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We Can’t Switch to Electric Cars Until We Get More Copper
- ggm 4y ago"switch" is a misnomer implying that my electric car is due to be delivered on monday with 22,000,000 others. We can actually continue to do what we are doing which is see the curve of adoption move, at the pace of supply chain logistics. Do we need more? Yes. Is this "switch tomorrow" ? no, it never was. Its a supply chain on lots of things, people included. Even chips. Your car is chip heavy and we don't have chips. Copper isn't the problem right now, or forseeable, at the prices people are prepared to pay for copper and its replacements. moving from ADSL to fibre? there is a LOT of copper in the Telco plant. A lot. Its valuable. In many economies they pay off local villagers to protect the phone lines for a 5km stretch to prevent predation on the copper. Does this mean we "don't have copper" ? no: it means that existing copper is cheaper than mining copper. This is also why henry moore and barbara hepworth sculptures are moving indoors: Bronze as scrap is valuable to thieves more than its art value. People have been stealing church roof lead since the middle ages. I am not a "shortage" denier, I just hate the "can't" in this because we can, at the pace we are.
- jschveibinz 4y agoTechnology marches on… https://hackaday.com/2021/09/30/the-coming-copper-shortage-aluminum-or-carbon-nanotubes-to-the-rescue/ https://hackaday.com/2021/09/30/the-coming-copper-shortage-a...
- entropicgravity 4y agoI haven't heard Musk complaining about copper before. Nickel yes, lithium yes but not copper. And China must have required huge amounts of copper (among other things) while they were building out all their cities. The price did go up a fair bit but there was no crisis.