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That's only one of many, many issues electric cars "revolution" is going to face. Where do we get all the lithium, copper, cobalt to build electric cars? The re

That's only one of many, many issues electric cars "revolution" is going to face. Where do we get all the lithium, copper, cobalt to build electric cars? The reality check for EV will be very brutal, according to those stats [1] we would need: "meeting UK electric car targets for 2050 would require production of just under two times the current total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper production." And this is only UK. In order to switch to EV we need revolution in battery production, we need revolution in electricity production and grid construction and I don't see any of this happening for now. I am tracking all news about "new, better battery" and typically it at the end of the news it turns out, that this new great battery weight is 2 tonnes or it can work in temperature range up to -200 degrees, etc. [1] https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html

lm28469 4y ago
> Where do we get all the lithium, copper, cobalt to build electric cars? The reality check for EV will be very brutal We're doing the same thing as we did with ICE cars. We're ignoring all the drawbacks and telling ourselves we'll find hypothetical solutions sometimes in the future. We're basically green washing the entire auto industry: "shhh don't worry it's electric, now buy our $50k car and tell your friends you're saving the planet" When the average driver does like 30km per day all you need is some kind of hybrid car with a small but efficient gas engine. 90% of your travel will be fully electric, the occasional road trip would use gas (which would be expensive but something the average user doesn't need more than a few times a year) But I guess it's more marketable to sell AWD, 600+ HP, three tonnes lithium monsters than glorified priuses. This industry is fucked up and doesn't care one bit about sustainability.
- aeha3hq 4y ago
  >We're doing the same thing as we did with ICE cars. Are we? Despite all the spin that the green crowd like the put on things it's not like we actually had any idea back in the day about things like the impact CO2 emissions would have longterm. We had hints, people working on wildly different problems had data that contained the patterns that they needed to realize, but no one actually realized the scope of things with ICE cars for a long long time and while we've woken up to the problems with ICE vehicles now... fuel is hardly one of those problems and saying otherwise is just histrionics.
- Maarten88 4y ago
  > telling ourselves we'll find hypothetical solutions sometimes in the future Or we just put in LFP batteries now. No cobalt and nickel needed. Energy density is a bit lower, but costs are lower and durability is better Most Chinese brands use these; Tesla as well on some models
- greenthrow 4y ago
  A hybrid car is the worst of both worlds. Most people would always have been fine 99% of the time with a short range EV like a Nissan Leaf. But the human brain can't let go of the "what if" and long range EVs have proven necessary for large scale adoption. Regardless, batteries are highly recyclable. Lithium is super plentiful. Cobalt reduction and eventual elimination is making progress. EVs are the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    It's the best of both world. No city pollution, 90% of usage is fully electric, small batteries, your "what if" problem disappear. > batteries are highly recyclable Yet only 5% of batteries are recycled world wide > Lithium is super plentiful. Cobalt reduction and eventual elimination is making progress I'd suggest you to look at the mining industry and come back to me with your sustainability talk. > EVs are the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Freon is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Leaded gas is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Leaded paint is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Asbestos is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Radium lipstick is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. The future is the end of personal vehicles, a fleet of state/city owned and shared small sized electric vehicles would be a vision of the future I can get behind. Three tonnes of steel and 600kg of battery to move our fat asses 30km a day isn't a future I believe in, it's a waste of space, resource and energy. Nothing in the auto industry makes sense right now, making them electric just displace the problem slightly further from us.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      The future is actually something akin to the eRockit which is a Pedelec turned into a small motorcycle. It has a max speed of 90km/h. I would rather commute with that than a car.
    - greenthrow 4y ago
      Hybrids combine all the downsides of an ICE car (way more maintenance, destroying the earth) with all the downsided of an EV (solving battery sustainability, requiring us to embrace renewable energy and move off coal and gas). Most Batteries not currently being recycled is a problem in the same way as most cars on the road still being ICE. Yeah it's an issue, but it's one which has obvious solutions. Your litany of non-sequitors doesn't warrant a response.
cm2187 4y ago
Plus the additional power generation. But I tend to think this can be solved by the market. Look at the extent we go to find oil at sea. If there is a market, the production will ramp up. What I would be curious is if there is a physical supply of those materials in such volumes.
uluyol 4y ago
Well how fast is capacity ramping up? And how much does the Earth have of these materials that we can sustainably harvest? I don't know the answers to those questions, but it seems like you need to know that to determine whether 100% EV roads can actually work.
XorNot 4y ago
This isn't an argument. You can't point to existing production in light of existing demand and say "this is insurmountable". You might as well be crying "we can't switch to electric cars! Where would we get all the electric cars from? Did you know that the current production of electric cars won't meet the demand if everyone switches?" The question is whether the materials are fundamentally unavailable in the accessible environment. Cobalt is only 140,000 metric tonnes per year, compared to an estimated 7.1 million tons currently known in reserves (and is a recyclable material).[1] China alone has 44 million tons of known neodymium. Global production was only 280,000 tons in 2021 but was an increase over 2018 which was 190,000.[2] Copper has known global reserves of 870 million tons, with 28 million tons a year of demand [3]. Lithium is the only resource where there's potentially an issue - known reserves are about 14 million tons, and production in 2018 was 85,000 tons so we have about 165 years worth at present rates but obviously that would increase. [4] But all these materials are recyclable - aggressively so. Once they enter the industrial chain they leave it very slowly. But what's strangest is the context: in a world where computers were expensive, then got so cheap we have them everywhere due to production efficiencies, suddenly on this issue capitalism cannot possibly work. There will only be more expensive goods forever, competition doesn't happen, a "gold rush" to find large reserves of demanded materials could not possibly result in a production boom. [1] https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/largest-cobalt-reserves-country/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/largest-cobalt-res... [2] https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/rare-earth-investing/rare-earth-metal-production/ https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-... [3] https://copperalliance.org/sustainable-copper/about-copper/cu-demand-long-term-availability/ https://copperalliance.org/sustainable-copper/about-copper/c... [4] https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium-mining-what-you-should-know-about-the-contentious-issue.html https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium...
greenthrow 4y ago
These are the same non-argument statements EV opponents bave been shoveling for decades. Any large scale change is necessarily going to be an enormous undertaking. That's self evident. Imagine telling someone in 2007 how many billions of iPhones and Android phones would be made and put into the hands of nearly every person on earth. They could have made exactly the same weak arguments you are making here of how it's not possible. But that's nonsense.

lm28469 4y ago

> Where do we get all the lithium, copper, cobalt to build electric cars? The reality check for EV will be very brutal We're doing the same thing as we did with ICE cars. We're ignoring all the drawbacks and telling ourselves we'll find hypothetical solutions sometimes in the future. We're basically green washing the entire auto industry: "shhh don't worry it's electric, now buy our $50k car and tell your friends you're saving the planet" When the average driver does like 30km per day all you need is some kind of hybrid car with a small but efficient gas engine. 90% of your travel will be fully electric, the occasional road trip would use gas (which would be expensive but something the average user doesn't need more than a few times a year) But I guess it's more marketable to sell AWD, 600+ HP, three tonnes lithium monsters than glorified priuses. This industry is fucked up and doesn't care one bit about sustainability.

aeha3hq 4y ago
>We're doing the same thing as we did with ICE cars. Are we? Despite all the spin that the green crowd like the put on things it's not like we actually had any idea back in the day about things like the impact CO2 emissions would have longterm. We had hints, people working on wildly different problems had data that contained the patterns that they needed to realize, but no one actually realized the scope of things with ICE cars for a long long time and while we've woken up to the problems with ICE vehicles now... fuel is hardly one of those problems and saying otherwise is just histrionics.
Maarten88 4y ago
> telling ourselves we'll find hypothetical solutions sometimes in the future Or we just put in LFP batteries now. No cobalt and nickel needed. Energy density is a bit lower, but costs are lower and durability is better Most Chinese brands use these; Tesla as well on some models
greenthrow 4y ago
A hybrid car is the worst of both worlds. Most people would always have been fine 99% of the time with a short range EV like a Nissan Leaf. But the human brain can't let go of the "what if" and long range EVs have proven necessary for large scale adoption. Regardless, batteries are highly recyclable. Lithium is super plentiful. Cobalt reduction and eventual elimination is making progress. EVs are the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational.
- lm28469 4y ago
  It's the best of both world. No city pollution, 90% of usage is fully electric, small batteries, your "what if" problem disappear. > batteries are highly recyclable Yet only 5% of batteries are recycled world wide > Lithium is super plentiful. Cobalt reduction and eventual elimination is making progress I'd suggest you to look at the mining industry and come back to me with your sustainability talk. > EVs are the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Freon is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Leaded gas is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Leaded paint is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Asbestos is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. Radium lipstick is the future and it will be great. Let go of your fear, it is not rational. The future is the end of personal vehicles, a fleet of state/city owned and shared small sized electric vehicles would be a vision of the future I can get behind. Three tonnes of steel and 600kg of battery to move our fat asses 30km a day isn't a future I believe in, it's a waste of space, resource and energy. Nothing in the auto industry makes sense right now, making them electric just displace the problem slightly further from us.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    The future is actually something akin to the eRockit which is a Pedelec turned into a small motorcycle. It has a max speed of 90km/h. I would rather commute with that than a car.
  - greenthrow 4y ago
    Hybrids combine all the downsides of an ICE car (way more maintenance, destroying the earth) with all the downsided of an EV (solving battery sustainability, requiring us to embrace renewable energy and move off coal and gas). Most Batteries not currently being recycled is a problem in the same way as most cars on the road still being ICE. Yeah it's an issue, but it's one which has obvious solutions. Your litany of non-sequitors doesn't warrant a response.

cm2187 4y ago

Plus the additional power generation. But I tend to think this can be solved by the market. Look at the extent we go to find oil at sea. If there is a market, the production will ramp up. What I would be curious is if there is a physical supply of those materials in such volumes.

uluyol 4y ago

Well how fast is capacity ramping up? And how much does the Earth have of these materials that we can sustainably harvest? I don't know the answers to those questions, but it seems like you need to know that to determine whether 100% EV roads can actually work.

XorNot 4y ago

This isn't an argument. You can't point to existing production in light of existing demand and say "this is insurmountable". You might as well be crying "we can't switch to electric cars! Where would we get all the electric cars from? Did you know that the current production of electric cars won't meet the demand if everyone switches?" The question is whether the materials are fundamentally unavailable in the accessible environment. Cobalt is only 140,000 metric tonnes per year, compared to an estimated 7.1 million tons currently known in reserves (and is a recyclable material).[1] China alone has 44 million tons of known neodymium. Global production was only 280,000 tons in 2021 but was an increase over 2018 which was 190,000.[2] Copper has known global reserves of 870 million tons, with 28 million tons a year of demand [3]. Lithium is the only resource where there's potentially an issue - known reserves are about 14 million tons, and production in 2018 was 85,000 tons so we have about 165 years worth at present rates but obviously that would increase. [4] But all these materials are recyclable - aggressively so. Once they enter the industrial chain they leave it very slowly. But what's strangest is the context: in a world where computers were expensive, then got so cheap we have them everywhere due to production efficiencies, suddenly on this issue capitalism cannot possibly work. There will only be more expensive goods forever, competition doesn't happen, a "gold rush" to find large reserves of demanded materials could not possibly result in a production boom. [1] https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/largest-cobalt-reserves-country/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/largest-cobalt-res... [2] https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/rare-earth-investing/rare-earth-metal-production/ https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-... [3] https://copperalliance.org/sustainable-copper/about-copper/cu-demand-long-term-availability/ https://copperalliance.org/sustainable-copper/about-copper/c... [4] https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium-mining-what-you-should-know-about-the-contentious-issue.html https://www.volkswagenag.com/en/news/stories/2020/03/lithium...

greenthrow 4y ago

These are the same non-argument statements EV opponents bave been shoveling for decades. Any large scale change is necessarily going to be an enormous undertaking. That's self evident. Imagine telling someone in 2007 how many billions of iPhones and Android phones would be made and put into the hands of nearly every person on earth. They could have made exactly the same weak arguments you are making here of how it's not possible. But that's nonsense.