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And the rest of metals? Nickel, copper?

• ajross 4y ago
  Storage batteries are moving rapidly toward a LiFePO4 chemistry that doesn't require rare resources. You can buy cars (even Teslas) and home batteries with them already.
  • TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
    Only a matter of time before phosphorus becomes as expensive as nickel or copper and you are back on the beginning with lack of materials for batteries. > Earth's commercial and affordable phosphorus reserves are expected to be depleted in 50–100 years and peak phosphorus to be reached in approximately 2030. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus
    • ajross 4y ago
      No, phosphate is vastly cheaper than battery metals. I mean, yes, we're using way too much of it (for agriculture, in a manner that ends up unrecoverably flushed into the oceans). And we're going to hit a wall, and its price is going to skyrocket. But to matter to a battery producer it would have to be so expensive that we'd have all starved anyway. The price levels between batteries and fertilizers are just too different.
      • TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
        > No, phosphate is vastly cheaper than battery metals Lithium used to be cheap. Is not anymore. Phosphate will go same route. That's the whole point.
        • ajross 4y ago
          I repeat: if phosphate was so expensive as to make a significant portion of the material cost of a LiFePO4 battery, then we would have long since starved for lack of crops. Relative to food, batteries are an extraordinarily expensive luxury good.