The electric car industry hasn't <i>remotely</i> boomed. Electric cars are still deeply strangled by two key factors: industry inertia and the cost/supply of lithium batteries. Once those two factors are solved (and a build-up of lithium mines is key to that) electric cars will go from being a niche within a niche to utterly dominating the market very, very quickly.<p>Within the next decade we might see companies like Hyundai/Kia, Toyota and Honda selling more EVs than ICE. Take the Kia Niro EV as an example: if the cost of batteries halved and the supply was unconstrained, there is little stopping that kind of product from dominating the market—starting with two-car households with off-street parking.<p>With their lithium cell investments, Telsa are well positioned to benefit from this boom, but they need to think carefully about their positioning. Right now they're a luxury brand with no serious competitors; when Telsa's drivetrain advantage is substantially neutralised, their mind share is likely to stagnate.<p>In my opinion Tesla needs to prepare to be in the budget space. They need to partner with an external manufacturer to sell a product with normal door handles that competes with Hyundai and Toyota. Because once the cost of batteries falls, I predict a substantial slice of their market will simply disappear to the economy manufacturers. I suspect that many people who love Telsa really just love the idea of electric vehicles and they'll be buying something more like the Kia Niro EV.
This seems like a bit of hype over very little.<p>Look at the graph in the article. Lithium cost $5000/ton 4 years ago. Now it costs more than $11,000/ton. The only difference is the period in between where the price of lithium was almost $21,000/ton.<p>Presumably the mines operation 4 years ago were profitable. Now there's all these additional mines, and demand still has the price doubled in 4 years. And yet somehow the story is that EVs aren't succeeding? I see just the opposite- EVs are succeeding so much that the industry supporting them is growing and profiting very nicely.
This was so evident 2-3 years ago it’s ridiculous.<p>I worked on a bunch of projects in 16/17 and what I told all my clients is get to production and lock down offtake agreements ASAP as the amount of projects coming online was huge for the short term (with regards to hard rock lithium) and even worse long term (salars etc).<p>Even the most optimistic of ev adoption rates showed oversupply by 2023.<p>Some other facts I remember just as points of interest:<p>* lithium market is opaque. No open market and all contract based so very difficult to price.<p>* one major unknown that will further add to supply is recycling, with some tech I remember showing cost effective recycling of up to 80% of lithium.<p>* major bottleneck in short to medium term are the converters ability to refine. Premium will be placed on higher % Li product to increase recovery rates.<p>So yeah no surprising at all.
(Am a mining/mechanical engineer)
It seems like people often forget how applicable EVs are to in city heavy commercial vehicles such as garbage truck, buses, service vehicles<p>The high torque nature and predicable nature (at least in the case of garbage trucks and buses) make them ideal candidates for EV. Arguably much more viable use case (at least initially) than household vehicles.
I think that a lot of people (including the authors) think that electric vehicles are only cars. You only need to walk around the streets of Beijing to notice that far more electric vehicles are scooters and busses. Not the Bird kind of scooters but the scooters that you see in very congested cities as well as the chaps who deliver your pizzas. They are completely silent, it’s surreal. They also omitted obvious other uses of lithium batteries like electronic gadgets and solar farms.
Something incredible just happened.<p>After a half century of jaw-boning about the need for renewable "green" energy, we now have a repeatable scalable tech template similar to the [oil well + refinery + piston engine] or [coal mine + pulverizer + furnace + turbine] tech templates that scaled fossil fuel energy. It is: [wind turbines and/or solar PV panels + lithium ion cells].<p>By repeatable and scalable tech template I mean something that no longer requires non-incremental forms of R&D. We no longer have to think that deeply about it. It's now in the realm of "see that stuff? Build more stuff like that."<p>The solar/wind+li-ion template can, <i>if scaled,</i> power almost all current human industrial activity with the exception of long-haul heavy vehicles (land, sea, or air) and rockets. Those are important things but they're collectively less than a quarter of all fossil fuel use.<p>The key is "if scaled." We are going to need more lithium. Good news is that it's not really all that rare. Bad news is that until quite recently there hasn't been <i>serious</i> investment in getting it. Look at what we invest in getting oil vs. lithium.<p>That's because until quite recently there hasn't been the demand to justify that investment. Now there is. Lithium prices have exploded, signaling the need for more. The price signals are working. Good.<p>It's normal during this kind of scaling to have periods where it looks like investment is outpacing demand and vice versa. Demand and supply don't scale at the same rate so you get price spikes in both directions. This doesn't change the underlying reality now in effect.
There is already a backing up of IC car production in the luxury car markets as large numbers of people are delaying the purchase of new IC based cars in anticipation of a new EV supplanting it based on lower running costs, lower maintenance costs et al. In addition, these longevity factors are making EV buyers move up-market. This has gutted Mercedes and BMW sales, among others.
<a href="https://electrek.co/2019/07/24/tesla-model-3-outsellin-gas-powered-equivalents-combined/" rel="nofollow">https://electrek.co/2019/07/24/tesla-model-3-outsellin-gas-p...</a>
Well, this topic went south really fast! I'm surprised the new Goodenough battery design hasn't come up!<p>Getting back to an actual discussion of <i>lithium</i>, it'll be very interesting to see if the Goodenough solid electrolyte batter works well enough with sodium. If so, a lot of expensive lithium mines will be worth a lot less over time!<p>The Goodenough battery (he invented LiON batteries for those who don't know) looks to improve on LiON in most important areas:<p><pre><code> - higher energy density (~2x)
- not flammable
- faster charge rates
- many more charge cycles (~100x more)
- better performance in cold conditions
- either lithium or *sodium* based glass electrolyte
</code></pre>
Apparently 89 companies are evaluating the patents for production:<p><a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/all-charged-up-john-goodenough/" rel="nofollow">https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/all-charged-up-john-good...</a>
Do people really build mines with a 5-year horizon? Of course it's going to outpace demand... initially.<p>The great thing about mines is that you can just leave the lithium in the ground if the current prices aren't right.
This is no big deal. Prices will tank and an equilibrium will be reached. This kind of stuff happens all the time when supply lags demand and then catches up and you have a little bit too much supply.
Aren't other metals like Nickel and whatnot are the main bottleneck for the vast numbers of batteries required for the electric car boom? Didn't we already know for the long time that lithium is very abundant, but it's those other metals (which are required much less by mass, but still required) that might be a problem, and this is why different companies are betting on different lithium chemical processes, because they don't know for sure which secondary metal will become the bottleneck?
There’s so much energy waste in electric cars from the greater number of times energy must be transferred specifically where it’s changing form. I don’t really see how this can be minimized or changed enough to make and electric car world (or even hybrid electric) scalable in a way that isn’t problematically energy-inefficient. So, I’m at least a little tired of the idea that electric cars are such a groundbreaking solution.<p>I have nothing against them/people who use them but I’m not convinced that it’s the solution to the looming crisis/possibly explosive break up in our love affair with crude oil. Plus, I’m a little afraid that here in the US we’re about a minute away from destroying Appalachia even moreso—I.e. due to particularly destructive coal mining practices and mountain topping, etc. So I’m apprehensive about increased strain on the power grid. (And I’m not keen on nuclear power either). But I welcome some kind of paradigm shift/future work that reveals I am wrong in this regard. It would be awesome if someone re-engineered and improved some aspects of these things rendering them more effective and less destructive.<p>(Edited at 2:24EST for typos)
Hey. That looks like what happens with crude/natural gas/agriculture/any commodity. While it is worth being reported, this is Econ 101 supply and demand. Price volatility is part of the market.
There are other problems arising for electric cars: road tax.<p>Electric cars are way havier than most cars and have so much traction that road maintenance will be much more expensive when everybody has an electric car.<p>This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles.<p>I also think this is why brands like Toyota are still thinking about hydrogen cars. They still don't believe 100% in electric battery cars.
So first the SKY IS FALLING because demand is greater than supply and now the SKY IS FALLING because supply is (forecasted) to catch up to demand.<p>Sensationalist media articles win both ways :-)
Kinda useless build up. More material are been used to build dense battery and they don’t use only lithium as major source for these new types of batteries.