Electric-car race could strain lithium battery supply

[jimnms]

Electric-car race could strain lithium battery supply

The headlong rush to create electric cars for green-minded consumers may come with a significant economic and environmental cost.

Lithium ion batteries--the same used in electronic gadgets and laptops--have become the preferred battery type for plug-in hybrids and electric cars now starting to come to market.

That swelling demand has some industry observers concerned that there will be a shortage of the metal lithium, the material used to make the batteries.

"You can solve the transportation problem but end up creating an equally vexing commodity problem," said Matthew Nordan, president of emerging technology consulting firm Lux Research. "It's a big concern."

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[Powder Hound]

Short term problems at best. Anytime you have an obvious demand and therefore a business opportunity, people will respond. The only problems with lithium are 1) toxicity and volatility making manufacturing and materials handling hazardous (solved by manufacturing them all in Skoda, Chech Republic), 2) mining capacity and therefore availability of the metal itself (it isn't very common).

And just like every other time there's a problem showing where there's money to be made, lots of solutions magically appear and solve it. It is the miracle of enterprise and markets.

Why there's always such whining in the press about anything and everything is beyond me. And everything and everyone is always in crisis. Gotta be the most overused word in the media, just like 'baby' is the most overused word in pop music.

Just grab your rum and cola and head for the beach, and enjoy the afternoon. Worrying about press reports is silly.

 

[GoFaster]

I am of the opinion that if we wish to have a long-term electric-vehicle solution, the battery materials have to include only commonplace materials. Platinum (problem with fuel cells), lithium, cadmium, etc are not good in this regard. The potential less-than-optimum range, needs to be solved some other way. (Battery exchange, with every vehicle having interchangeable battery trays? It's done this way with forklifts ...)

Sodium-sulfur is a pretty good battery couple, the only trouble is that they can only work at high temperature.

 

[RabbitGTI]

WGAF, drive a diesel.