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But for the cost of batteries, electric has already won. As soon as we can 10x the manufacturing volume of lithium ion cells, price per cell will plummet and pr

But for the cost of batteries, electric has already won. As soon as we can 10x the manufacturing volume of lithium ion cells, price per cell will plummet and private transport will shift to electric rapidly. (Obviously that isn’t trivial.)

pietrovismara 6y ago
You're missing the fundamental factor here: There isn't enough lithium on earth to sustain a full switch to eletric. This article from 2015 sums it up pretty well: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Is-There-Enough-Lithium-to-Maintain-the-Growth-of-the-Lithium-Ion-Battery-M https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Is-There-Enough... Edit: and to add, I don't want to attack you personally but the kind of "market will take care of it" thinking you shown here is exactly the problem. The market will just exhaust our lithium reserves in a few decades if let on its own. I'd even argue that the market should be excluded outright from limited resources at this point.
- sjwright 6y ago
  > There isn't enough lithium on earth to sustain a full switch to eletric. No serious person claims that. The bogus article you linked to doesn't even claim that. Lithium is as common as copper in the earth's crust; the USGS estimates 13.5 million metric tons of it. We are presently limited only by the scale of current lithium mining operations. "Rest assured, Earth has the lithium. The next dozen years will drain less than 1 percent of the reserves in the ground, BNEF says. But battery makers are going to need more mines to support their production, and they’ll have to build them much more quickly than anyone thought." https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-future/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-futu... By the time we get anywhere close to dwindling natural resources, it's likely that opportunities for lithium recycling will ramp up.
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    Well I hope you're right, but even bloomberg doesn't deny that if all private transportation was to be converted to electric, the resources we have would not be enough. Developing recycling processes efficient enough and in time is nothing more than a bet at this point. And we are not even accounting all the pollution caused by the production of batteries. From Forbes[0]: "The drawbacks of the mining industry itself have weighed heavily against the rise of batteries. Mining rare earth and heavy metals emit large amounts of emissions whilst also having a noticeable impact on the environment. Around half of lithium mining comes from brine extraction while the rest is hard rock mining, which has even more damaging consequence to the environment." Finally to charge these battieries, we will still be using dirty energy sources for the foreseeable future, since renewables are nowhere near to be enough to stop using coal/gas/biomass. I stand convinced that the only way we have is to rethink entirely our habits of transportation. [0] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/10/electric-vehicles-are-driving-demand-for-lithium-with-environmental-consequences/#17e3a41262e2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/10/electr...

pietrovismara 6y ago

You're missing the fundamental factor here: There isn't enough lithium on earth to sustain a full switch to eletric. This article from 2015 sums it up pretty well: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Is-There-Enough-Lithium-to-Maintain-the-Growth-of-the-Lithium-Ion-Battery-M https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Is-There-Enough... Edit: and to add, I don't want to attack you personally but the kind of "market will take care of it" thinking you shown here is exactly the problem. The market will just exhaust our lithium reserves in a few decades if let on its own. I'd even argue that the market should be excluded outright from limited resources at this point.

sjwright 6y ago
> There isn't enough lithium on earth to sustain a full switch to eletric. No serious person claims that. The bogus article you linked to doesn't even claim that. Lithium is as common as copper in the earth's crust; the USGS estimates 13.5 million metric tons of it. We are presently limited only by the scale of current lithium mining operations. "Rest assured, Earth has the lithium. The next dozen years will drain less than 1 percent of the reserves in the ground, BNEF says. But battery makers are going to need more mines to support their production, and they’ll have to build them much more quickly than anyone thought." https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-future/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-lithium-battery-futu... By the time we get anywhere close to dwindling natural resources, it's likely that opportunities for lithium recycling will ramp up.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  Well I hope you're right, but even bloomberg doesn't deny that if all private transportation was to be converted to electric, the resources we have would not be enough. Developing recycling processes efficient enough and in time is nothing more than a bet at this point. And we are not even accounting all the pollution caused by the production of batteries. From Forbes[0]: "The drawbacks of the mining industry itself have weighed heavily against the rise of batteries. Mining rare earth and heavy metals emit large amounts of emissions whilst also having a noticeable impact on the environment. Around half of lithium mining comes from brine extraction while the rest is hard rock mining, which has even more damaging consequence to the environment." Finally to charge these battieries, we will still be using dirty energy sources for the foreseeable future, since renewables are nowhere near to be enough to stop using coal/gas/biomass. I stand convinced that the only way we have is to rethink entirely our habits of transportation. [0] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/10/electric-vehicles-are-driving-demand-for-lithium-with-environmental-consequences/#17e3a41262e2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/10/electr...