8 ms·

I'm all for electric vehicles, but there are a few things that have bothered me about its mass adoption. Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the autom

by pcr0 10y ago

I'm all for electric vehicles, but there are a few things that have bothered me about its mass adoption. Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the automobile market share. Yet Tesla is already running into supply issues, particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. Secondly, I suppose we're currently in the honeymoon period for electrics. But what will happen 5-8 years down the line, when all the early mainstream adopters of electrics will have to replace their batteries? Is it feasible to recycle all those batteries?

victorlew 10y ago
Yes. You can think of all those batteries as high quality lithium ore.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
microcolonel 10y ago
I wonder how slate got the idea that they're not "expensive". Maybe the prices have been manipulated independently of supply.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Battery costs are five years ahead of the predicted price curve: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-already-probably-cheaper-than-2020-projections/ http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-already... GM says li-ion pack costs for its Bolt are ~$145/kWh, predicting $100/kWh by 2021: http://www.hybridcars.com/gm-ev-battery-cells-down-to-145kwh-and-still-falling/ http://www.hybridcars.com/gm-ev-battery-cells-down-to-145kwh... Tesla confirms its costs are below $190/kWh: https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/battery-cost-below-190kwh-says-tesla https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/battery-cost-bel... Batteries are following the same price curve of solar panels, and are about to get stupid cheap. EDIT: If Tesla is able to drive down battery costs to below $100/kWh, I assure you, EVs won't be the biggest success story; you'll be able to turn every wind and solar generator into dispatchable generation cheaper than coal, nuclear, and natural gas. We'll be off fossil fuels in ~10-15 years.
  - colanderman 10y ago
    Nitpick: the unit you mean is kWh, not kW, which is a different, though related, unit of merit for batteries. (kWh measures capacity; kW measures output.)
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Thanks for the correction! Comment updated!
  - owengriffiths 10y ago
    I think there's a bit of confusion about Pack prices vs Cell prices. The $145 is cell only, which is one of the reasons it is so much lower. There don't seem to be consistent pack-pack price comparisons.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      I agree there is a disparity between the Bolt's cell-only cost vs Tesla's cost all-in on a pack. Regardless, the cost is below $200/kWh, and it appears that the cost decreases will continue.
dredmorbius 10y ago
This is a real problem and a real concern. An EV essentially is a car with a very expensive fuel tank (the battery), made out of specific materials and properties. While it is efficient in energy use and can make use of fungible electricity, lithium is rare, limited to specific areas of concentration, and can (as any material) only be partially recycled. There's lithium elsewhere on Earth, or more precisely, in seawater, but processing seawater for minerals (uranium is another which might be extracted) is expensive in the sense of requiring a lot of energy (arguably the ultimate definition of cost is energy requirements). At US rates of auto ownership scaled to the world and future populations, known lithium reserves would quickly be exhausted -- a few decades, if that. With recycling, yes, some of that would be re-used, but even at 90% material recoverability (and references I have suggest 30% is far more common), you'll lose ~50% of your original material in 7 generations. (The formula: remaining material = (portion recoverable)^generations. So: 0.47 ~= 0.9^7.) Other options include other forms of energy storage (including possibly synfuels), other battery components, or we all just start walking a lot more.
- 8note 10y ago
  There's someone in Halifax researching Sodium Batteries, which would be a fair bit easier to find than lithium, though less effective.
  - Animats 10y ago
    Sodium batteries have been around since the 1960s.[1] They're a high-temperature battery, 90°C and upwards. Ford built some experimental vans with sodium-sulfur batteries in 1991. Two of them caught fire. That technology was abandoned for mobile applications. There's still interest in this for stationary energy storage on power-grid scale. But not for mobile. Sodium catches fire if exposed to air. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery
    - lhl 10y ago
      Sodium-ion batteries aren't necessarily the dead end you might think. Faradion has been working on portable batteries w/ decent energy density (~150 Wh/kg), excellent charge-discharge performance (93% capacity after 1000 cycles) and competitive costs: http://www.faradion.co.uk/about/news/2015/05/489/ http://www.faradion.co.uk/about/news/2015/05/489/ Recent formulations for sodium rechargeable batteries are room-temperature and non-flammable: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525335/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525335/ Here's a a short article progress being made getting Na-ion batteries into an 18650 form-factor (their current prototype has an energy density of about 90 Wh/kg): https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/a-battery-revolution-in-motion https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/a-battery-revolution-in-motion While energy density is lower than Li-ion, there's probably a good argument for longevity, safety, and material costs.
ebbv 10y ago
> Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the automobile market share. Yet Tesla is already running into supply issues, particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. Why would any consumer have to care at all about this? If it really becomes a problem the price of EVs will go up and then people won't buy them. You're letting details you needn't worry about influence your possible purchase now? That makes no sense. Do you worry about how Ford is going to source their parts when they run into supply chain issues (which they do)? Do you worry about any other company's supply chain issues? You are repeating anti-EV FUD. > I suppose we're currently in the honeymoon period for electrics. But what will happen 5-8 years down the line, when all the early mainstream adopters of electrics will have to replace their batteries? Is it feasible to recycle all those batteries? A) All manufacturers have buyback/replacement programs in place that they have to uphold with the customer. Again, you needn't worry about the details as a consumer beyond that. B) If you really insist on worrying about the details, look at some actual historic data instead of FUD; the price of EV batteries has been dropping dramatically over the last 10 years. All real signs (the fact that manufacturers keep opening new plants and increasing capacity, and that there is no real shortage of Lithium in the world despite the "3 companies" baloney) point to them continuing to drop. The only REAL reason to consider not buying an EV right now is the dramatic pace at which they are improving. But to me that just points to leasing instead of buying one.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  Consumers should absolutely consider whether we are on a sustainable growth curve. How common will electric charging stations be if it turns out that EVs can't rise above 10% of the total car market? If hydrogen-powered cars all of a sudden became the norm, EV drivers will be much less well-served than if EV sales continue to scale (as most EV purchasers probably assume they will).
  - ebbv 10y ago
    > How common will electric charging stations be if it turns out that EVs can't rise above 10% of the total car market? One of the beauties of EVs is you don't need charging stations. I leased a Nissan LEAF 2 years ago, and it almost only gets charged at home. You can't really know whether EVs are going to take over or not, it depends on too many factors. If our government gets bamboozled with Hydrogen the way they did with Ethanol, then yeah Hydrogen cars could become more popular than EVs. But I would argue that even in that world, EVs are the better choice. They are lower maintenance and like I said, you don't need refueling stations. Your car refuels while it's parked in your garage.
jseliger 10y ago
But what will happen 5-8 years down the line, when all the early mainstream adopters of electrics will have to replace their batteries? Is it feasible to recycle all those batteries? I quoted this below, but yes: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/09/3775606/used-second-life-electric-car-batteries/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/09/3775606/used-sec.... Furthermore, lots of research is going into electric battery recycling. I've worked on EV-battery-related grant applications that also demonstrate promise. I can't say more about them, but I'm optimistic. At the moment, lithium commodity prices remain oddly low if most people expect reserves to run out (if you (in the plural you sense) expect reserves to run out, there's a fortune to be made!). See also http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Is-There-Enough-Lithium-to-Maintain-the-Growth-of-the-Lithium-Ion-Battery-M http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Is-There-Enough-....
scythe 10y ago
Supply issues are normal when demand rises suddenly. They aren't necessarily indicative of the long-term productive capacity of the Earth. Websites go back and forth on this, but truly scientific analyses of "will we run out of X" are few and far between. But there's just no point in looking for a new quarry if the demand isn't there. You think it will be, but technology is capricious -- someone could invent a new gizmo that renders your investment worthless, so market forces generally don't support dragging a bunch of resources around until there's no other option. There are ten pounds of lithium in a car battery. It's about as common as copper. That's hardly the end of the world. http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for-electric-cars/ http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
agumonkey 10y ago
Wild bet: Musk is planning on spatial extraction to provide itself lithium.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  In case you missed this a few years back (not musk, but his peers): http://www.planetaryresources.com/ http://www.planetaryresources.com/
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    I did not.
codingdave 10y ago
Mineral extraction of non-renewable resources is a funny thing - when demand moves up, eventually supplies will drop, and prices rise. Then people either find a way to extract energy from a different mineral, or build better technology to remove it from rock, and prices go back down. The drop in oil and gas prices over the last few years being a perfect example of this, as it is due to new drilling techniques. When the current lull in oil prices ends, electricity will take its place. And we will start the same cycle for batteries that we have lived through over the past 100 years with oil -- either technology will bring out more lithium, or research will move us to use a different fuel source.
devy 10y ago
> particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. It appears that there are more than 3 lithium mining companies[1]. Care to provide your source to prove otherwise? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_as_an_investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_as_an_investment
dragontamer 10y ago
> Is it feasible to recycle all those batteries? Why recycle when you can give them a second life? https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538541/nissan-gm-give-ev-batteries-a-second-life/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538541/nissan-gm-give-ev-... No recycling involved. Just use the batteries as they are as cheap power storage.

by pcr0 10y ago

victorlew 10y ago

Yes. You can think of all those batteries as high quality lithium ore.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

microcolonel 10y ago

I wonder how slate got the idea that they're not "expensive". Maybe the prices have been manipulated independently of supply.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
Battery costs are five years ahead of the predicted price curve: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-already-probably-cheaper-than-2020-projections/ http://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-already... GM says li-ion pack costs for its Bolt are ~$145/kWh, predicting $100/kWh by 2021: http://www.hybridcars.com/gm-ev-battery-cells-down-to-145kwh-and-still-falling/ http://www.hybridcars.com/gm-ev-battery-cells-down-to-145kwh... Tesla confirms its costs are below $190/kWh: https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/battery-cost-below-190kwh-says-tesla https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/battery-cost-bel... Batteries are following the same price curve of solar panels, and are about to get stupid cheap. EDIT: If Tesla is able to drive down battery costs to below $100/kWh, I assure you, EVs won't be the biggest success story; you'll be able to turn every wind and solar generator into dispatchable generation cheaper than coal, nuclear, and natural gas. We'll be off fossil fuels in ~10-15 years.
- colanderman 10y ago
  Nitpick: the unit you mean is kWh, not kW, which is a different, though related, unit of merit for batteries. (kWh measures capacity; kW measures output.)
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Thanks for the correction! Comment updated!
- owengriffiths 10y ago
  I think there's a bit of confusion about Pack prices vs Cell prices. The $145 is cell only, which is one of the reasons it is so much lower. There don't seem to be consistent pack-pack price comparisons.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    I agree there is a disparity between the Bolt's cell-only cost vs Tesla's cost all-in on a pack. Regardless, the cost is below $200/kWh, and it appears that the cost decreases will continue.

dredmorbius 10y ago

This is a real problem and a real concern. An EV essentially is a car with a very expensive fuel tank (the battery), made out of specific materials and properties. While it is efficient in energy use and can make use of fungible electricity, lithium is rare, limited to specific areas of concentration, and can (as any material) only be partially recycled. There's lithium elsewhere on Earth, or more precisely, in seawater, but processing seawater for minerals (uranium is another which might be extracted) is expensive in the sense of requiring a lot of energy (arguably the ultimate definition of cost is energy requirements). At US rates of auto ownership scaled to the world and future populations, known lithium reserves would quickly be exhausted -- a few decades, if that. With recycling, yes, some of that would be re-used, but even at 90% material recoverability (and references I have suggest 30% is far more common), you'll lose ~50% of your original material in 7 generations. (The formula: remaining material = (portion recoverable)^generations. So: 0.47 ~= 0.9^7.) Other options include other forms of energy storage (including possibly synfuels), other battery components, or we all just start walking a lot more.

8note 10y ago
There's someone in Halifax researching Sodium Batteries, which would be a fair bit easier to find than lithium, though less effective.
- Animats 10y ago
  Sodium batteries have been around since the 1960s.[1] They're a high-temperature battery, 90°C and upwards. Ford built some experimental vans with sodium-sulfur batteries in 1991. Two of them caught fire. That technology was abandoned for mobile applications. There's still interest in this for stationary energy storage on power-grid scale. But not for mobile. Sodium catches fire if exposed to air. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery
  - lhl 10y ago
    Sodium-ion batteries aren't necessarily the dead end you might think. Faradion has been working on portable batteries w/ decent energy density (~150 Wh/kg), excellent charge-discharge performance (93% capacity after 1000 cycles) and competitive costs: http://www.faradion.co.uk/about/news/2015/05/489/ http://www.faradion.co.uk/about/news/2015/05/489/ Recent formulations for sodium rechargeable batteries are room-temperature and non-flammable: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525335/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525335/ Here's a a short article progress being made getting Na-ion batteries into an 18650 form-factor (their current prototype has an energy density of about 90 Wh/kg): https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/a-battery-revolution-in-motion https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/a-battery-revolution-in-motion While energy density is lower than Li-ion, there's probably a good argument for longevity, safety, and material costs.

ebbv 10y ago

> Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the automobile market share. Yet Tesla is already running into supply issues, particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. Why would any consumer have to care at all about this? If it really becomes a problem the price of EVs will go up and then people won't buy them. You're letting details you needn't worry about influence your possible purchase now? That makes no sense. Do you worry about how Ford is going to source their parts when they run into supply chain issues (which they do)? Do you worry about any other company's supply chain issues? You are repeating anti-EV FUD. > I suppose we're currently in the honeymoon period for electrics. But what will happen 5-8 years down the line, when all the early mainstream adopters of electrics will have to replace their batteries? Is it feasible to recycle all those batteries? A) All manufacturers have buyback/replacement programs in place that they have to uphold with the customer. Again, you needn't worry about the details as a consumer beyond that. B) If you really insist on worrying about the details, look at some actual historic data instead of FUD; the price of EV batteries has been dropping dramatically over the last 10 years. All real signs (the fact that manufacturers keep opening new plants and increasing capacity, and that there is no real shortage of Lithium in the world despite the "3 companies" baloney) point to them continuing to drop. The only REAL reason to consider not buying an EV right now is the dramatic pace at which they are improving. But to me that just points to leasing instead of buying one.

gnicholas 10y ago
Consumers should absolutely consider whether we are on a sustainable growth curve. How common will electric charging stations be if it turns out that EVs can't rise above 10% of the total car market? If hydrogen-powered cars all of a sudden became the norm, EV drivers will be much less well-served than if EV sales continue to scale (as most EV purchasers probably assume they will).
- ebbv 10y ago
  > How common will electric charging stations be if it turns out that EVs can't rise above 10% of the total car market? One of the beauties of EVs is you don't need charging stations. I leased a Nissan LEAF 2 years ago, and it almost only gets charged at home. You can't really know whether EVs are going to take over or not, it depends on too many factors. If our government gets bamboozled with Hydrogen the way they did with Ethanol, then yeah Hydrogen cars could become more popular than EVs. But I would argue that even in that world, EVs are the better choice. They are lower maintenance and like I said, you don't need refueling stations. Your car refuels while it's parked in your garage.

jseliger 10y ago

But what will happen 5-8 years down the line, when all the early mainstream adopters of electrics will have to replace their batteries? Is it feasible to recycle all those batteries? I quoted this below, but yes: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/09/3775606/used-second-life-electric-car-batteries/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/09/3775606/used-sec.... Furthermore, lots of research is going into electric battery recycling. I've worked on EV-battery-related grant applications that also demonstrate promise. I can't say more about them, but I'm optimistic. At the moment, lithium commodity prices remain oddly low if most people expect reserves to run out (if you (in the plural you sense) expect reserves to run out, there's a fortune to be made!). See also http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Is-There-Enough-Lithium-to-Maintain-the-Growth-of-the-Lithium-Ion-Battery-M http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Is-There-Enough-....

scythe 10y ago

Supply issues are normal when demand rises suddenly. They aren't necessarily indicative of the long-term productive capacity of the Earth. Websites go back and forth on this, but truly scientific analyses of "will we run out of X" are few and far between. But there's just no point in looking for a new quarry if the demand isn't there. You think it will be, but technology is capricious -- someone could invent a new gizmo that renders your investment worthless, so market forces generally don't support dragging a bunch of resources around until there's no other option. There are ten pounds of lithium in a car battery. It's about as common as copper. That's hardly the end of the world. http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for-electric-cars/ http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

agumonkey 10y ago

Wild bet: Musk is planning on spatial extraction to provide itself lithium.

Godel_unicode 10y ago
In case you missed this a few years back (not musk, but his peers): http://www.planetaryresources.com/ http://www.planetaryresources.com/
- agumonkey 10y ago
  I did not.

codingdave 10y ago

Mineral extraction of non-renewable resources is a funny thing - when demand moves up, eventually supplies will drop, and prices rise. Then people either find a way to extract energy from a different mineral, or build better technology to remove it from rock, and prices go back down. The drop in oil and gas prices over the last few years being a perfect example of this, as it is due to new drilling techniques. When the current lull in oil prices ends, electricity will take its place. And we will start the same cycle for batteries that we have lived through over the past 100 years with oil -- either technology will bring out more lithium, or research will move us to use a different fuel source.

devy 10y ago

> particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. It appears that there are more than 3 lithium mining companies[1]. Care to provide your source to prove otherwise? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_as_an_investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_as_an_investment

dragontamer 10y ago

> Is it feasible to recycle all those batteries? Why recycle when you can give them a second life? https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538541/nissan-gm-give-ev-batteries-a-second-life/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538541/nissan-gm-give-ev-... No recycling involved. Just use the batteries as they are as cheap power storage.