3 ms·

What are the true problems? I find Jacques' concerns to be well thought out, showing that he has actually dug into the numbers. However, I'm interested to know

by sounds 11y ago

What are the true problems? I find Jacques' concerns to be well thought out, showing that he has actually dug into the numbers. However, I'm interested to know what you see are even more significant problems.

VLM 11y ago
Its sort of an amateurs discuss tactics and generals discuss logistics kind of problem. Oddly enough for HN, its a scalability problem (LOL). If you turned the entire known planetary stock of economically useful lithium ore into present gen batteries with 100% efficiency (LOL) and eliminated all competing uses (LOL), depending who's goofy numbers you use, you could give every human on the planet roughly one electric car. Once. There on its relying on recycling, or the market absorbing dramatically more expensive sources of lithium, or income inequality making a car lifestyle unavailable to most people, etc. Its a kin to the argument of take the amount of copper in the infrastructure of the USA and divide it by the number of people in the USA and multiply that by the population of the undeveloped world, and you end up with more than the worlds known copper reserves. Africa, for example, will never be electrified at least as we in the west understand electrification. Perhaps new technologies or new ways of looking at things... but just picking up the plans for the TVA and dropping them in the 3rd world is literally not physically possible with existing known metal reserves. Universal EVs are no problem for every status signalling coastal yuppie, theres just not that many of them. If the developed world retains hegemony we MIGHT be able to switch as a culture completely to EVs. But "the world" is not switching to EVs unless the global population shrinks to fit the global resource limits or ... ? Note that my numbers assume 100% of the world supply is mined AND 100% efficiency (LOL) and there are no limits. I'm not claiming that 1% of that is realistic, but I am claiming its the very hard upper bound is too low even in some kind of star trek post singularity magical handwave world. Maybe you could fuse hydrogen atoms into lithium in a fusion reactor for a hundred years to make the worlds most expensive battery... I'm not even sure we can pull it off with low range lead acid batteries in low range cars. When discussing infrastructure type stuff, there are only so many pounds of "stuff" currently economically available given current refining technology per human being. There IS enough iron to give us all cars (maybe not crude oil, but at least iron won't be the limiting factor) but there is literally not enough economically lithium recoverable on this planet, at the current technology level.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Sodium-ion appears to be practical enough (just not as attractive as lithium ion, so less developed). Sodium ion beats lead acid for specific energy and sodium is rather more abundant than lithium. Also, 1 car per person is probably more than is necessary.
- dv_dt 11y ago
  EVs may end up coinciding with the rise of automated cars, which may give rise to a large portion of people accessing vehicles on-demand (and not owning them). It that bcomes true, it's very possible that the world very much won't need even one EV per person... How much is "economically useful or available" lithium is interesting as what makes sense to access now with current technologies changes as demand increases. More expensive techniques get pioneered and then the access cost drops for the technique as it gets optimized - much like the recent fracking boom.
- jhayward 11y ago
  This is not really a practical objection for two reasons: demand increases mineral reserves, and we're unlikely to ever have 1 car per person globally. Right now there is very little demand for lithium compared to the economically recoverable reserves. But the way mineral discovery works, as demand increases more money and effort is invested in finding new resources. There is absolutely no danger that ever-expanding lithium reserves will ever be exhausted by any reasonable vehicle production numbers. It's not even a given that per-pound prices would have to increase, as shown by the success of enhanced oil recovery having a break-even in the $30/bbl range now. Lithium is also just about the least expensive part of battery production. The cost of lithium in the market could increase by an order of magnitude and only affect battery cost by perhaps 10-20%. It's not reasonable to project 1 vehicle per person globally for many reasons. Economics, geography, the built infrastructure, and demographics affect vehicle ownership. The techno-society changes such a massive increase in vehicles would bring are enormous and unlikely to evolve soon. Transport paradigms that work in one area, say the US, aren't likely to work in all others. Using US vehicle numbers as a world-wide projection just isn't reasonable. A more reasonable thought exercise would be to replace all the vehicles in existence with electrics. At about 1 billion vehicles on the road today, there's plenty of lithium to do so, even at current known reserves.

by sounds 11y ago

VLM 11y ago

Its sort of an amateurs discuss tactics and generals discuss logistics kind of problem. Oddly enough for HN, its a scalability problem (LOL). If you turned the entire known planetary stock of economically useful lithium ore into present gen batteries with 100% efficiency (LOL) and eliminated all competing uses (LOL), depending who's goofy numbers you use, you could give every human on the planet roughly one electric car. Once. There on its relying on recycling, or the market absorbing dramatically more expensive sources of lithium, or income inequality making a car lifestyle unavailable to most people, etc. Its a kin to the argument of take the amount of copper in the infrastructure of the USA and divide it by the number of people in the USA and multiply that by the population of the undeveloped world, and you end up with more than the worlds known copper reserves. Africa, for example, will never be electrified at least as we in the west understand electrification. Perhaps new technologies or new ways of looking at things... but just picking up the plans for the TVA and dropping them in the 3rd world is literally not physically possible with existing known metal reserves. Universal EVs are no problem for every status signalling coastal yuppie, theres just not that many of them. If the developed world retains hegemony we MIGHT be able to switch as a culture completely to EVs. But "the world" is not switching to EVs unless the global population shrinks to fit the global resource limits or ... ? Note that my numbers assume 100% of the world supply is mined AND 100% efficiency (LOL) and there are no limits. I'm not claiming that 1% of that is realistic, but I am claiming its the very hard upper bound is too low even in some kind of star trek post singularity magical handwave world. Maybe you could fuse hydrogen atoms into lithium in a fusion reactor for a hundred years to make the worlds most expensive battery... I'm not even sure we can pull it off with low range lead acid batteries in low range cars. When discussing infrastructure type stuff, there are only so many pounds of "stuff" currently economically available given current refining technology per human being. There IS enough iron to give us all cars (maybe not crude oil, but at least iron won't be the limiting factor) but there is literally not enough economically lithium recoverable on this planet, at the current technology level.

maxerickson 11y ago
Sodium-ion appears to be practical enough (just not as attractive as lithium ion, so less developed). Sodium ion beats lead acid for specific energy and sodium is rather more abundant than lithium. Also, 1 car per person is probably more than is necessary.
dv_dt 11y ago
EVs may end up coinciding with the rise of automated cars, which may give rise to a large portion of people accessing vehicles on-demand (and not owning them). It that bcomes true, it's very possible that the world very much won't need even one EV per person... How much is "economically useful or available" lithium is interesting as what makes sense to access now with current technologies changes as demand increases. More expensive techniques get pioneered and then the access cost drops for the technique as it gets optimized - much like the recent fracking boom.
jhayward 11y ago
This is not really a practical objection for two reasons: demand increases mineral reserves, and we're unlikely to ever have 1 car per person globally. Right now there is very little demand for lithium compared to the economically recoverable reserves. But the way mineral discovery works, as demand increases more money and effort is invested in finding new resources. There is absolutely no danger that ever-expanding lithium reserves will ever be exhausted by any reasonable vehicle production numbers. It's not even a given that per-pound prices would have to increase, as shown by the success of enhanced oil recovery having a break-even in the $30/bbl range now. Lithium is also just about the least expensive part of battery production. The cost of lithium in the market could increase by an order of magnitude and only affect battery cost by perhaps 10-20%. It's not reasonable to project 1 vehicle per person globally for many reasons. Economics, geography, the built infrastructure, and demographics affect vehicle ownership. The techno-society changes such a massive increase in vehicles would bring are enormous and unlikely to evolve soon. Transport paradigms that work in one area, say the US, aren't likely to work in all others. Using US vehicle numbers as a world-wide projection just isn't reasonable. A more reasonable thought exercise would be to replace all the vehicles in existence with electrics. At about 1 billion vehicles on the road today, there's plenty of lithium to do so, even at current known reserves.