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During the height of the industrial revolution, humans were able to double steel production roughly every 6 years. We've doubled global lithium production in th
by legitster 1y ago
During the height of the industrial revolution, humans were able to double steel production roughly every 6 years. We've doubled global lithium production in the last 3!
Even so, if you do the math about how much lithium we need to get to a few dozen kg per person given that rate of growth, we're still looking at 20-30 years. (There are also a lot of elemental and labor bottlenecks).
So you're right that it's not astronomical! We just might have speedier expectations for when it's achievable.
- NewJazz 1y agoWell, lithium is not the only option. For fixed storage, sodium is more and more feasible everyday.
- epistasis 1y agoI think the underlying point is that it production capacity, no matter the tech, takes time to grow. It's not lithium that's the bottleneck, it's building a big enough supply chain to get the lithium into battery factories. It's about building enough factories. For the particulars of sodium, it's similar enough to lithium that factories for one can be repurposed into factories for the other without a total rebuild or even total retooling. There are also many different lithium chemistries that are economical and feasible, and we see big swings in chemistries when there's a temporary supply block for, say, cobalt. So perhaps sodium would add a bit more to that flexibility, actually... However even when lithium was at its maximum in 2023, nearly 6x more expensive than it is now, it wasn't the main blocker for expanding battery production capacity (Sorry for the rambling, when I get some coffee in me sometimes it just pours out!)