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Electric Vehicles: Setting the Record Straight on Lithium Availability
- hristov 17y agoThe supposed lithium shortage has always been a red herring used by oil supporters. The theory goes something like this "if we rely too much on electric vehicles and hybrids we will switch from reliance on oil exporting countries to reliance on lithium exporting countries, which will be just as bad or even worse." Then the oil supporter starts drawing a scary picture of evil socialist Bolivia which is poised to take over the US economy with its vast lithium deposits. Of course this ignores a couple of things -- (i) lithium is not that rare, and is not only found in Bolivia and most importantly (ii) lithium is not used up or destroyed in batteries. It can be recycled. So it is very unlikely that we will get into the situation of progressively using up all the lithium supply and having a lithium crisis and so on.
- iigs 17y agoThis topic is as fascinating to me as it is impenetrable. I'd love to understand what he's saying but get balled up in the abbreviations and not understanding how to calculate how much lithium is usable from each mined mineral. Not to be too USA Today, but my understanding would certainly benefit from a couple pictures/graphs.