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It does not matter. You need less than a dollar's worth of lithium to a kWh of battery thay costs 200 dollars. Once you increase a price of commodity by an orde

It does not matter. You need less than a dollar's worth of lithium to a kWh of battery thay costs 200 dollars. Once you increase a price of commodity by an order of magnitude - which we can here easily afford - all current reserve estimates are worthless due to massive new interest in research and development in mining technology and deposit discovery.

ISL 9y ago
Or recycling. Why mine when you already have some sitting around?
rad_gruchalski 9y ago
What you are saying leads me to the following thought: lithium will be the new oil. With all the same consequences that oil has now.
- akanet 9y ago
  This is pretty unlikely given that lithium is recoverable, extremely common (an element, not a complex organic molecule), and not, you know, we don't burn it to get value out of it.
  - FooHentai 9y ago
    >This is pretty unlikely given that lithium is recoverable This is a bit of an aside, but I think it's interesting that oil is recoverable from plastics via pyrolisis.
    - Tade0 9y ago
      Unfortunately only about 8% of the extracted oil is turned into plastics.
    - lxmorj 9y ago
      But not from fuel use...
- saget 9y ago
  The good news is the batteries can be recycled and there is a lot of new research on developing new types of batteries that don't use lithium
- foota 9y ago
  Lithium can be recycled though.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- scythe 9y ago
  This is simply false. The amount of lithium in a battery is about 400 g/kWh http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/How_Much_Lithium_Per_Battery.pdf http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/How_Much_Lithium_Pe... Putting a 100 kWh battery in a car would then require 40 kg of lithium, and with 2bn cars (projection for mid-21st century) you're looking at 80 million tonnes of lithium. The ocean contains about 240 billion tonnes of lithium, 3000x requirements, and extracting lithium from seawater costs about $30/kg: http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for-electric-cars/ http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-... so the total value of that lithium comes to less than $2.4T. While not a small figure, this is miniscule compared to the global oil industry, which brings in more than that per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_companies_by_revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_co... and that's using some of the most pessimistic numbers for lithium costs and requirements that I can find. The actual operation of the global lithium market will probably bring the total cost well below $1T, and seawater extraction will probably never be necessary: https://gigaom.com/2010/03/10/will-seawater-stave-off-a-lithium-squeeze/ https://gigaom.com/2010/03/10/will-seawater-stave-off-a-lith... Lithium absolutely will not, ever, be in any way comparable to oil in terms of price, environmental damage, or political impact. Lithium Chicken-Littling is not helpful to anyone.
  - rad_gruchalski 9y ago
    I was explicitly referring to the topic of mining and discovering new reserves. But thanks for resources.

ISL 9y ago

Or recycling. Why mine when you already have some sitting around?

rad_gruchalski 9y ago

What you are saying leads me to the following thought: lithium will be the new oil. With all the same consequences that oil has now.

akanet 9y ago
This is pretty unlikely given that lithium is recoverable, extremely common (an element, not a complex organic molecule), and not, you know, we don't burn it to get value out of it.
- FooHentai 9y ago
  >This is pretty unlikely given that lithium is recoverable This is a bit of an aside, but I think it's interesting that oil is recoverable from plastics via pyrolisis.
  - Tade0 9y ago
    Unfortunately only about 8% of the extracted oil is turned into plastics.
  - lxmorj 9y ago
    But not from fuel use...
saget 9y ago
The good news is the batteries can be recycled and there is a lot of new research on developing new types of batteries that don't use lithium
foota 9y ago
Lithium can be recycled though.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
scythe 9y ago
This is simply false. The amount of lithium in a battery is about 400 g/kWh http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/How_Much_Lithium_Per_Battery.pdf http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/How_Much_Lithium_Pe... Putting a 100 kWh battery in a car would then require 40 kg of lithium, and with 2bn cars (projection for mid-21st century) you're looking at 80 million tonnes of lithium. The ocean contains about 240 billion tonnes of lithium, 3000x requirements, and extracting lithium from seawater costs about $30/kg: http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for-electric-cars/ http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-... so the total value of that lithium comes to less than $2.4T. While not a small figure, this is miniscule compared to the global oil industry, which brings in more than that per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_companies_by_revenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_co... and that's using some of the most pessimistic numbers for lithium costs and requirements that I can find. The actual operation of the global lithium market will probably bring the total cost well below $1T, and seawater extraction will probably never be necessary: https://gigaom.com/2010/03/10/will-seawater-stave-off-a-lithium-squeeze/ https://gigaom.com/2010/03/10/will-seawater-stave-off-a-lith... Lithium absolutely will not, ever, be in any way comparable to oil in terms of price, environmental damage, or political impact. Lithium Chicken-Littling is not helpful to anyone.
- rad_gruchalski 9y ago
  I was explicitly referring to the topic of mining and discovering new reserves. But thanks for resources.