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With India also discovering a very large amount of lithium reserves very recently, lithium might end up being abundant and accelerate the EV transition even fas

by npalli 4y ago

With India also discovering a very large amount of lithium reserves very recently, lithium might end up being abundant and accelerate the EV transition even faster. [1] https://innovationorigins.com/en/india-discovers-5-5-of-worlds-lithium-reserves/ https://innovationorigins.com/en/india-discovers-5-5-of-worl...

gleenn 4y ago
I believe even ocean water is a potential source of Lithium if we ever get constrained on more direct sources. Unfortunately it's not really Lithium holding back EVs, it's Cobalt and a few other rare earth metals. Also not sure how much having Lithium locked up in a heavily sanctioned country will help the big battery manufacturers. Edit: typos
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Doesn't Iran export oil to China? I'm sure they can export lithium, too.
- Swizec 4y ago
  > Also not sure how much having Lithium locked up in a heavily sanctioned country will help the big battery manufacturers To put my cynic’s hat on: Having something the super powers want sounds like a great way to stop being so sanctioned. Great negotiating leverage.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 988747 4y ago
    Or a great way to get yourself invaded by said superpower.
    - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
      I'm sure Iran is glad to field-test its drones in the Ukrainian theatre for this reason.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    Having something the super powers want sounds like a great way to get invaded.
agumonkey 4y ago
also interesting to divert interests from oil in this region, if they can prosper on lithium it may loosen some tensions
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  The tensions don't exist because of its oil. They exist because of their natural resources which may or may not include oil. Look all over africa for examples. Being rich in natural resources is a bit like being a really hot girl around a bunch of abusive predatory men. They'll shower her with gifts and tell her how amazing she is until she says: "no, I don't want to sleep with you" and all hell breaks loose.
  - lyu07282 4y ago
    western economists unironically call it the resource curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse examples include Saudi Arabia, Norway and Alaska. Oh no wait bad examples.
    - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
      Saudi Arabia is hardly a desirable model, though enough money admittedly papers over a lot of human rights abuses. In the above example it's like a hot girl with severe mental health issues. Norway's sovereign wealth fund is a strategy to escape the resource curse. It's like a hot girl with high self esteem and a handgun in her purse. Alaska is one state in a country that has other things going for it. It's like a hot girl with a protective older brother.
      - Turing_Machine 4y ago
        > Norway's sovereign wealth fund is a strategy to escape the resource curse. Alaska has the Permanent Fund for much the same reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
throwawaymaths 4y ago
Iirc, lithium is abundant, it just is enough of a pain (and water consuming) to purify and extract that you want to bootstrap with a high purity source. More than total lithium, I would want to know how pure it starts and what the access to water is like at any given site.
epistasis 4y ago
If I had a nickel mine for every time I've pointed out to someone that the "proven reserves" of lithium on a USGS two page PDF are completely uncorrelated to the amount of lithium that will soon be discovered, I'd be extremely wealthy with cobalt. (Cobalt is a common byproduct of nickel mining.) Even looking at the year-after-year increases in known lithium resources over the past decade shows massive increases. Lithium will not be a scarce material. The only difficulty in a speedy transition is planning: deploying capital at the right places so that there's not too much mining nor too little. Making enough battery production capacity, but not too little. There is a ton of money to be made in batteries, but there's a lot of risk due to uncertainty of size of market and timing.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  Exactly. Lithium scarcity is a similar mindset to what peak oil was in the 90s. It seems like an issue given our current understanding, but there's a huge economic incentive to discover new deposits and make their extraction economically viable. Some of the the largest oil fields currently known were only discovered in the past decade or two. I wouldn't be surprised if battery materials follow a similar discovery curve.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Peak oil was both right and wrong at the same time. Higher prices slowed demand growth, and made tight-oil financially feasible at the same. This combination made the peak much closer to a plateau. I also believe (but could be wrong), that a not insignificant amount of the success of oil alternatives today (which helps to slow demand growth) is due to a flurry of research that started with the price shocks of the 70s that were definitely not due solely to supply-demand issues.
    - cameldrv 4y ago
      I'd say peak oil was 99% wrong. The main argument against it was simply that market forces would find a way to deliver more oil if conventional oil started getting expensive. That's exactly what happened. As it turned out, the main solution the market has come up with is fracking, but if fracking had not been invented, it could have been tar sands, coal-to-liquids, gas-to-liquids, more ultra-deepwater drilling, political accommodation with pariah states, etc etc.
megaman8 4y ago
If you were to electrify all the vehicles in the world today (and the developing world hasn't even got lots of cars yet), it would take 1/2 the world's known supply of lithium. and those batteries only last about 8 to 10 years. Lithium become abundant, no way. Not with the amounts we're using up per capita and the enormous population on this planet. the green revolution is just getting started and there's definitely not enough to go around.
- adshouts 4y ago
  Lets save the planet with further exploitation of the planet.
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    What’s the alternative? Continue with fossil fuels? Pick your poison.
    - chuckwolfe 4y ago
      I see no reason why we can’t have both. Let the free market decide.
    - adshouts 4y ago
      There is no good alternative unfortunately, but the belief that electric cars are "better" for the planet is utterly ridiculous and false.
      - thehappypm 4y ago
        How so?
        adshouts 4y ago
        The total energy cost of producing and using the Tesla Model S Long Range battery pack for example, including battery production, lithium extraction, transportation, the energy cost of building the Gigafactory, battery transportation, battery recycling, diesel fuel required to generate electricity to charge the battery, and the environmental costs of battery disposal and battery fires, is equivalent to about 3,088,431 barrels of oil.

by npalli 4y ago

gleenn 4y ago

I believe even ocean water is a potential source of Lithium if we ever get constrained on more direct sources. Unfortunately it's not really Lithium holding back EVs, it's Cobalt and a few other rare earth metals. Also not sure how much having Lithium locked up in a heavily sanctioned country will help the big battery manufacturers. Edit: typos

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Doesn't Iran export oil to China? I'm sure they can export lithium, too.
Swizec 4y ago
> Also not sure how much having Lithium locked up in a heavily sanctioned country will help the big battery manufacturers To put my cynic’s hat on: Having something the super powers want sounds like a great way to stop being so sanctioned. Great negotiating leverage.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- 988747 4y ago
  Or a great way to get yourself invaded by said superpower.
  - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
    I'm sure Iran is glad to field-test its drones in the Ukrainian theatre for this reason.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  Having something the super powers want sounds like a great way to get invaded.

agumonkey 4y ago

also interesting to divert interests from oil in this region, if they can prosper on lithium it may loosen some tensions

rjzzleep 4y ago
The tensions don't exist because of its oil. They exist because of their natural resources which may or may not include oil. Look all over africa for examples. Being rich in natural resources is a bit like being a really hot girl around a bunch of abusive predatory men. They'll shower her with gifts and tell her how amazing she is until she says: "no, I don't want to sleep with you" and all hell breaks loose.
- lyu07282 4y ago
  western economists unironically call it the resource curse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse examples include Saudi Arabia, Norway and Alaska. Oh no wait bad examples.
  - SuoDuanDao 4y ago
    Saudi Arabia is hardly a desirable model, though enough money admittedly papers over a lot of human rights abuses. In the above example it's like a hot girl with severe mental health issues. Norway's sovereign wealth fund is a strategy to escape the resource curse. It's like a hot girl with high self esteem and a handgun in her purse. Alaska is one state in a country that has other things going for it. It's like a hot girl with a protective older brother.
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      > Norway's sovereign wealth fund is a strategy to escape the resource curse. Alaska has the Permanent Fund for much the same reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

throwawaymaths 4y ago

Iirc, lithium is abundant, it just is enough of a pain (and water consuming) to purify and extract that you want to bootstrap with a high purity source. More than total lithium, I would want to know how pure it starts and what the access to water is like at any given site.

epistasis 4y ago

If I had a nickel mine for every time I've pointed out to someone that the "proven reserves" of lithium on a USGS two page PDF are completely uncorrelated to the amount of lithium that will soon be discovered, I'd be extremely wealthy with cobalt. (Cobalt is a common byproduct of nickel mining.) Even looking at the year-after-year increases in known lithium resources over the past decade shows massive increases. Lithium will not be a scarce material. The only difficulty in a speedy transition is planning: deploying capital at the right places so that there's not too much mining nor too little. Making enough battery production capacity, but not too little. There is a ton of money to be made in batteries, but there's a lot of risk due to uncertainty of size of market and timing.

mywittyname 4y ago
Exactly. Lithium scarcity is a similar mindset to what peak oil was in the 90s. It seems like an issue given our current understanding, but there's a huge economic incentive to discover new deposits and make their extraction economically viable. Some of the the largest oil fields currently known were only discovered in the past decade or two. I wouldn't be surprised if battery materials follow a similar discovery curve.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Peak oil was both right and wrong at the same time. Higher prices slowed demand growth, and made tight-oil financially feasible at the same. This combination made the peak much closer to a plateau. I also believe (but could be wrong), that a not insignificant amount of the success of oil alternatives today (which helps to slow demand growth) is due to a flurry of research that started with the price shocks of the 70s that were definitely not due solely to supply-demand issues.
  - cameldrv 4y ago
    I'd say peak oil was 99% wrong. The main argument against it was simply that market forces would find a way to deliver more oil if conventional oil started getting expensive. That's exactly what happened. As it turned out, the main solution the market has come up with is fracking, but if fracking had not been invented, it could have been tar sands, coal-to-liquids, gas-to-liquids, more ultra-deepwater drilling, political accommodation with pariah states, etc etc.

megaman8 4y ago

If you were to electrify all the vehicles in the world today (and the developing world hasn't even got lots of cars yet), it would take 1/2 the world's known supply of lithium. and those batteries only last about 8 to 10 years. Lithium become abundant, no way. Not with the amounts we're using up per capita and the enormous population on this planet. the green revolution is just getting started and there's definitely not enough to go around.

adshouts 4y ago
Lets save the planet with further exploitation of the planet.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  What’s the alternative? Continue with fossil fuels? Pick your poison.
  - chuckwolfe 4y ago
    I see no reason why we can’t have both. Let the free market decide.
  - adshouts 4y ago
    There is no good alternative unfortunately, but the belief that electric cars are "better" for the planet is utterly ridiculous and false.
    - thehappypm 4y ago
      How so?
      - adshouts 4y ago
        The total energy cost of producing and using the Tesla Model S Long Range battery pack for example, including battery production, lithium extraction, transportation, the energy cost of building the Gigafactory, battery transportation, battery recycling, diesel fuel required to generate electricity to charge the battery, and the environmental costs of battery disposal and battery fires, is equivalent to about 3,088,431 barrels of oil.