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According to an alternative energy researcher's presentation about his research there isn't even enough lithium to make batteries for all the cars, so it's an i
by jules 15y ago
According to an alternative energy researcher's presentation about his research there isn't even enough lithium to make batteries for all the cars, so it's an imaginary scenario.
Napkin calculuation:
A Tesla Roadster has a 53 kwh battery. Assuming 1kg lithium per kwh (a Chevy Volt uses 1.4kg of lithium per kwh [1]) that's 50kg of lithium per car. Assuming that we need around 1 billion cars in the world [2], that's 50 million tonnes of lithium. The total lithium reserve of the world is less that 10 million tonnes [3].
Note that this is not even counting trucks, buses, motorcycles, scooters and all the cars that people in developing countries are going to want, and assuming that we can perfectly recover lithium from old cars.
The researcher recommended power lines on all big roads, and bicycles for the rest.
[1] http://gigaom.com/cleantech/what-the-looming-lithium-squeeze-means-for-electric-car-batteries/ http://gigaom.com/cleantech/what-the-looming-lithium-squeeze...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium
- wisty 15y agoReserves is a kind of dodgy term. Never trust a table stating what the reserves are, unless it's something well-studied like oil (which will have dozens of different charts, depending on what you mean by "reserves"). Like oil, lithium will keep being produced as long as the price keeps rising, as new reserves are found or uneconomic reserves become economic. It's more a question of price, how quickly it rises, and what the alternatives are.
- jules 15y agoUnless the reserves turn out to be at least 20x larger than that table, all electric lithium-ion is not going to happen. Are you saying that that table is off by 2000%? Sure, it's not a fixed reserve but a smooth price curve. That doesn't mean a lot in practice; people aren't going to pay millions to extract every last bit of lithium from the earth. The point is that lithium-ion batteries for cars are most likely not going to be the long term solution. The same applies to solar panels and fuel cells that have rare materials in them by the way.
- dwiel 15y agoI could imagine driverless cars reducing the total number of vehicles we need to own as a species by an order of magnitude, perhaps more. That might help.
- Robin_Message 15y agoJust to note that lithium is not like oil: the lithium is not consumed in making the batteries, so if it turns out to be useful it'll be worth gathering even from low quality sources. Also, sea water is 1-2ppm lithium -- expensive but plenty of it to extract.