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The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom
- ironfootnz 7y agoKinda useless build up. More material are been used to build dense battery and they don’t use only lithium as major source for these new types of batteries.
- crb002 7y agoIndustrial battery will eat it.
- taneq 7y agoExactly. The potential market for grid storage for renewables will be similar in size to the market for EV batteries once the cost of battery-backed renewables falls below the cost of a grid connection. And once that does happen, power grids worldwide are going to rapidly enter a death spiral as their fixed costs are spread between fewer and fewer users.
- dTal 7y agoWhy? The role of the grid will still be arbitrage between power generation and power consumption. A flat in a high-rise in a city doesn't have anywhere to put solar panels; a factory couldn't possibly sustain its power consumption with on-site renewables, and no amount of on-site battery storage will change that. Somebody needs to buy power from net producers, and sell it to consumers.
- ecpottinger 7y agoA factory may put in batteries to prevent the cost of demand/surge power. An apartment depending of where it is may put in batteries if it is in a location where power sagging/failures happen often. Remember the entire world is not North America or Europe.
- dTal 7y agoYes, of course power sinks gain value from having their own power buffer, even if only to take advantage of fluctuations in energy cost. But why would this cause grid collapse? They still need the energy delivered, at some point. It puts whoever runs the grid in the quite enviable position of power market middleman. Far from collapsing, I would expect grids to do extremely well out of such a shift.
- ninju 7y agoSo first the SKY IS FALLING because demand is greater than supply and now the SKY IS FALLING because supply is (forecasted) to catch up to demand. Sensationalist media articles win both ways :-)
- CriticalCathed 7y agoIs it sensationalist? Seems factual.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't use uppercase for emphasis. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- Causality1 7y agoI would've been very excited about this back in the halcyon days of being able to carry spare batteries for my phone and laptop.
- et2o 7y agoYou actually. They are just external.
- xxpor 7y agoI bought a laptop with a replaceable battery, RAM, and HDD this year. A Lenovo T480. Most people don't have to buy a MacBook (outside of iOS dev).
- Causality1 7y agoGood choice, since it's the last one which had the feature. The T490 drops support for removable batteries.
- xxpor 7y ago>The T490 drops support for removable batteries. That's seriously disappointing :(
- Tade0 7y agoI think you can still charge a MacBook via a pedestrian power bank, provided it has a USB-C and enough output power.
- natch 7y agoThe electric car boom is in such early days now, I don’t know that anyone can even discern the shape of the curve yet.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago>I don’t know that anyone can even discern the shape of the curve yet. Now, you have: https://assets.weforum.org/editor/large_opfwi0Tq43oLA-yv3bAvJAPxmmvpzpeqDpa2HoienxQ.jpg https://assets.weforum.org/editor/large_opfwi0Tq43oLA-yv3bAv... One a country tells its population to go electric and put the infrastructure in place to support that, people adopt EVs at a pretty fast pace and end up pretty happy about it.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoThis is no big deal. Prices will tank and an equilibrium will be reached. This kind of stuff happens all the time when supply lags demand and then catches up and you have a little bit too much supply.
- yarg 7y agoYou also have to consider the percentage of the market controlled by China. Look at what they've done with their control of rare earth metals. Artificial scarcity and resource hoarding is something that needs to be considered.
- Sabinus 7y agoBut China doesn't have control of the lithium market.
- sjwright 7y agoThe electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed. Electric cars are still deeply strangled by two key factors: industry inertia and the cost/supply of lithium batteries. Once those two factors are solved (and a build-up of lithium mines is key to that) electric cars will go from being a niche within a niche to utterly dominating the market very, very quickly. Within the next decade we might see companies like Hyundai/Kia, Toyota and Honda selling more EVs than ICE. Take the Kia Niro EV as an example: if the cost of batteries halved and the supply was unconstrained, there is little stopping that kind of product from dominating the market—starting with two-car households with off-street parking. With their lithium cell investments, Telsa are well positioned to benefit from this boom, but they need to think carefully about their positioning. Right now they're a luxury brand with no serious competitors; when Telsa's drivetrain advantage is substantially neutralised, their mind share is likely to stagnate. In my opinion Tesla needs to prepare to be in the budget space. They need to partner with an external manufacturer to sell a product with normal door handles that competes with Hyundai and Toyota. Because once the cost of batteries falls, I predict a substantial slice of their market will simply disappear to the economy manufacturers. I suspect that many people who love Telsa really just love the idea of electric vehicles and they'll be buying something more like the Kia Niro EV.
- ajross 7y ago> The electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed. Plug-in electric sales in 2018 were up 61% over 2017, which was 51% higher than 2016 (via quick wikipedia check). What numbers would you want to see before calling that a "boom"? How much higher than 60% growth does something have to have before it's not "strangled"? I think that's silly. Clearly these things are going somewhere. Production at all levels is adapting to compete, and that means some areas (like Li production in the linked articles) are going to outstrip the field which remains limited by other things. But even right now they're clearly out of the "niche within a niche" category and growing very well.
- sjwright 7y agoOf course EVs are booming in relative terms. Things boom all the time in relative terms. That's not remarkable. The pure EV market will eventually dominate vehicle sales in most segments, and most of the rest will be PHEV. Have EVs even hit 1% of worldwide vehicle sales yet? Call me back when it passes 10% and we'll talk about an EV boom.
- Mengkudulangsat 7y agoDo people really build mines with a 5-year horizon? Of course it's going to outpace demand... initially. The great thing about mines is that you can just leave the lithium in the ground if the current prices aren't right.
- barry-cotter 7y agoIf you try and time the market at horizons greater than five years when that’s your startup time from planning to production sometimes you’ll win big and sometimes you’ll discover you’ve made a genuinely awful investment. With a ten year turnaround time you could easily have the technical, social or economic environment just destroy the viability of your investment. Imagine you’re investing in a new city somewhere in Malaysia or Pakistan and the government falls or there’s a war. Imagine you’re going to build a new auto manufacturing hub in Nigeria and the entire West African economy tanks because Ebola goes pandemic. Timing the marker is fantastic if your bet pays off but nothing is guaranteed.
- throwawaycert 7y agoThe point is more to not try timing the market. There are all sorts of things one could reasonably say about what would be right or wrong for these unstable areas, but fundamentally the most long term good would be if they could engage in slow but steady development of both their natural resources and their infrastructure. I'm quite confident lithium will continue to be quite valuable for at least a generation. Remember, we still use NiMH and even NiCad batteries in some cases. Even if science has already discovered the magic new battery chemistry that will replace lithium ion, you're most likely looking at 5-10 years before the very first commercial applications come about. I don't remember exact context, but I recall a long time ago someone was talking about shipping medicine and such to a particularly poor area of Africa, and the reply was basically "There are no roads here to ship the medicine on."
- zaarn 7y agoNiMH and NiCad batteries do have some useful properties. We still use Lead Acid too, despite it begin a truly awful battery in terms of energy density and based on fairly ancient designs because it's incredibly robust against environmental changes, can delivery incredibly high currents and don't care about how to charge them; you can comfortable load them up by plugging them into a 14.4V supply. NiCad for example is great for low temperature environments and they can deliver almost 100% of their capacity at the maximum rated discharge. They are essentially lead-acid with a tad more energy density and being very sensitive about how they're charged. NiMH don't have that great of a capacity at maximum rated discharge but they do have a very very low internal resistance while still (almost) matching Lithium batteries in energy density. Additionally, they are almost perfectly constant voltage until discharged, making them suitable for applications where you might not want a complicated voltage controller. Lithium is actually a fairly difficult cell. Drawing maximum discharge will reduce capacity, they don't like shocks or extreme temperatures and their voltage stability is meh at best. They also heat up a lot when charging or discharging, making cooling circuits required in some scenarios. They do have extraordinary energy density though. Don't discount other battery types; battery chemistry dictates the behaviour of the battery under load scenarios, Lithium batteries aren't always the answer.
- Animats 7y agoOK, another worry out of the way.
- rmm 7y agoThis was so evident 2-3 years ago it’s ridiculous. I worked on a bunch of projects in 16/17 and what I told all my clients is get to production and lock down offtake agreements ASAP as the amount of projects coming online was huge for the short term (with regards to hard rock lithium) and even worse long term (salars etc). Even the most optimistic of ev adoption rates showed oversupply by 2023. Some other facts I remember just as points of interest: * lithium market is opaque. No open market and all contract based so very difficult to price. * one major unknown that will further add to supply is recycling, with some tech I remember showing cost effective recycling of up to 80% of lithium. * major bottleneck in short to medium term are the converters ability to refine. Premium will be placed on higher % Li product to increase recovery rates. So yeah no surprising at all. (Am a mining/mechanical engineer)
- yread 7y agoIf you had to guess what will be the price of lithium once those big mines come online? 5000/ton Li2CO3 (at 99%) or even lower? And do you think there will ever be an open market with future contracts?
- rmm 7y agoOn the first question it’s been a while so haven’t really followed too closely, but once the salars come online depending on the agreements they have in place they really will have the ability to set the price to whatever they want (as they have been doing for past 3-4 decades). These hard rock mines are making serious money on the fact that the big 3/4 missed the boat (somehow) on the lithium/ev boom. I reckon they will be they will set production/prices to a point just below the number where hard rock equivalents are commercial. With regard to opening the market I personally don’t think so. If the market didn’t have big players in it then yes it probably would have by now. That being said there were/are a lot of mid stage converters coming online that are disrupting the old guard and taking whatever is out there and not being secretive on pricing so maybe?
- yread 7y agoThanks, that's interesting. And what do you think of this PFS? https://www.share-talk.com/european-metals-hldg-aimemh-pfs-confirms-potential-low-cost-lithium-producer/ https://www.share-talk.com/european-metals-hldg-aimemh-pfs-c... People in .cz think this is a gold mine but investors don't seem to agree
- Erlich_Bachman 7y agoAren't other metals like Nickel and whatnot are the main bottleneck for the vast numbers of batteries required for the electric car boom? Didn't we already know for the long time that lithium is very abundant, but it's those other metals (which are required much less by mass, but still required) that might be a problem, and this is why different companies are betting on different lithium chemical processes, because they don't know for sure which secondary metal will become the bottleneck?
- hwillis 7y agoCobalt yes, kind of. Nickel absolutely not. Every single car, globally, could be electrified without making a big dent in nickel demand. Stainless steel is FAR more demanding of nickel. Cobalt is tricky because in most places it's a byproduct of nickel mining, and it is only mined on its own in a couple places (notably the DRC). Despite that it's fairly likely that it will scale well, and it also becomes less and less relevant as electrodes reduce the amount of cobalt they use. Virgin spheroidal graphite is another possibly-constrained supply, as it's a very particular kind of hard coal. Luckily it can be produced artificially- batteries use a roughly 40-60 mix and it costs roughly the same. IIRC natural graphite has a slightly higher power output and synthetic graphite has higher capacity, due to the nanoscale patterning of the graphite grains. As coal mining decreases graphite will probably just become more artificially produced, since it can be made from essentially anything.
- davidhyde 7y agoI think that a lot of people (including the authors) think that electric vehicles are only cars. You only need to walk around the streets of Beijing to notice that far more electric vehicles are scooters and busses. Not the Bird kind of scooters but the scooters that you see in very congested cities as well as the chaps who deliver your pizzas. They are completely silent, it’s surreal. They also omitted obvious other uses of lithium batteries like electronic gadgets and solar farms.
- S_A_P 7y agoHey. That looks like what happens with crude/natural gas/agriculture/any commodity. While it is worth being reported, this is Econ 101 supply and demand. Price volatility is part of the market.
- want2know 7y agoThere are other problems arising for electric cars: road tax. Electric cars are way havier than most cars and have so much traction that road maintenance will be much more expensive when everybody has an electric car. This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles. I also think this is why brands like Toyota are still thinking about hydrogen cars. They still don't believe 100% in electric battery cars.
- AgloeDreams 7y agoThis is hilariously misguided with little real truth to it. Are electric Cars heavier? Yes...but not really by much. Sure a Model S is heavy, but it is a full size car designed to compare with other 4000-pound range cars and a side effect of the platform's age meanwhile a Model 3 is less than 10% heavier than a BMW 3 series. The traction idea is just absurd. The real reason why Norway wants to raise the road tax is because the taxes they use on gas cars and gas itself is used to pay for road repair and if there are no gas cars then there is no road upkeep budget. Also, Toyota wants to do hydrogen because they are materials-cheap, offer specific marketable advantages, and easy to build under current architectures enabling larger profits.
- want2know 7y agoWell maybe this is different in the US but in Europe electric cars are easily 20% heavier than similar models. The traction idea is not absurd. Tesla owners claim the tires last around 25000 kilometers instead of 60000 when the drive 'insane' all the time. Takeshi Uchiyamanda was always talking about the environment when he talked about hydrogen. And even now he sees that battey cars are taking off he still stand by his point. But that is all marketing talk?
- AgloeDreams 7y agoThe first two points don't really apply to future electric cars however. Euro Electric car models (like the e-golf or such) are generally adapted gasoline models that require additional hardware to make the design work, this is obviously inefficient. To make it clear, the current non-tesla/Jag/Audi EVs are almost all examples of designs that will not be seen in the future so I don't think they are fair to compare. The VW ID3 would probably be the best example of a future euro electric car. The traction idea is absurd for a few reasons: 1: fast cars exist currently. 2: There is no proof to the idea that accelerating hard has any effect at all on roads. 3: Tesla's Performance is incredible, sure...but that's a $100K car, it is not what will be sold mass market or bought mass market. It's priced near that of a Porsche 911 turbo, which accelerates somewhat near to the level of the Model S and has never been this kind of issue. As for hydrogen, look at this Toyota-press chart: https://insideevs.com/news/353600/toyota-six-global-bevs/ https://insideevs.com/news/353600/toyota-six-global-bevs/ 1: they are not all in on FCEV 2: Their own chart shows them believing that BEVs will eventually outsell Fuel Cell (but of course not before FC takes off..which it hasn't. )
- rudolph9 7y agoIt seems like people often forget how applicable EVs are to in city heavy commercial vehicles such as garbage truck, buses, service vehicles The high torque nature and predicable nature (at least in the case of garbage trucks and buses) make them ideal candidates for EV. Arguably much more viable use case (at least initially) than household vehicles.
- ianai 7y agoEVs are a clear winner for jobs like that. Has the prediction of EVs being low on maintenance bore out? If so, its further incentive for commercial and public use. Municipalities benefit greatly from predictable, constant expenses. I know Leafs have had their service lives (at least for their batteries) revised up recently. Solid state is where it’s at.
- neltnerb 7y agoAlthough I agree, I was interested in the article about how poorly planned EV city owned equipment was a huge strain on the power grid that city planners didn't seem to understand how to do right. I look forward to what I expect to be the near future where cities start sharing best practices on this and collectively we do this right.
- glogla 7y agoDepends on the location. In cities that have trams, metro and electric trains, the infrastructure shouldn't be that far out.
- Reason077 7y agoTaxis, city buses, UPS trucks, etc, all tend to be busy during the day. They get charged overnight, when grid demand is lower, and take advantage of low off-peak electricity prices. The idea that these things place a “huge strain on the grid” as the poster above suggests just sounds like more made up FUD.
- Recurecur 7y agoWell, this topic went south really fast! I'm surprised the new Goodenough battery design hasn't come up! Getting back to an actual discussion of lithium, it'll be very interesting to see if the Goodenough solid electrolyte batter works well enough with sodium. If so, a lot of expensive lithium mines will be worth a lot less over time! The Goodenough battery (he invented LiON batteries for those who don't know) looks to improve on LiON in most important areas: - higher energy density (~2x) - not flammable - faster charge rates - many more charge cycles (~100x more) - better performance in cold conditions - either lithium or *sodium* based glass electrolyte Apparently 89 companies are evaluating the patents for production: https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/all-charged-up-john-goodenough/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/all-charged-up-john-good...
- FrojoS 7y agoIt took me a while to get, that Goodenough is the name of the inventor (John Goodenough) and not a tacky brand name.
- Recurecur 7y agoHis name should already be famous, but it sure will be if this new battery works out. Phones that fully charge in five minutes, then last twice as long...and can go for many thousands of charge cycles? Count me in!
- clouddrover 7y ago> Apparently 89 companies are evaluating the patents for production That article is from the October, 2017 issue. What have they found after two years? Progress, no progress? Here's another interesting battery from a company called XNRGI: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/xnrgi-develops-ev-battery-tech-that-extends-range-to-700-miles/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/xnrgi-develops-ev-ba... We'll have to wait and see if it lives up to XNRGI's claims.
- hwillis 7y agoGoodenough didn't invent li-ion, he invented the cobalt oxide cathode that dominated the industry until nickel and iron cathodes came along. Goodenough is 97 years old and while he is still apparently sharp, he is not leading the lab that gets publicity under his name. From what I've seen he's more of a mentor. I, and many others[1], are extremely skeptical of the claims coming from that group. At best, they have been putting out very misleading papers that gloss over key factors or lie by omission to make their research look like they're making massive breakthroughs. At worst, many of their claims break basic rules of conservation of energy. Either way they haven't given much evidence they have a better battery. One of the ways they produce these claims is by creating several cells, each optimized for maximum performance in one area while totally sacrificing every other metric. Then they put every good metric in the abstract and conclusion, while if the battery was balanced for lifespan, power, and capacity it would perform poorly in all ways. Beyond that they also make some absurdly high ion mobility claims in mundane materials, and nonsensical energy balances. Honestly, it has a lot of signs of bunk science... but it does seem mixed in with good (but routine) work, so it's kind of perplexing. [1]: http://lacey.se/2018/07/05/glass-battery-part-2/ http://lacey.se/2018/07/05/glass-battery-part-2/
- mabbo 7y agoThis seems like a bit of hype over very little. Look at the graph in the article. Lithium cost $5000/ton 4 years ago. Now it costs more than $11,000/ton. The only difference is the period in between where the price of lithium was almost $21,000/ton. Presumably the mines operation 4 years ago were profitable. Now there's all these additional mines, and demand still has the price doubled in 4 years. And yet somehow the story is that EVs aren't succeeding? I see just the opposite- EVs are succeeding so much that the industry supporting them is growing and profiting very nicely.
- eigenvalue 7y agoNote that this is the spot price of lithium, which no large consumer of lithium pays. All the big users of lithium (like Panasonic) buy it based on long term contracts with companies like Albemarle (which bought Rockwood Lithium just before the recent boom). Thus it's very misleading to look at spot prices for reaching any determinations about the prospective returns from lithium mine investments.
- duckymcduckface 7y agoFun fact, there is no spot market for lithium. Lithium is sold on a contract by contract basis and there isn't an equivalent of the London Metal Exchange price.
- intrasight 7y agoAny idea why that is?
- rtkwe 7y agoProbably because most uses of lithium are heavily processed and it's not particularly useful or safe in it's raw form, so if you're going to use it you're more likely to need an oxide or something instead of the raw metal.
- duckymcduckface 7y ago
- aurizon 7y agoThere is already a backing up of IC car production in the luxury car markets as large numbers of people are delaying the purchase of new IC based cars in anticipation of a new EV supplanting it based on lower running costs, lower maintenance costs et al. In addition, these longevity factors are making EV buyers move up-market. This has gutted Mercedes and BMW sales, among others. https://electrek.co/2019/07/24/tesla-model-3-outsellin-gas-powered-equivalents-combined/ https://electrek.co/2019/07/24/tesla-model-3-outsellin-gas-p...
- api 7y agoSomething incredible just happened. After a half century of jaw-boning about the need for renewable "green" energy, we now have a repeatable scalable tech template similar to the [oil well + refinery + piston engine] or [coal mine + pulverizer + furnace + turbine] tech templates that scaled fossil fuel energy. It is: [wind turbines and/or solar PV panels + lithium ion cells]. By repeatable and scalable tech template I mean something that no longer requires non-incremental forms of R&D. We no longer have to think that deeply about it. It's now in the realm of "see that stuff? Build more stuff like that." The solar/wind+li-ion template can, if scaled, power almost all current human industrial activity with the exception of long-haul heavy vehicles (land, sea, or air) and rockets. Those are important things but they're collectively less than a quarter of all fossil fuel use. The key is "if scaled." We are going to need more lithium. Good news is that it's not really all that rare. Bad news is that until quite recently there hasn't been serious investment in getting it. Look at what we invest in getting oil vs. lithium. That's because until quite recently there hasn't been the demand to justify that investment. Now there is. Lithium prices have exploded, signaling the need for more. The price signals are working. Good. It's normal during this kind of scaling to have periods where it looks like investment is outpacing demand and vice versa. Demand and supply don't scale at the same rate so you get price spikes in both directions. This doesn't change the underlying reality now in effect.
- nrev 7y agoThere’s so much energy waste in electric cars from the greater number of times energy must be transferred specifically where it’s changing form. I don’t really see how this can be minimized or changed enough to make and electric car world (or even hybrid electric) scalable in a way that isn’t problematically energy-inefficient. So, I’m at least a little tired of the idea that electric cars are such a groundbreaking solution. I have nothing against them/people who use them but I’m not convinced that it’s the solution to the looming crisis/possibly explosive break up in our love affair with crude oil. Plus, I’m a little afraid that here in the US we’re about a minute away from destroying Appalachia even moreso—I.e. due to particularly destructive coal mining practices and mountain topping, etc. So I’m apprehensive about increased strain on the power grid. (And I’m not keen on nuclear power either). But I welcome some kind of paradigm shift/future work that reveals I am wrong in this regard. It would be awesome if someone re-engineered and improved some aspects of these things rendering them more effective and less destructive. (Edited at 2:24EST for typos)