Quote:
Originally Posted by MPaulHolmes
Lithium. It is thought (although not known) that practical lithium supply will be sufficient for a global hybrid market, but not a global plug-in hybrid market, and certainly not a global pure EV market.
|
Everything I've seen stating that seems to use outdated assumptions. I suppose that with Lithium Cobalt and similar availability could be a problem, but the best (cheapest per kWh stored) Lithium batteries, LFPs, use
about an eighth of what previous chemistries have used. G00gling turns up 1.4kg of Lithium Carbonate per kWh for LCP, and since the LFP batteries on TS' site seem to be ~1.5 times the weight of their equivalent LCP batteries, a kWh of LFP would require ~.25kg of Lithium Carbonate.
World reserves at 2005 prices are at ~13 billion kgs of Lithium, or about 68 billion kgs of Lithium Carbonate, which is enough for ~17 billion 16kWh packs, which would be good for ~160 miles in something like the Aptera and ~80 miles in something like the i-MiEV. Course, this is at 2005 prices/recoverable reserves, and based on everything I've read the $2-3 or so increase in battery price per kWh due to a doubling of Lithium prices would also increase world reserves by a fair chunk, and recycling would naturally be an option as well. Then there's seawater absorption, which is definitely expensive, but still an option because pure Lithium is currently only ~$40/kg. Even if Lithium absorption results in Lithium that's nearly a hundred times more expensive than what we see currently, it would still only double the cost of battery packs.
Supposely the cost of seawater extraction is ~$150/kg, which would increase the cost of Lithium per battery from ~$2-3/kWh to ~$10-12/kWh.
That said, as we've seen with NiMH, patent isht can keep low cost mass produced large format chemistries off the market for more than a decade, so I wouldn't hold my breath in terms of seeing LiFePO4 from a U.S. distributor for the same prices we're seeing from China, but it's definitely a technical possibility, even if it'll take a while to filter through.