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IMVHO > How much lithium does the world have? We don’t really know for sure. That's the simple main point. The rest are speculation. Oh, sure "not being sure"

by kkfx 4y ago

IMVHO > How much lithium does the world have? We don’t really know for sure. That's the simple main point. The rest are speculation. Oh, sure "not being sure" is not a reason not to try, but is a reason to have some backups. SO far we lack them. And that's the main issue. The secondary issue is recycling of metals, so far we have many experimental procedures, more or less doable at a not-just-lab scale, but nothing usable on scale. The corollary issue is that we do not have just cars, we also have airplanes and ships. So far some eVTOL have popped up but also prove they are not much more than very-short-range cars replacers for certain use cases. We also have some battery-electrical ship (and modern sub), but nothing really usable on large scale. Long story short: the road is very long and looking for alternatives is a MUST. A company can fail, it's perfectly normal, a society should NOT FAIL by all means and when happen it hurt much.

rootusrootus 4y ago
> nothing usable on scale There are many battery recyclers in China that grind up lithium ion batteries all day every day and recover the metals.
- slow_typist 4y ago
  Even if you can do it on scale and with a very high recovery rate of 90%, after 7 cycles half of the lithium is gone. Given the massive environmental effects of the mining and the relatively scarce reserves we need to allocate the metal very carefully. It should not be used to maintain a broken business model IMO.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Where does that 90% figure come from? The state of the art appears to be 99%.
    - slow_typist 4y ago
      99% in a lab, if you are very good. 90% IRL (on industrial scale) is my educated guess given that you have losses in the whole reduction network and diminishing returns in the extraction process.