4 ms·

World Lithium Supply (2010)

46 points by julianozen 12y ago

wrd 12y ago
The author's numbers represent a lower bound on the amount of lithium required -- in reality, the amount of lithium required to produce all of those cars is much greater than just what's in the car. Each processing step from lithium-bearing ore to advanced lithium electrode materials has some yield less than 1, which quickly compounds. E.g., if there were only 10 steps between ore and electrode material (optimistic) and each step had an average yield of 90% (again, optimistic), then only 34% of the material in the ore would actually make it into the electrode.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nkoren 12y ago
This is a good analysis reaching a solid conclusion. The author is quite correct that the world cannot support billions of cars using long-range Lithium-based batteries. However, it probably will not need to. First: most cars are used for urban journeys, and most urban journeys are relatively short-range (roughly 12km in the US; half that in Europe). You could have a vehicle with a 30km range and it would suffice for >95% of your travel needs. Hydrocarbon fuels, with their high energy densities, made range a secondary design consideration -- there was little downside to designing for the 99.9th percentile of use cases. But range is fundamentally more costly in battery-based vehicles, which changes the design logic. I expect both users and the industry to recognise that it's better to design for the 95th percentile of use-cases, and rent larger vehicles for the rest. Second: infrastructure will be developed which mitigates/eliminates range concerns. Things like in-road inductive charging on motorways would make intercity travel possible even on a tiny battery. Third: In contrast to most of the 20th century, in the 21st century, cities are becoming denser and more walkable, public transport is generally becoming better, and younger generations are less enamoured with the car than they used to be. These trends don't look to reverse anytime soon. Fourth: Cars which require drivers spend > 95% of their lives parked. Vehicles which don't require drivers can provide taxi-like on-demand personal transport -- but as a public mode, for a fraction of the price of an actual taxi -- and they can be in essentially continuous service. Depending on the nature of the demand patterns and consumer acceptance of ride-sharing, one Robotaxi can do the job of 20-40 cars. Given the cost and convenience of such a transport system, it can be reasonably assumed that many people would forego private car ownership altogether, and rely on Robotaxis exclusively. While this wouldn't take cars off the road per se, it would certainly reduce vehicle sales dramatically (while rendering parking lots anachronistic). I expect that these trends, over the next 30-40 years, will produce a roughly 20-fold reduction in car ownership in the developed world. This will be offset somewhat by still-rising car ownership in the developing world, but the bottom line is that the industry is likely to shrink down to a size which the earth's lithium supply can handle.
- swimfar 12y ago
  If we assume that people continue to drive the same number of miles per year, the robotaxi concept won't actually reduce the number of cars being produced* . (number of cars produced/year=number of people * average number of miles driven per (person* year) * (1/average life of a car in miles) ). But it would do two other things. It would reduce the number of cars in existence at any given time potentially freeing up space (garages, driveways, parking garages, street parking, etc.) for other things. Also, cars would wear out faster (in time) which means you would shift the average age of cars on the road down. So on average it would also increase the safety and efficiency of cars on the road as well. Imagine 10 people who drive 10k miles per year who own cars that last 100k miles (just for the sake of simplicity). Right now, those people would each own one car for 10 years. In the system you suggest they would all share one car which would be replaced every year. So they would be driving a (technologically) new car every year. Of course this assumes that none of them ever want/need to drive at the same time. Perfect usage like that is not likely, but you can see that shared usage would still have this effect (even if it is not as large). * Neglecting the damage to cars which is not due to driving wear, e.g. corrosion. Taking this into account we would expect to see a reduction in the production due to being able to get more miles out of a car before it "can't" be driven anymore.
  - nkoren 12y ago
    Your formula is incorrect; time is more of a factor than mileage, when it comes to vehicle deterioration. This is why you routinely see taxis with more than 300,000 miles on their engines. Furthermore, automation itself will reduce wear-and-tear. I worked on the driverless pod system at Heathrow Terminal 5. One of the things we found was that wear-and-tear on the system was almost negligible -- probably less than 10% of what you would see in a human-driven vehicle. This was partially due to the fact that it was driving on a smoother surface than an ordinary roadway -- but also due to the extremely conservative and consistent acceleration/braking behaviour which the vehicles achieved, which put much less stress on many parts of the system. Although those are essentially hand-built prototype vehicles, I expect them to last ~400,000 miles before requiring significant refurbishment. Based on these observations,I feel quite comfortable predicting a dramatic decline in the rate of vehicle sales within the next several decades.
meesterdude 12y ago
So, if we run out of lithium, what are we switching to? lead-acid?
- enupten 12y ago
  Running out of Lithium is the least of our problems.
  - enupten 12y ago
    For the downvote mafia: running out of oil is way more dangerous for the civilization.
    - shoo 12y ago
      Agreed, even using a fraction of remaining oil reserves is dangerous for civilization. In a sense, these are all symptoms of the underlying problems: population growth, industry growth, consumption of resources (both non-renewable and renewable) at rates that cannot be sustained, and worst of all, the reluctance to think clearly about the longer term and take necessary action.
      - enupten 12y ago
        Not using it to prepare for the post-oil world is way way worse. I don't think current social - no it's not just political - structures allow for hitting the brake pedal before it is too late. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  Sodium? It may be a great alternative for applications less sensible to weight.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    >applications less sensible to weight // Such as?
jhayward 12y ago
This is an interesting calculation to do but the specific example needs improvement. First, the calculation of the available supply is based on known, existing reserves economically retrievable at current prices. Changes in demand will change both the known reserve quantity and the price. Lithium is currently about $1/kg, so there is plenty of room to grow price to increase supply without affecting the cost of batteries. So a reasonable estimate of lithium supply has to include both demand volume and price. Reserve growth based on demand volume and price is a very tricky thing to forecast. Second, the choice of 3.4 billion vehicles to "bring the entire world to North American levels" as a goal is an unrealistic number for many reasons. Regional economics, geography, and social density vary quite radically around the world. The built infrastructure varies and supports many different transportation modalities. It also doesn't take in to account changes in technology, infrastructure, and social organisation during such a radical transition. So a more reasonable estimate would be to simply replace all vehicles on the road with BEVs. Last, the note could also be improved by doing sanity checks. For instance, could the world production capacity of any other energy storage mechanism, including oil, hydrogen, ethanol, etc. support 3.4 billion vehicles? It's always useful to compare what you are calculating to the alternatives. There are currently about 1 billion cars in use in the world. Using just the reserve numbers quoted in the article it seems economically feasible to replace them all with Lithium chemistry battery electric vehicles.
- enupten 12y ago
  Ethanol wouldn't work because, it usually has a <1 EROI, and requires way too much land. Hydrogen might work as way for storing energy; I don't think there are limits on producing Hydrogen, given the energy. I don't know if the Tech is mature enough. Oil is doomed to run out someday (possibly within this century).
- closetnerd 12y ago
  > Using just the reserve numbers quoted in the article it seems economically feasible to replace them all with Lithium chemistry battery electric vehicles. Are you taking the efficiency of recycling lithium batteries into account? As I understand it, recycling lithium batteries isn't that efficient, and the average lifetime of lithium batteries, currently, is relatively low in relation to the usable lifetime of a car. The main point of the article seems to be about raising the very real concern that lithium is yet another finite resource which we do need to be aware of.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
As others have pointed out, Lithium mining is actually quite modest. When the price goes up those efforts will increase. And should we begin to desalinate sea water, one of its potential "waste products" is excess lithium. But that said, the real "win" comes when we have capacitors which are mechanically storing charge. Today you have two choices, one is a "plate" capacitor which builds up a separation of charges between two plates, limited by the dielectric constant of the material holding the plates apart, and chemical separation of charge by binding electrons to the atomic structure of two materials that can will exchange electrons given the opportunity. Mechanical storage of charge will probably involve a nanostructure of dendrites and spheres which are filled and emptied using magnetic fields. An early example was magnetic bubble memory which the presence or lack of charge in a small bubble, moved through a "racetrack" by manipulating the fields around the bubbles could be "read" or "written". If the charge carrying capacity of the bubbles was significantly improved, one could imagine a device where each bubble stays within the dielectric limits of carrying charge, but the total population of bubbles holds significant charge. As with the chemical process an internal "resistance" is present by the mechanical limitation of pulling charge out of the device (that is the rate of chemical reaction in a battery) but unlike a chemical battery such a device would by "fillable" at the same rate as it was "drainable".
allworknoplay 12y ago
It seems weird to assume we'll be on lithium batteries for the foreseeable future. I have twice in my career bet against improvements in battery technology, but even I think we'll eventually get ultracapacitors working reliably for transportation.
yzh 12y ago
That's why people are developing magnesium-ion batteries, which has much higher capacity and charge-discharge efficiency.
api 12y ago
I have wondered why a few car companies continue to work on hydrogen despite the success of the Leaf and the Tesla and the obvious advantages of plugin vehicles. Perhaps this is why: they don't think Li-Ion can scale in production to meet the needs of the massive mainstream car market.

46 points by julianozen 12y ago

wrd 12y ago

The author's numbers represent a lower bound on the amount of lithium required -- in reality, the amount of lithium required to produce all of those cars is much greater than just what's in the car. Each processing step from lithium-bearing ore to advanced lithium electrode materials has some yield less than 1, which quickly compounds. E.g., if there were only 10 steps between ore and electrode material (optimistic) and each step had an average yield of 90% (again, optimistic), then only 34% of the material in the ore would actually make it into the electrode.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

nkoren 12y ago

This is a good analysis reaching a solid conclusion. The author is quite correct that the world cannot support billions of cars using long-range Lithium-based batteries. However, it probably will not need to. First: most cars are used for urban journeys, and most urban journeys are relatively short-range (roughly 12km in the US; half that in Europe). You could have a vehicle with a 30km range and it would suffice for >95% of your travel needs. Hydrocarbon fuels, with their high energy densities, made range a secondary design consideration -- there was little downside to designing for the 99.9th percentile of use cases. But range is fundamentally more costly in battery-based vehicles, which changes the design logic. I expect both users and the industry to recognise that it's better to design for the 95th percentile of use-cases, and rent larger vehicles for the rest. Second: infrastructure will be developed which mitigates/eliminates range concerns. Things like in-road inductive charging on motorways would make intercity travel possible even on a tiny battery. Third: In contrast to most of the 20th century, in the 21st century, cities are becoming denser and more walkable, public transport is generally becoming better, and younger generations are less enamoured with the car than they used to be. These trends don't look to reverse anytime soon. Fourth: Cars which require drivers spend > 95% of their lives parked. Vehicles which don't require drivers can provide taxi-like on-demand personal transport -- but as a public mode, for a fraction of the price of an actual taxi -- and they can be in essentially continuous service. Depending on the nature of the demand patterns and consumer acceptance of ride-sharing, one Robotaxi can do the job of 20-40 cars. Given the cost and convenience of such a transport system, it can be reasonably assumed that many people would forego private car ownership altogether, and rely on Robotaxis exclusively. While this wouldn't take cars off the road per se, it would certainly reduce vehicle sales dramatically (while rendering parking lots anachronistic). I expect that these trends, over the next 30-40 years, will produce a roughly 20-fold reduction in car ownership in the developed world. This will be offset somewhat by still-rising car ownership in the developing world, but the bottom line is that the industry is likely to shrink down to a size which the earth's lithium supply can handle.

swimfar 12y ago
If we assume that people continue to drive the same number of miles per year, the robotaxi concept won't actually reduce the number of cars being produced* . (number of cars produced/year=number of people * average number of miles driven per (person* year) * (1/average life of a car in miles) ). But it would do two other things. It would reduce the number of cars in existence at any given time potentially freeing up space (garages, driveways, parking garages, street parking, etc.) for other things. Also, cars would wear out faster (in time) which means you would shift the average age of cars on the road down. So on average it would also increase the safety and efficiency of cars on the road as well. Imagine 10 people who drive 10k miles per year who own cars that last 100k miles (just for the sake of simplicity). Right now, those people would each own one car for 10 years. In the system you suggest they would all share one car which would be replaced every year. So they would be driving a (technologically) new car every year. Of course this assumes that none of them ever want/need to drive at the same time. Perfect usage like that is not likely, but you can see that shared usage would still have this effect (even if it is not as large). * Neglecting the damage to cars which is not due to driving wear, e.g. corrosion. Taking this into account we would expect to see a reduction in the production due to being able to get more miles out of a car before it "can't" be driven anymore.
- nkoren 12y ago
  Your formula is incorrect; time is more of a factor than mileage, when it comes to vehicle deterioration. This is why you routinely see taxis with more than 300,000 miles on their engines. Furthermore, automation itself will reduce wear-and-tear. I worked on the driverless pod system at Heathrow Terminal 5. One of the things we found was that wear-and-tear on the system was almost negligible -- probably less than 10% of what you would see in a human-driven vehicle. This was partially due to the fact that it was driving on a smoother surface than an ordinary roadway -- but also due to the extremely conservative and consistent acceleration/braking behaviour which the vehicles achieved, which put much less stress on many parts of the system. Although those are essentially hand-built prototype vehicles, I expect them to last ~400,000 miles before requiring significant refurbishment. Based on these observations,I feel quite comfortable predicting a dramatic decline in the rate of vehicle sales within the next several decades.

meesterdude 12y ago

So, if we run out of lithium, what are we switching to? lead-acid?

enupten 12y ago
Running out of Lithium is the least of our problems.
- enupten 12y ago
  For the downvote mafia: running out of oil is way more dangerous for the civilization.
  - shoo 12y ago
    Agreed, even using a fraction of remaining oil reserves is dangerous for civilization. In a sense, these are all symptoms of the underlying problems: population growth, industry growth, consumption of resources (both non-renewable and renewable) at rates that cannot be sustained, and worst of all, the reluctance to think clearly about the longer term and take necessary action.
    - enupten 12y ago
      Not using it to prepare for the post-oil world is way way worse. I don't think current social - no it's not just political - structures allow for hitting the brake pedal before it is too late. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg
marcosdumay 12y ago
Sodium? It may be a great alternative for applications less sensible to weight.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  >applications less sensible to weight // Such as?

jhayward 12y ago

This is an interesting calculation to do but the specific example needs improvement. First, the calculation of the available supply is based on known, existing reserves economically retrievable at current prices. Changes in demand will change both the known reserve quantity and the price. Lithium is currently about $1/kg, so there is plenty of room to grow price to increase supply without affecting the cost of batteries. So a reasonable estimate of lithium supply has to include both demand volume and price. Reserve growth based on demand volume and price is a very tricky thing to forecast. Second, the choice of 3.4 billion vehicles to "bring the entire world to North American levels" as a goal is an unrealistic number for many reasons. Regional economics, geography, and social density vary quite radically around the world. The built infrastructure varies and supports many different transportation modalities. It also doesn't take in to account changes in technology, infrastructure, and social organisation during such a radical transition. So a more reasonable estimate would be to simply replace all vehicles on the road with BEVs. Last, the note could also be improved by doing sanity checks. For instance, could the world production capacity of any other energy storage mechanism, including oil, hydrogen, ethanol, etc. support 3.4 billion vehicles? It's always useful to compare what you are calculating to the alternatives. There are currently about 1 billion cars in use in the world. Using just the reserve numbers quoted in the article it seems economically feasible to replace them all with Lithium chemistry battery electric vehicles.

enupten 12y ago
Ethanol wouldn't work because, it usually has a <1 EROI, and requires way too much land. Hydrogen might work as way for storing energy; I don't think there are limits on producing Hydrogen, given the energy. I don't know if the Tech is mature enough. Oil is doomed to run out someday (possibly within this century).
closetnerd 12y ago
> Using just the reserve numbers quoted in the article it seems economically feasible to replace them all with Lithium chemistry battery electric vehicles. Are you taking the efficiency of recycling lithium batteries into account? As I understand it, recycling lithium batteries isn't that efficient, and the average lifetime of lithium batteries, currently, is relatively low in relation to the usable lifetime of a car. The main point of the article seems to be about raising the very real concern that lithium is yet another finite resource which we do need to be aware of.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

As others have pointed out, Lithium mining is actually quite modest. When the price goes up those efforts will increase. And should we begin to desalinate sea water, one of its potential "waste products" is excess lithium. But that said, the real "win" comes when we have capacitors which are mechanically storing charge. Today you have two choices, one is a "plate" capacitor which builds up a separation of charges between two plates, limited by the dielectric constant of the material holding the plates apart, and chemical separation of charge by binding electrons to the atomic structure of two materials that can will exchange electrons given the opportunity. Mechanical storage of charge will probably involve a nanostructure of dendrites and spheres which are filled and emptied using magnetic fields. An early example was magnetic bubble memory which the presence or lack of charge in a small bubble, moved through a "racetrack" by manipulating the fields around the bubbles could be "read" or "written". If the charge carrying capacity of the bubbles was significantly improved, one could imagine a device where each bubble stays within the dielectric limits of carrying charge, but the total population of bubbles holds significant charge. As with the chemical process an internal "resistance" is present by the mechanical limitation of pulling charge out of the device (that is the rate of chemical reaction in a battery) but unlike a chemical battery such a device would by "fillable" at the same rate as it was "drainable".

allworknoplay 12y ago

It seems weird to assume we'll be on lithium batteries for the foreseeable future. I have twice in my career bet against improvements in battery technology, but even I think we'll eventually get ultracapacitors working reliably for transportation.

yzh 12y ago

That's why people are developing magnesium-ion batteries, which has much higher capacity and charge-discharge efficiency.

api 12y ago

I have wondered why a few car companies continue to work on hydrogen despite the success of the Leaf and the Tesla and the obvious advantages of plugin vehicles. Perhaps this is why: they don't think Li-Ion can scale in production to meet the needs of the massive mainstream car market.