvo wagon that almost never needs service :) Of course I exaggerate - I probably average $150/month in maintenance. Sorry, but the chances of Tesla doing the same over 15 years is zero.

Same! Mine's a 30 year old Volvo wagon and a 32 year old sedan. Besides oil changes, I've spent about $2000 in the last 5 years of ownership. I was only left stranded once, but that was because the NAPA in the middle of Nebraska didn't have the part I needed to get back on the road. I would doubt that the same NAPA has many Tesla parts in stock as well.

If Tesla is to ever have the same reputation, it will be because they made issues trivial to diagnose, dead simple to replace and allowed other manufactures to make replacement parts.

However, this whole argument is moot, because the era of the 15-30 year daily driver is over anyway. When my ignition computer failed, it was $35 to swap one out from a junkyard. You just have to unplug the old one, and plug in the new one and off you go. What's the procedure for replacing a computer on a 2018 Tesla in the year 2038?

Furthermore, any new car has little maintenance to really worry about within the first 100k miles. If you are upper middle class in a bougie area, you're probably buying a new car before maintenance is really an issue anyway. (cue everyone chiming in that their Subaru's turbo blew up 100 miles outside of warranty)

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

#195

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #142

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…

Re " In my opinion Tesla needs to prepare to be in the budget space." There are entire large traditional car companies that build no, or very few, budget cars. To make electric cars cheaply, it will take several changes, some of which look promising, but should not be underestimated for time and difficulty: It will take widespread adoption of level 4 autonomy to make crashes rare Scaled-down lightweight EVs will have…

Autonomy is a red herring to cheap.

Other form factors are nice, but also indirectly related.

On the other hand it may only take one tiny disruption in ICE engine supply chains, or one large production ramp up to an order of scale efficiency boost to drop EVs below ICE vehicle costs on a like-model for like-model basis. With all of the major German automakers now on an "electrify everything by 2023" plan, one or both of those disruptions may exactly happen within the next five years.

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

#196

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

AgloeDreams wrote: post #100

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…

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…

Toyota is also probably stuck in a weird version of the sunk costs fallacy at this point, having spent R&D money continuously on hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles since the 1990s. Luckily for them, a good hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is just a good EV with a really weird "refillable battery", so their sunk costs aren't likely to sink the company because the rest of the "drive train" is the roughly the same for HFC and battery EV.

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

#197

Post by AgloeDreams » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #196

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…

Toyota is also probably stuck in a weird version of the sunk costs fallacy at this point, having spent R&D money continuously on hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles since the 1990s. Luckily for them, a good hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is just a good EV with a really weird "refillable battery", so their sunk costs aren't likely to sink the company because the rest of the "drive train" is the roughly the…

Exactly, they were originally acting extremely forward thinking. The one thing they simply did not see coming is the mid-2000's mobile tech revolution. The cost of lithium batteries fell like a rock to where they are today (due to smartphones, etc) and that was simply unforeseeable 20 years ago. What Toyota needs now is a single skateboard platform for both BEV and FCEV and then to simply build the FC models with a dummy pack structure and keep the entire rest of the design the same.

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

#198

Post by adrianmonk » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

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…

The one thing I actually truly care about is the financial risk of large repairs. (For example, I had an issue which unexpectedly forced me to spend $3-4K on camshaft-related major engine work.)

Maintenance itself (oil changes, minor repairs) is something I'd like to eliminate, but that's a lower priority. Electric cars score better here, but it's not my top concern.

The real, key issue (to me) is whether the drivetrain is expensive. If it's expensive to build, and if it can fail in a way that something needs to be replaced, then it's going to be expensive to repair if/when needed.

And both gas cars and electric cars have expensive drivetrains, just for different reasons. On a gas car, major engine and transmission work is expensive. On an electric car, battery pack replacement is expensive.

Maybe one is less expensive than the other, so there could still be a net win here, but I definitely don't think electric cars have completely escaped the problem.

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

#199

Post by michaelt » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

clouddrover wrote: post #102

michaelt wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A solar roof providing 3.8 mi of battery-only range per day isn’t going to replace the need for a charging network. A 1.9 mile commute is what, 4 minutes drive?

I didn't say it would replace the need for a changing network. I do say that in Summer you could get an average of 50 kilometres per day from solar in the Lightyear One (if you live somewhere sunny). That would cover the daily commute of many people. You could go months without plugging in.

The 3.8 mile range figure is from the Experimental Toyota Prius article you linked.

I’ve also used my home rooftop solar PV to charge a Hyundai Kona. Unless this “lightyear one” has solar panels the size of six parking spaces, I suspect the reason they claim so much more than Toyota is because it’s BS.

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

#200

Post by Reason077 » Mon, Jul 29, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

clouddrover wrote: post #191

Reason077 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EV batteries should last much longer than 10 years. Ideally, they should last the lifetime of the vehicle. Most manufacturers, including Tesla, provide an 8 year warranty on battery and drivetrain.

Tesla's warranty is 8 years at 70% original capacity for the Model 3. For the X and S they don't warrant the capacity at all: https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty You'll be getting less range over time as the battery degrades. Eventually you'll have to replace the battery to get the range back.

They don't explicitly state a warranted capacity for the Model S/X, but I've never heard of an S/X battery with more than ~20% degradation that wasn't considered faulty by Tesla. Whatever Tesla's reason is for not stating a specific capacity, it's not to screw over S/X owners, and I'm sure that 30% capacity loss within 8 years would be considered a fault.

We don't yet know how they stand up over >8 years of service, of course, but there are many examples of very high milage Tesla vehicles (> 200,000 miles) that are still on their original battery and show only modest degradation.