4 ms·

Well, lithium is not the only option. For fixed storage, sodium is more and more feasible everyday.

• epistasis 1y ago
  I 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!)