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"Less cobalt" is another one in there that the battery industry has been working on, and has made a lot of progress. (It's related to price, but also related t
by elihu 7y ago
"Less cobalt" is another one in there that the battery industry has been working on, and has made a lot of progress. (It's related to price, but also related to not wanting to be constrained by the availability of a conflict mineral.)
- bitL 7y agoNot just cobalt, there aren't enough rare earth minerals to have battery production at required scale. Extraction of those is extremely expensive process as well, then the question is what to do with used batteries. We are trading one known externality (air pollution) for a bunch of unknown externalities, passing the buck.
- NotSammyHagar 7y agoThere are unknowns. Batteries can be recharged hundreds of times and some are already reused for home solar power packs. A bigger unknown is mass battery recycling. Right now prices of batteries are going down so fast there isn't much financial demand for recycling.