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The price of a given commodity rises due to demand increases -> people look for more of it -> people find it -> the commodity is eventually mined or otherwise e

The price of a given commodity rises due to demand increases -> people look for more of it -> people find it -> the commodity is eventually mined or otherwise exploited -> prices moderate. It happened with oil and now it's happening with lithium.

CameronNemo 3y ago
See also Aluminium. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/11/aluminum-was-once-one-of-the-most-expensive-metals-in-the-world/382447/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/11/alumi...
mschuster91 3y ago
And in a lot of cases it's countries that aren't exactly stable which have the resources. A lot of currently known lithium deposits (thankfully) come from nations at least allied with the West, but there are also places like Afghanistan [1] that just reek of a repeat of the failure in managing oil countries. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ev-lithium-afghanistan-taliban-china/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ev-lit...
- jbm 3y ago
  > of the failure in managing oil countries It's always fun when we go masks off on HN.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    The West propped up a ton of dictators and looked sideways as radical Islamists got ever more and more power. Yes I'd call that a failure in management.
mulmen 3y ago
It has happened with all resources. I won’t assume your intent but you invoked oil so I do want to point out the difference. In a battery lithium is not consumed completely after every use like oil. The lithium in a battery is used hundreds or thousands of times. When the pack is dead it can still be downcycled and eventually the individual cells recycled. With the lithium being recovered and reused. Yes, there is or will be a “lithium rush”. But it will look a lot more like gold or aluminum than oil.
mabbo 3y ago
I think the difference is that lithium is being created into a reusable product while oil is mostly made into a consumable, used once. A good battery lasts years, maybe decades. And in theory it can then be recycled.
- echelon 3y ago
  > I think the difference is that lithium is being created into a reusable product while oil is mostly made into a consumable, used once. Sourcing lithium is something we've been thinking a lot about, whereas we haven't reached peak fossil fuels or scarcity. There are plenty of places to continue drilling: the US, Greenland, the Arctic Circle, Antarctica ... The problem with fossil fuels is the carbon entering the atmosphere.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    To be fair, "peak oil" was a big scare at one point.
    - nostrademons 3y ago
      Arguably we reached peak oil in 2019: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265203/global-oil-production-in-barrels-per-day/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/265203/global-oil-produc... It's hard to extrapolate a trend though - there was a dip caused by COVID, and global oil use has been growing since then, but it's still not back to where it was 4 years ago. Also a lot of people think peak oil means that we suddenly won't have any gas available. No. Peak oil means all the easily extractable oil is gone, and so all future projects need to use more capital-intensive, technologically-advanced extraction techniques that cost more, and so the price of oil goes up, and then we use less of it while it's replaced by other technologies. Which is exactly what's been happening for the past ~5-15 years. U.S. is back to being the world's top oil producer, but all of it is in shale oil fields that aren't economically viable below ~$50/barrel, and so gas will never go back down to the $1/gallon it was in the 90s.
      - 3y ago

CameronNemo 3y ago

See also Aluminium. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/11/aluminum-was-once-one-of-the-most-expensive-metals-in-the-world/382447/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/11/alumi...

mschuster91 3y ago

And in a lot of cases it's countries that aren't exactly stable which have the resources. A lot of currently known lithium deposits (thankfully) come from nations at least allied with the West, but there are also places like Afghanistan [1] that just reek of a repeat of the failure in managing oil countries. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ev-lithium-afghanistan-taliban-china/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ev-lit...

jbm 3y ago
> of the failure in managing oil countries It's always fun when we go masks off on HN.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  The West propped up a ton of dictators and looked sideways as radical Islamists got ever more and more power. Yes I'd call that a failure in management.

mulmen 3y ago

It has happened with all resources. I won’t assume your intent but you invoked oil so I do want to point out the difference. In a battery lithium is not consumed completely after every use like oil. The lithium in a battery is used hundreds or thousands of times. When the pack is dead it can still be downcycled and eventually the individual cells recycled. With the lithium being recovered and reused. Yes, there is or will be a “lithium rush”. But it will look a lot more like gold or aluminum than oil.

mabbo 3y ago

I think the difference is that lithium is being created into a reusable product while oil is mostly made into a consumable, used once. A good battery lasts years, maybe decades. And in theory it can then be recycled.

echelon 3y ago
> I think the difference is that lithium is being created into a reusable product while oil is mostly made into a consumable, used once. Sourcing lithium is something we've been thinking a lot about, whereas we haven't reached peak fossil fuels or scarcity. There are plenty of places to continue drilling: the US, Greenland, the Arctic Circle, Antarctica ... The problem with fossil fuels is the carbon entering the atmosphere.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  To be fair, "peak oil" was a big scare at one point.
  - nostrademons 3y ago
    Arguably we reached peak oil in 2019: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265203/global-oil-production-in-barrels-per-day/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/265203/global-oil-produc... It's hard to extrapolate a trend though - there was a dip caused by COVID, and global oil use has been growing since then, but it's still not back to where it was 4 years ago. Also a lot of people think peak oil means that we suddenly won't have any gas available. No. Peak oil means all the easily extractable oil is gone, and so all future projects need to use more capital-intensive, technologically-advanced extraction techniques that cost more, and so the price of oil goes up, and then we use less of it while it's replaced by other technologies. Which is exactly what's been happening for the past ~5-15 years. U.S. is back to being the world's top oil producer, but all of it is in shale oil fields that aren't economically viable below ~$50/barrel, and so gas will never go back down to the $1/gallon it was in the 90s.
    - 3y ago