Shortfall of lithium

corkgsxr

Seen a article about the big stumbling block that is coming around as more manufacturers go for electric is shortage in lithium and cobalt.

What do people think the solution Is? Or is it just speculation

oppenheimer1

They will mine more of it. What is interesting is that we will be exchanging working with the oppressive regimes of the middle East for the despots and warlords of Africa.

unkel

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

They will mine more of it. What is interesting is that we will be exchanging working with the oppressive regimes of the middle East for the despots and warlords of Africa.

What, Africa? South America. And Chili alone has enough reserves to provide the lithium for the batteries of 25 million EVs

As I've found from many of your posts in this forum, your research leaves a lot to be desired. Leading to your posts presented as truth, but falling far short of it.

jimmycrackcorm

A huge proportion of cobalt comes from the Congo so he's quite correct e.g. from Cnet

Deep in the earth there's a scarce, hard-to-mine metal whose price has already spiked by 70 percent in 2017, according to Quartz. And for companies to keep making billions of batteries for electric cars, cell phones and laptops, it's absolutely essential.

Give up? It's cobalt, a key ingredient in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Sixty percent of the world's supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), The Washington Post reported. Compounding the problem are alleged child labor practices that caused Apple to at least temporarily cut ties with certain mines (current status: suspended, a spokesperson confirmed to CNET).

So not only is cobalt hard to get, period, and even harder to get ethically, it's also now extremely expensive.

liamog

The repressive regimes of Canada and Australia can provide the Cobalt

eeguy

There's emerging techniques of taking lithium from seawater

Bigus

corkgsxr wrote: »

Seen a article about the big stumbling block that is coming around as more manufacturers go for electric is shortage in lithium and cobalt.

What do people think the solution Is? Or is it just speculation

Depressing (pun intended)

oppenheimer1

unkel wrote: »

What, Africa? South America. And Chili alone has enough reserves to provide the lithium for the batteries of 25 million EVs

As I've found from many of your posts in this forum, your research leaves a lot to be desired. Leading to your posts presented as truth, but falling far short of it.

Most observers of the market don't expect Lithium to be the element that slows EV production. They expect it to be Cobalt and Neodymium. The bulk of global Cobalt production takes place in central Africa where child labour and other abuses are rampant. Just like diamonds there is so called "blood Cobalt" too. There are other sources granted, but nowhere near as vast as central Africa.

As for Neodymium and the other rare earths required for EV production, China is by far the largest producer. There is a genuine fear that China will stockpile these elements for domestic use only and restrict sales to the rest of the world.

As the moderator in the forum, you should know to attack the post and not the poster. Point one of the charter.

unkel

I'm not a moderator in this forum. If you have a problem with any post, you can report it.

goz83

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

As the moderator in the forum, you should know to attack the post and not the poster. Point one of the charter.

That's where your research falls apart. You miss the obvious stuff. Had you looked under Unkels tag, you would see he is Mod for:

Motoring & Transport, Aviation & Aircraft Mods, Commuting & Transport Mods, Dublin County West, Motors Mods

Though he might want to shoulder in to mod this forum. Power corrupts!

unkel

goz83 wrote: »

Had you looked under Unkels tag, you would see he is Mod for:

Motoring & Transport, Aviation & Aircraft Mods, Commuting & Transport Mods, Dublin County West, Motors Mods

I'm actually only a Moderator for Dublin County West

I'm one of two Category Moderators for the Motoring and Transport category and part of that category are Aviation & Aircraft, Commuting & Transport, Motors, etc. including this forum

In fairness to oppenheimer1, yourself and many other people, the way boards presents this makes it not very clear at all. And there seems to be no easy solution to fix this

But back on topic please!

oppenheimer1

unkel wrote: »

I'm not a moderator in this forum. If you have a problem with any post, you can report it.

Cmod, whatever - it still means you should know the charter.

Anyway aside from a personal attack, you also went after the truthfulness of my post, so please enlighten me where the majority of cobalt (an essential raw material in Li-ion batteries) is mined?

zilog_jones

Aren't there efforts to try and move away from cobalt in batteries? There are also emerging technologies like glass batteries which don't seem to need it, but who know far away that stuff is...

liamog

Cobalt is mined in the DRC because it is cheap, other countries also produce Cobalt.

As a customer you can choose to purchase an EV using ethically sourced natural minerals. It could be like fair-trade for batteries.

Cobalt is also fully recyclable, which is more than can be said for dino juice.

BoatMad

Tesla has stated it intends to source North american cobalt for the gigafactory, whether enough can be obtained remains to be seen, but it should provide a spurt for the Nickel mining , as its in the doldrums

biko

unkel wrote: »

I'm not a moderator in this forum. If you have a problem with any post, you can report it.

unkel wrote: »

But back on topic please!

No backseat modding please

And yeah, stick to addressing the particular post rather than poster's history unless iT pertains to the particular post.

Lots of Lithium at Mount Leinster seemingly.

air

Neodymium is only required for permanent magnet motors which many mainstream EVs don't use at all. Furthermore rare earth (which Neodymium is made from) isn't rare at all, it's the low concentration of it in soil that leads to the use of the term "rare". The extraction of it is pretty abhorrent, the only reason it takes place in China is because they don't worry about damaging the environment very much.
So we're back to just cobalt and there are plenty of lithium chemistries that don't use it at all.
Lithium itself is not in short supply, there are huge reserves.
/thread

corkgsxr

BoatMad wrote: »

Tesla has stated it intends to source North american cobalt for the gigafactory, whether enough can be obtained remains to be seen, but it should provide a spurt for the Nickel mining , as its in the doldrums

Tesla have alot of orders they can't seem to fill. It's about 10k shortfall. And batterys are the issue

I suspect that's why Nissan are "probably" keeping their share in AESC after negotiations with LG chem fell through, they probably can't make the cells fast enough. And probably a reason there'll be no 60 kwh leaf for some time. Nissan can't produce cells to the same quantity so their costs are not low enough.

stesaurus

I remember Cros13 predicting all of this shortfall of battery production with manufacturers probably 18-24 months ago.

oppenheimer1

Deleted User wrote: »

I suspect that's why Nissan are "probably" keeping their share in AESC after negotiations with LG chem fell through, they probably can't make the cells fast enough. And probably a reason there'll be no 60 kwh leaf for some time. Nissan can't produce cells to the same quantity so their costs are not low enough.

It really won't matter how cheaply you can make the manufacturing process of batteries if the raw material price goes too high

I think competition will sort out that.

oppenheimer1

Deleted User wrote: »

I think competition will sort out that.

All competition does is prevent gouging, keeping suppliers honest. Competition won't stop prices rising if demand outstrips supply. Higher demand encourages higher prices which will bring new supply (difficult to extract but is now profitable) until price-demand equilibrium is reached.

cros13

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

All competition does is prevent gouging, keeping suppliers honest. Competition won't stop prices rising if demand outstrips supply. Higher demand encourages higher prices which will bring new supply (difficult to extract but is now profitable) until price-demand equilibrium is reached.

True... but there was a flood in investment in new lithium mining over the last 2-3 years and the market is on track to keep up with demand without prices rising.

Cobalt is the most difficult material, it's also very very supply inelastic with production usually a secondary output to mining for another metal like copper or nickel.
But everybody and their neighbour's dog are targeting low or no cobalt chemistries for their next gen batteries.
Tesla's 2170 cells for the Model 3 are rumored to be low-cobalt. And there is a new cobalt mine fairly close to the Gigafactory, with a second supplier in Mexico.

If we did have a spike in cobalt pricing we could see some mines "spent" for their primary resources reopened for cobalt, there's some interest in such a mine in Spain right now. In the medium term (~5 years) there could be as many as nine cobalt mines hitting full production in North America alone, if the price is there to meet it.

The squeeze in battery manufacturing over the next few years is down to lack of manufacturing capacity rather than raw materials. The capital investments simply haven't been made, for a lot of reasons... not least of which is that the last time carmakers were "going to go all in" on EVs the demand for the batteries never materialised and several large players went into bankruptcy. Most of the survivors were divisions of much larger companies and HQs have been understandably cautious about handing over billions to build new factories. We've now got to a point where the purse strings have loosened but the scale of the required build-out in bricks and mortar and machinery is stunning. We're talking about demand in kWh growing between 10 and 100 fold in the space of ten to twenty years.

Every $1/kWh below ~$140/kWh cell price has an outsize impact on demand as new battery markets open up outside of automotive.