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> He's basically working to replace Big Oil with Big Lithium. Electric cars need X kg of elemental lithium over the lifetime of the car. ICE cars need [on the
by dreamcompiler 9y ago
> He's basically working to replace Big Oil with Big Lithium.
Electric cars need X kg of elemental lithium over the lifetime of the car. ICE cars need [on the order of] X kg of gasoline every 200 miles. This makes such a huge quantitative difference that comparing lithium mining to oil mining is almost pointless.
In addition, lithium can in principle be recycled when the battery wears out. Gasoline cannot be recycled, even in principle.
- nbanks 9y agoSome CO2 hydrogenation processes can produce liquid fuels which is kind of like recycling gasoline, but this is much more complicated than recycling batteries. It may still prove useful for fueling rockets or aircraft in a CO2 neutral way.
- dreamcompiler 9y agoUnderstood. My former employer was researching this. But taking the separated atoms of gasoline and rebuilding hydrocarbon molecules from them is -- as you say -- not quite the same thing as recycling. And it requires very large energy inputs. It only really makes sense for aircraft fuel, since large or high-performance aircraft cannot (yet) be powered by batteries.