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Tesla Shakes Up Market for Lithium, Other Metals
- epicmellon 11y agoMusk further said, "This is totally not related to why we want to mine asteroids."
- adwn 11y agoSpaceX isn't planning to mine asteroids, that's Planetary Resources. http://planetaryresources.com/ http://planetaryresources.com/
- hga 11y agoSomeone needs to get their space craft there....
- epicmellon 11y agoYou're right. I should clarify that by "we" I mean "the people doing stuff".
- jcbeard 11y agoBut why not...it could be.
- JshWright 11y agoIt could be a lot of things... there is no compelling motivation for SpaceX to get involved in asteroid mining (aside from providing rides).
- ck2 11y agoThere is no shortage of lithium, even the USA has lots of it (owned by Canadian companies). It's just they don't want to mine it until the price is much higher. Kind of like oil vs gas prices. But I am curious to see what the next level beyond lithium is for compact power storage. Lithium can't be the end of the line.
- no1youknowz 11y agoWhere are we with the next-gen battery tech? It's like every 5 years we see some research lab announce a breakthrough but as if yet no real progress. You would have thought it would be a priority for Musk to research next-gen batteries in a really serious way.
- NickM 11y agoLithium-ion cells have been slowly, steadily improving by a few percent a year for a long time now. A few percent is not a lot, but if these incremental improvements keep happening then that adds up to some pretty good progress. Cost is also decreasing quite rapidly as economies of scale continue to ramp up. It's not as flashy as some magical new tech that comes along and doubles battery capacities overnight, but on the flip side li-ion is already good enough for most applications. We'll need some pretty big improvements before we can have electric passenger jets, but other than that we're already in pretty good shape.
- goda90 11y agoHeck, I'd say I see an article about new battery developments multiple times a year. I wonder if the delay has as much or more to do with economics than actual research and development. It might not be in the best interest of a lot of players, whether that's battery manufacturers, or device manufacturers, to produce something that has improved longevity if that means fewer sales due to batteries wearing out.
- LoSboccacc 11y agoYeah last time they completely resolved memory problems and made batteries which basically lasted forewer. http://m.learningenglish.voanews.com/a/nanowires-battery/3313100.html http://m.learningenglish.voanews.com/a/nanowires-battery/331... I wish I could live in scientist land XD
- extrapickles 11y agoIts economics in the manor that its non-trivial and time consuming to produce a physical good. A existing factory can take 6+ months to retool, especially if you don't want to interrupt its existing output much. Also a bunch of the developments don't pan out for various reasons, like not being able to get the yield high enough to be worth while, requires large amounts of unobtainium, have very restrictive operating requirements not mentioned in press release (such as a 140F auto-ignition temperature), etc.
- duaneb 11y agoHow viable is lithium recycling?
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoThis article says a lot about it: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714000037 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714... tl;dr: its hard because lithium cells are complex materials mixed at a very fine scale (coatings and doping). It has to be chemically separated; smelting won't do it.
- mizzao 11y agoThere are so many discarded batteries from old electronic devices. Even chemical separation must be more effective than digging it out of the earth, right?
- mjevans 11y agoYou'd probably assume liability for all of the other stuff that's around that thin lithium lining. It must be cost, because I can't think of any other reason that we don't have micro-machine dis-assemblers for slowly picking apart our garbage in to neatly binned resources.
- oflannabhra 11y agoThe headline is a misquote. The actual quote, from Musk in the article, is "In order to produce half a million cars a year…we would basically need to absorb the entire world’s lithium-ion production." That is very different that the entire world's lithium production.
- mtgx 11y agoWhich is just another variation of something he's said since he announced the Gigafactory - "We'll produce more than the entire world's capacity of batteries."
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tkahnoski 11y agoIt's fascinating to read some of the other related articles on the Internet. There's a lot investment analysis going into whether the EV market will cause a "Peak Lithium" like "Peak Oil". It could happen, however given how Tesla has already made moves to create a giga-factory to avoid "Peak Battery" pricing they likely already have a supply solution in mind.
- creshal 11y ago> will cause a "Peak Lithium" like "Peak Oil". So a pointless hype bubble? As long as there's demand and money to back up that demand, we'll find a way to make more of whatever you want.
- hinkley 11y agoAnd I'm still trying to figure out why everyone thinks this is a big deal. Lots and lots and lots of companies end up at some point representing 50% of all sales, products, or activity in their market. Hell, even Starbucks was opening coffee shops so fast they were targeting owning half of all coffee shops on the planet. If he said he needed to quadruple the world output, I might furrow a brow. If he said he needed 8 times the world supply, I'd think he was nuts. Double? That's just a really big growth market.
- mchannon 11y agoLithium doesn't weigh much of anything (even compared to oil), so a ton of Lithium is a LOT of lithium. Since as a commodity it's never traded in metallic form (too hazardous and energy-intensive to get it there, and not much market for straight metal, even as an input to battery production). It tends to be traded as carbonate, so a ton of lithium carbonate still has a very small amount of lithium in it. The article completely misses the fact that lithium is not the most important metal in a lithium-ion battery. More pounds of cobalt are required than are of lithium (remember, lithium weighs almost nothing). Lithium traditionally comes from briny lakes and salt deserts like those in Chile, along with other valuable commodities like Iodine and Nitrate. Lithium occurs throughout the US in ores like Lepidolite, but it's never been considered cost-effective to extract it. I've found a way.
- djb_hackernews 11y ago> I've found a way. Need help?
- mchannon 11y agoMessaged you.
- ipince 11y agoI want to help too!
- simplemath 11y ago>I've found a way wow. If you're not bullshitting, and your method is scalable,reliable,and cost-effective congratulations on changing the world.
- scythe 11y agoIt's worth pointing out that "cost-effective" in a competitive market is actually a pretty high bar. For context, lithium can be reliably extracted from seawater, with more available than humans could dream of using. To do so costs about $30/lb, which certainly isn't breaking the bank if you're using it for a car battery. Trouble is, the market price for lithium is closer to $5/lb, so good luck selling any. (Prices in this post are examples, and from memory)
- Eric_WVGG 11y ago“that some call ‘white petroleum’” stop trying to make “fetch” happen
- olivermarks 11y agohttp://www.extremetech.com/electronics/149779-sodium-air-batteries-could-replace-lithium-air-as-the-battery-of-the-future http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/149779-sodium-air-bat...
- portman 11y agoArticle is actually titled "Tesla Shakes Up Market for Lithium, Other Metals" which is less sensational and more accurate.
- Robin_Message 11y agoIn shocking other news: car, utility companies currently absorbing entire global fossil fuel production, a state of affairs which is set to continue
- coredog64 11y agocar makers, utility companies, plastic makers, paint makers, etc. You underestimate the utility of petrochemicals.
- astrodust 11y agoTransportation uses absolutely dwarf others, and many of the non-gasoline byproducts are only cheap because the gasoline itself is so in demand. Gasoline itself was once seen as a useless byproduct of kerosene production.
- seltzered_ 11y agoI don't have wsj access to read the article, but for those looking for some help in doing the math Danielle Fong has an interesting collection of notes on calculating lithium ion storage growth (page 19) : http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/refs/DanielleFong-GrowthRateRequiredInEnergyStorage.pdf http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/refs/DanielleFong-Growth... (found via the energy storage section in http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ )
- kilroy123 11y agoI don't really see the problem. It's simple supply and demand. Once the gigafactory is operation and demand goes up, supply will also go up in time. I'm just worried costs will rise so much, the 35k for the Tesla model 3 will rise as well.
- Zekio 10y agoWasn't there recently an article that stated lithium had already tripled in price. And if it reached a quadruple it would become cost effective to extract it from the ocean?