Will We Run Out Of Lithium?
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- čas přidán 17. 05. 2024
- Lithium demand has been increasing for years thanks to the lithium ion battery. Now, that demand looks set to explode as many nations set new targets for reducing their carbon emissions. Given this, we might well wonder - could we actually run out of the stuff? Join us today as we explore projections for our lithium use and what it all means for the future of our society.
Written & presented by Prof David Kipping. Special thanks to Marc-SJ for fact checking.
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::References::
► USGS Data: www.usgs.gov/centers/national...
► LCE Conversion factors: nebula.wsimg.com/16ac93d043bf...
► Li per kWh calculation by Paul Martin: / how-much-lithium-li-io...
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#Lithium #lithiumionbattery #CoolWorlds - Věda a technologie
I don't find a lot of thoughtful, rational, information analysis-based videos that actually engender hope for civilization's future. This one did. Thank you for that. It matters more than you know.
That’d weird. I ALWAYS find that type of analysis to engender hope in the future.
It's coming to an end. Just repent!!!
This channel fucks for shit like that dude.
That's because "trust the science" types also tend to be liberal for whatever reason. And the liberals thrive on your suffering.
humanity deserves to die, the faster the better, we have dont nithing good on this planet, war, crime famine, suffering, cruelty,
I’m always amazed by David’s raw intellectual horsepower. I could analyze this video as a template for numerous other business analysis scenarios. Bravo David and the Cool Worlds team. You’ve done it again as always.
Agreed 👍
Thanks so much Derek! It was fun to take on a more grounded video here and I’m so pleased you enjoyed it too.
Cracks me up how he lowers expectations with “I am not an Economist” then proceeds to lay out an analysis far superior that just about anything I’ve seen written in Forbes and WSJ about this subject. It seems that the business world in general has a poor understanding of Li.
*Wow... the internet today, Poe's Law. So difficult.*
I wonder if there is lithium in Israel's Dead Sea. If so it could be mined and replenished by water from the Mediterranean Sea. In addition hydropower could be extracted in the process.
This is your most "grounded" video to date and I wasn't sure at first if I would like the absence of astrophysics as a primary subject. However, you're really good at this and I want more pure science, no matter whether it is tethered to issues here on Earth. Keep this up and you will give Veritasium a run for his money!
Thanks! Trying to be open to experimenting with content, keeps it fun and interesting for me as the creator too
You are not just an astro-physicist. You are a very good data scientist :)
I enjoy your comprehensive videos very much.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Absolutely love your way of storytelling. I’m not sure how you script them, but I know your delivery is flawless.. and a huge inspiration for me. Keep it up mate🙏
Thanks for the kind comment!
Actually, because of improvements to Li-ion batteries we may see an issue with lithium availability but for an entirely different reason (failure to die). The latest chemistries are so good that they will see over 1500 "full" charge cycles. For an EV with 300 miles of range that means well over 400,000 miles of life and that's just until the capacity has fallen to between 60% and 70% of the original capacity. They will still function just fine albeit with 30% to 40% less range. The car will be gone long before the battery packs die and used battery packs are too valuable to discard with too much remaining capacity to warrant recycling. Batteries are only going to get better so I'm not sure where this ends.
I'll leave a comment here, for I truly hope it'll get your channel a bit more well-deserved exposure:
Due to your comment, I went over and checked out your channel, the nosy bloke that I am, and I have to say... wherever you've found your inspiration for cooking up these videos, you must have had an eye for spotting the exact right places. But I am sure that what fascinates us viewers and which you can deliver has its roots in your very own, natural talent nonetheless.
A rare gem to find in today's CZcams landscape, to say the least!
@@ancogaming wow, I don’t really know what to say… thank you so much?!❤️
By far the biggest help Washington can do is to streamline mine/mill permitting process that takes a decade today, mandates, incentives and other costly ways *will not* help for local production without getting out of the darn road to production. Canada takes only some 2 yrs for the same process.
04:06 ".. think about that the next time you hold a piece of Lithium in your hand". I'm fairly sure something else would dominate your thoughts if that most unfortunate thing happened. ;)
I remember reading a novel where the modern day protagonist awoke in the future and was surprised at how fast humanity ran out of iron. That's sadly the harsh reality of all non renewable resources on Earth. We are literally on a race against time to gain the ability to mine the stars (more realistically, asteroids and other planets) versus the limited resources of Earth. If we're fast enough to develop space travel in the solar system, we will have access to a near infinite amount of resources, if we are too slow, we will be stuck on this tiny floating ball for eternity. But to relate to the video, yeah we will ran out of Lithium way before we can get this alloy elsewhere at which point will it be really worth it to start using it again.
Do you always play with yourself in public?
What you should do is start worrying about food production and it's efficiency when it comes to having the total population rise up to 10 billion.
Where are you going to get the electricity to power the batteries
@@autohmae exactly, my recent comment, lithium has nothing to do with nothing when compared to population n power production....
@@autohmae We probably won't reach that number within this century or the next. All first world countries fertility rate per women is below 2.1 and as soon as Africa get below that as it eventually will, everyone will feel the reduction of people (be it good or bad). Some country already face this problem like Japan and within 1-2 decades China.
I was really impressed about this release as it was different to what you normally do, and would be happy to see more of this!
Another thing to be addressed next to the lithium supply, is the fact that today's power grids are unsuitable for all those cars to be charged simultaneously.
No, in nearly every industrial country, the grid engineers will tell you the grid can and will cope fine. For one thing everybody will never charge their cars simultaneously, the same as every ICE car does not turn up at the pumps at the same time. And EVs can actually help the grid, by using up the abundant spare off-peck energy. (most grids spend most the time at around 40% capacity). And as grids bolt on more and more renewables will be more and more times when the grid has excess spare cheap energy. And there is the potential of VTG!
And all power grids are dynamic and evolve and continuously change over time (for example when AC was introduced in the US the grid demand doubled in a decade)
But yes, I'm sure there will be some minor teething problems along way which the press will jump on!
@@stevetaylor2818 That's cope, actually.
@@stevetaylor2818 wrong
I think this is a great argument for why ewe can't just switch all cars to electric, but that we need actively push to (re)develop our cities so that cars are not necessary for every day life.
Indeed.
PUBLIC TRANSIT.
Busses, trains, metros, etc.
I think cities designed around cars is mostly United States/Canada problem, not the world problem. Although there's a push for an electric public transport now. Bus with a battery seems more convenient than a huge electic grid for trams or trolleys. Couple of years back, largest trolleybus system in the world was dismantled, in Moscow, in favor of new electric buses. Which can spontaneously catch fire btw. I read about same thing in Germany, like whole bus depot with 100+ vehicles burned down because of 1 damaged battery or something.
"Full disclosure here, I'm an astrophysicist, not an economist." has got to be one of the proudest statements anyone could ever make.
This is a very good and informative documentary. Thank you David for the hard work of producing it.
(This video is for explanation purpose only in Animation of the prototype of the device in CZcams)
czcams.com/video/wfGjGqMfKNs/video.html
Never thought about running out of lithium but you have a point.
Lithium isn't really the material we need to worry about running out of. It is the other materials used in batteries that are less common that might be a bigger deal.
Great video! I have been looking at some adjacent stuff, and something to keep in mind is that the high energy density of lithium batteries is only *needed* by mobile applications, while stationary assets can be reasonably replaced with heavier, non-lithium constructs. I think one US company is developing a ferric battery that is super bulky and heavy, but can run for decades with minimal maintenance and hazard. In the case of distributed solar generation as you mentioned, it is not always required to get that fancy tesla wall pack when a big buried box does the same thing but cheaper.
That’s an excellent point and a good way to save on lithium
Yu Lu: Yup. Instead of electric batteries, large stationary systems can use heat storage, gravity, etc. -- the key is cheap, reliable, durable energy storage that can generate electricity (by, say, driving a turbine), and be 'recharged" to store the needed energy repeatedly.
Just like for oil, where we should be using it for things we badly need (materials) vs. just stupidly burning it, using lithium for where the light weight is needed makes lots of sense. The good news is that over time, economics tends to reward using things wisely at large scale -- though it can take a long time for industries to mature enough to "get there".
@Peter from NZ Regarding your point (a): That was my thought too, but I read that a grid even the size of Europe is way too small to work, aka will occasionally drop below 10 %. And larger grids are just not feasible today.
Regarding (b): Nevertheless the majority of power consumption is still instant, the large industries consumers and commerce.
@Peter from NZ Your right, I didn't specified it more clearly cus I didn't remember it enough. What I remember: It said in a grid the size of Europe we would need more than 10 times more installed capacity than needed, so that at any given time to not have power outages with only renewable energy.
@Peter from NZ Maybe you are right.
You are to science education as Philip Glass is to music. You inspire me and cause me to relate to science in an emotionally rich as well as critically analytical way. If I decide to pursue a graduate degree, you will have greatly influenced that choice, and it will most definitely be in astrophysics. Thank you for your contributions to science and the improvement of the average persons understanding of it.
"You are to science education as Philip Glass is to music..."
Philip Glass, the famous taxi driver who was flagged down on Broadway while his music was being premiered at Lincoln Center?
I dunno. Can David Kipping pass the test for his license? Or will he, sob, end up the Billie Holiday of science education, unable to get his cabaret card?
You are such a good educator! I would love to see a joint video conversation between you and Anton Petrov.
Who is Anton Petrov?
I would absolutely love to hear your input, as a follow up to this video, on other battery technologies like graphene, solid state, nuclear, diamond, and hemp
Graphene Aluminium-ion batteries should be coming out to EV's by 2025/2026 and could be a big help to this problem. No lithium, manganese, cobalt, etc. Just aluminium and graphene.
The big crux of these batteries is the graphene, which until now, hasn't been easy to manufacture. A few companies (Graphene Manufacturing Group for one) are on the cusp of mass producing battery grade graphene on the cheap. As well as their batteries.
The biggest tragedy of the energy industry has been the systematic over-looking of nuclear fission electricity. Vehicular emissions should rightly be a concern, however the daily and industrial use of energy represents the lion share of the global issue. Unilaterally switching the global fleet of vehicles over to EV without proper service infrastructure or energy production to match the now significantly increased demand on energy presents an exacerbated energy crisis we are already facing as we wane off our usage of fossil fuels for energy production. Our production of clean renewable energy will not be able to keep up with our energy needs if we pursue this course of action to manage climate change. In fact we may see some regions fall back on older dirtier methods to meet demand, we see this in countries like Germany where their energy crisis is being managed by re-opening coal fired plants after they've shut down their nuclear reactors, and due to the on-going war in Ukraine. Solving our growing energy crisis by investing into more nuclear technologies before we put ourselves deeper into the hole we find ourselves in should be our priority.
Yes! Sustainable energy is basically vaporware. It sounds nice but, unless we make jumps in magnitudes, it will never be able to power the world
I agree in more than one way, yet a lot of people are afraid of nucleare, wich can be understand but we cannot tolerate anymore in the situation we are in right now. Massive neutre and accurate information should be given to mass of people, starting immediately. Sadly if I try so I will be chased down from every part on internet.
Oh, and we should reduce our growing demand on energy. At least this. Asap.
Anyone any idea how to do all of this? I take any.
@@louiseb3146 If you truly feel the ‘calling’ to
‘evangelize’ for NUCEAR POWER, I recommend that you leave URL call words, such as “GOOGLE LFTR and/or MSR Nuclear power generation”. That way you can get an assist from those who have already polished their spiel.
This method applies to just about any point that you may wish to make.
Great points. Unless we address the fundamental way we use energy (using and using without thought for the long term), I fear we will be in an increasingly tighter spot energy-wise.
There is so much wrong with the op, I don't even know where to start.
What unilateral push? There is none, strawman lover. Infrastructure grows with demand, which will grow with demand for electric-only vehicles. Also, natural gas is not perfect, but having that provide energy at scale is WAY better vs the burning of oil-based gas on each and every individual car. And renewable that is not fission-based can scale up while we rely on other non-fission solutions.
The real problem that you and your cohorts will never overcome is that fission has REALLY bad PR - and it earned with the accidents that have happened (and not because of some green loving person). You live in a fantasy world if, for example, you think we will build these out in the US with it being nickel and dimed until, sooner or later, there is an accident.
The private section can certainly not be trusted with fission, and the government will bend to that will and just screw it up all the same. Also - none of your supporters want to live anywhere near it, so you whining about nimby-ism is especially funny.
Great video. I wonder if non-lithium batteries - like ones with heavier elements (sodium) could be reserved for stationary applications (grid storage) so lithium could be used for high-value and mobile applications like electronics and cars.
Good idea I suspect will have to happen to some degree
I think that a lot of the tech, at least for home applications, use deep cycle batteries. So, they already use heavier type cells?
We have SCADS of Zinc for Zinc Flow batteries.
If we had to, we could replace all the gas stations with Zinc electrolyte stations.
You’d literally “fill up your tank” while discharging spent electrolyte for recharging.
You pump the electrolyte through the battery plates to power the wheels.
But the graphene/aluminum ion solid state batteries will probably eliminate any demand for Zinc Flow cars.
I’ve read that Zinc Flow batteries are very well suited to Grid power backup.
If you can store ten THOUSAND GALLONS of charged electrolyte underground, why would you use any other battery chemistry?
Already been happening... Chemistries that are cheaper but less energy dense go into stationary storage and lower range cars... Future techs are planned the same... basic business to aim products with different specifications at different market applications...
no, it's bad, in most circumstances batteries are like the worst way of storing energy from solar and electric cars suck in most instances, better public transport would help way more
Last time I ran out of lithium, I maxed out all my credit cards and booked an expensive hotel in Vegas. So, I'm not sure _the world_ can afford to run out.
Excellent analysis, as always. I completely agree that recycling will play a crucial part in obtaining enough lithium to get us by.
Ex-Tesla employee J.B. Straubel started Redwood Materials in 2017, and is not only recycling a huge amount of lithium now, it's plans include actually making cathode material on-site. And they claim a 97% efficiency in recovering battery materials.
I wonder about sodium, I've heard that companies are trying to substitute it for lithium,; it's a little heavier that lithium, but not by a lot.
I'm glad to see you branching off from astrophysics a bit. Not that you don't do a fantastic job with the stars, (you absolutely do) I'm just happy to see the subject of lithium availability treated with scientific rigor.
Well done, as always.
Have you heard about hydrogen cells? Small tank of hydrogen in your car can give you way better range than the best battery-powered EVs. And it's so ridiculously simple.. Just take a tank, fill it with hydrogen (which takes minutes at most like in every regular car nowadays, not hours for EVS) and you're good to go. There's nothing to degrade, no elaborate chemistry needed, it's also much safer. Everything is pointing to hydrogen cells in EVs making it absolutely obvious choice yet somehow people still seem to push their money and effort into batteries. It's ridiculous.
@@JayPixx Hindenburg.
@@actually5004 Hindenburg what?
Haha you tried to be clever I suppose xD
Try to think about your comparison deeper and come back smarter.
@@JayPixx Elon and many others have explained in detail why hydrogen is not a good fuel for most use cases. Some large scale uses is about the only cases where it makes sense... look into it, please... There are some basic physics that get in the way and some large scale distribution and generation problems as well... It is far from an "obvious choice", it is obvious why it is a terrible idea, actually...
@@karlsjostedt8415 absolutely not and I "looked into it".. A lot. Why do you think Musk says hydro isn't good? Do I really have to spell out the reasons for you? ;)
Oh, and feel free to give me some examples of why is it so difficult to generate and distribute hydro? :) especially the generate part, because it's so easy we wouldn't even have to distribute it.
Super educational ! Keep up the great work !!
Well researched and well said. I think it was great you mentioned the recycling research. I was really hoping you'd mention it at the start of the video
The other thing is the working conditions for lithium and cobalt miners. EV advocates like to ignore the child labor involved in EV production but nothing can stay hidden forever.
So glad you addressed recycling. I do wonder if the non-EV demand is understated. As automation comes more online for common jobs there might be more autonomous workers who move through facilities uncabled which will also need batteries.
The video is actually generally wrong. There's already efficient recycling happening of lithium ion batteries, it's just not at a significant level yet as there's very little lithium batteries to recycle yet.
Also not factored in is growth in local power storage, if it picks that that could consume as much if not more than EVs. As renewable energy has to be stored for quick release and gravity based storage solutions may not be enough.
@@Codysdab Each EV stores enough energy to run a house for about a week... And they are starting to and will ever more be used as stationary storage to help balance the grid... Also, the cell chemistries that are cheaper but not energy dense enough be to put into a moving vehicle is what is used for stationary storage, so one supply is not necessarily taking away from a different supply...
Great video! In terms of battery/lithium recycling i recommend having a look at Redwood Materials. I would also love to see a similar video on graphite! It will be in deficite just like lithium and the material is much more under the radar even though it makes up about 30% of the mass of a lithium-ion battery! Keep up the great work!
Great video and so well researched. Thank you. Some food for thought though:
- Lithium mining is devastating to the earth's surface and scenery.
- Lithium leech fields are toxic. What happenms to them once the mine is abandoned?
- What is to be done with discarded batteries?
- The amount of heavy fossil fuel powered equipment used to extract, transport and process lithium renders any carbon reduction to virtually net zero.
- The necessary mining is done on the backs of the poor and children in poorer countries as rich countries' dermand increases. Is there a moral cost?
- What do we do with unwanted EVs once the battery life is exhausted or the owner wants a newer model? There is no resale market for a car needing a $20k battery replacement.
- What happens when an inevitable terror attack on the power grid takes the grid offline for weeks or months? How will that affect the economy when the primary mode of transport is parked?
- What happens when electric demand outpaces the ability of municipal power infrastructure to deliver like in California?
- Not everyone will be able to afford an EV. If fossil fuel vehicles are "illegal" how will these people get around?
- Automobile crashes happen frequently. If batteries are damaged and need replacing at exorbitant costs, what happens to the affordability of car insurance? How will that affect those of lesser means?
- If the motivation for widely adopting EVs here in the US is to prevent the dubious idea that climate change will be catastrophic if not controlled, what about the two most populace countries on earth (China and India)? They are poorer countries with combined populations ten times greater than the US and are larger contributors to global carbon emmissions than the US. Us "doing our part" addresses nothing happening in the rest of the world with a more deleterious impact on the macro climate.
Sometimes the law of unintended consequences creates a larger problem than the problem being solved.
Someone once mentioned that we will never run out of oil… and they’re right. Not because it is unlimited, but because as it becomes more rare the price will suppress demand to the point people don’t use it. The same is true for lithium. As demand outstrips supply, the price will increase to the point of depressing demand and we’ll never approach the country’s ambitious goals. Fortunately, Silicon Ion and Aluminum Ion hold promise of diversifying our battery supply. Look forward to those two technologies maturing and how they can propel EV adoption.
Excellent point and one that the presenter seems to have completely missed. Demand, supply and price are all interlinked. In our modern economies supply ALWAYS meets demand at a variable price, then the price affects the demand and supply.
Lithium is plentiful, there is way more that we can relatively easily reach on the planet than we could possibly need even if we grew our activities by 10x... Regarding ambitious goals of nations and mandates, industries and consumers are making the switch much faster than any mandates in any region... Renewables with battery storage is so cheap that all grids would like to convert yesterday... EVs have been proven and sought after by fleet operators for many years already. Consumer demand and cheaper costs to manufacturing EVs means that it will be hard to sell ICE vehicles after around 2025 with USA and a few others being about a year behind due to the extreme propaganda against EVs in some places... Tesla and Chinese companies are growing very fast and will take over any demand that the older companies cannot fill with their new EVs...
Exactly! We will never run out of oil, just as we haven't run out of uranium, coal or wood.
I doubt a major lithium shortage will materialize because the mandated EV adoption is impossible. California which has only .3% EVs on the road already has resorted to asking people not to recharge their EVs at certain times because California's power grid couldn't handle it. 5% or more EVs by the 2030s would require a massive increase in the construction of new powerplants along with a complete overall of the power grid... Actions so unpopular government not only hasn't shown any interest in paying for it, they're not even talking about it.
Globally EVs account for about .007% of cars on the road. So given the permitting process for new powerplants is measured in years if not decades and again government isn't even talking about increasing grid capacity. The idea we're going to increasing the number of EVs by hundreds of times current levels in just 13 years is total pie in the sky....
I mean this why Musk is after Germany to reopen it's nuclear plants. He knows the real shortage that will limit EV adoption is grid capacity, not lithium.
Shhhhh dont tell that stuff, many ppl like to dream... and many are totally lost in dreams but some will feel pretty stupid when wake up.
>22% of all passenger cars on Norwegian roads were plug-ins
I think this is just California being a joke that neglected its infrastructure (well okay later part applies to all of USA, thanks boomers)
Screw lithium, have you ever seen a cobalt mine? These EV acolytes have no idea the sorts of dirty, low-paid, exploitative conditions they put workers in third world countries through just to claim they're "green" and therefore better than those "dirty gas guzzlers". The cognitive dissonance is beyond astounding.
@@Poctyk Norway is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. Richer than the US. As well it's small and has a population under 6 million. That's a pretty good recipe for EV adoption. The US is a massive country with 330 million far less affluent people.
Also the term Plug-ins is BS. Plug in hybrids which undoubtedly make up nearly all that number rarely actually get plugged in...Not to mention if/when EVs really start to make a dent in the percentage of ICE cars on the road we can expect electricity rates to increase dramatically and gas prices to plummet. Which will also slow the rate of EV adoption.
Currently Asphalt, oil, rubber, fertilizers, plastics and thousands of other things are biproducts of Gas and Diesel production. These products will still need to be made. Which means gas will also need to be made and lower demand for gas means lower prices for gas. Lower gas prices will make ICE cars more attractive and EVs less attractive .
If that was the case manufacturers must be in their own little world of agenda to think ruling authority will mandate more power grid for the increase of EV cars. That or your random statistics and make believe stories are to be taken in a pinch of salt.
Interesting analysis. EVs are just the beginning in a shifting energy market. No one knows what the future looks like until it’s in the history books
not entirely true. many people successfully predict future trends of tech, social norms, economies etc. we just don't get exposed to them by mainstream medias who are controlled by corporations with vested interests in certain outcomes over others and want to influence that in their favor.
@@daltonbedore8396 Just as many, if not more, people make incorrect predictions. Your conspiratorial response doesn't refute the OP in any way.
@@ilicdjo Original Poster
@@ilicdjo tf is tf?
@@brettvv7475 There was no conspiracy AT ALL in that person's post. Try harder. People make predictions all the time - we knew about global warming for DECADES (early predictions about it are almost entirely correct) - yet most people DIDN'T actually know about all that - because... why?
Yeah, that's what I thought. I guess your reply is much dumber than at first glance.
Cheat sheet - the oil companies knew about global warming and the human effect on it for many decades and lied about it while even preparing for it - because making money was way more important than the future of the planet.
Oh, it must suck to be so totally wrong when there are EASY examples of Dalton being 100000% correct. But who knows, maybe Dalton also things some dumb crap about a flat earth or whatever, but their point stands, and your reply is stupid.
"One word for you, Benjamin": Norway. That's right: lovable, already wealthy, Western Norway has just struck the lithium motherlode. Literally! So, don't worry. Be 😊
What i got from this video is ,invest in lithium stocks
I have great appreciation for the amount of research you put into this. Love your storytelling abilities and caution while extrapolating out the data. I'd love to see a second part of this video digging more into the climate change aspect of this. For example, what would the effect of switching to EV's really actually be for the environment while considering all factors like what it takes to recharge them, the effects of the mining, and the effect of non-recyclable batteries.
@EO Then thank the grad students and post docs. Cheers,
Short answer, it's really fucking bad.
Long story. Switching to EV will destroy energy stability of 3rd world countries and some 1st world countries will become 3rd world (you can already see the problem developing in real time on Germany and don't buy the msm bullshit, it's not Russia's fault, Trump even warned Germany about this, they laugh at him, they're not laughing now).
Now mining... well... remember the blood diamonds? multiply the effect x10000, countries that are already dystopic will become even more miserable for those unfortunate to born there, look at southamerica, companies mining lithium there are foreign investments, mainly China and Canada, working conditions are hazardous and if you suffer an accident you can forget about getting any kind of meaningful compensation, governments are not and will not be your side.
The amount of energy needed to recharge a battery will probably go down as new technology emerges, but the requirement is there, hope you love nuclear energy because that's gonna be the only way for a nation to supply the energy that will be needed without going to war every 2 years. Nuclear energy is by the way, the cleanest energy we can have today so if you're one of those virtue signaling champagne socialist ecohypocrites you better remember this when you're bitching on twatter about new nuclear power plants being planned.
Battery recycling doesn't look good, realistically speaking, only countries with a lot of money will be able to do so, but at the expense of new taxes, recycling is neither cheap nor profitable, it's gonna be subsidized with your money but you'll see no earnings.
So... EV it's not good enough to go full in, even the prices are trash, they cost almost 4 times a normal vehicle, so if you don't make 100k yearly you will probably not own an EV anytime soon, and prices thanks to the globalists at the WEF will only go up.
Welcome to 1984, you will own nothing and be happy.
I would also ask what the effects of climate change might have on our ability to mine, recycle, and research. There's the matter of maintaining and improving our infrastructure to withstand higher climatic demands and stresses, as well as growing demand for consumption, especially as we need electricity for cooling or heating. What's the expected (growing) demand for lithium to support infrastructure? I see another upward demand curve here.
My goodness, i've sid it time and again and i'll continue to say it, i LOVE your videos, to me they're the best on CZcams for the type of content you make, my absolute favorite, top shelf quality material, thank you to you and your team, keep the good stuff coming.
👍
check out tom scott
Great video. I’d be interested in your thoughts on similar questions regarding products closely tied to lithium like semiconductors.
The most thought provoking channel on CZcams. Excellent.
Great video!
No matter how well electric cars and battery storage develop, it showes (again) that simply shifting from ic engines to electric cars will not work.
There needs to be a combined effort. Smaller cars need to be the new standard; comfortable, quick and cheaper public transport as a better alternative - and sustainable cities with an infrastructure that encourages a lifestyle without the need for a car in the first place.
Thanks, I tried to avoid injecting anything political here but I would agree that depending solely on EVs isn’t enough
Also ride/car sharing needs to be managed and private car ownership reduced.
Very well thought out video! I do wonder what the carbon footprint and ecological cost of all the lithium will be as it is sold as a counter to that.
🤫
You dont need to wonder, there are studies out there
Yeah lithium like with all lithophile element extraction is not an energy friendly process (and pretty much all mining is an environmental nightmare) also lets not forget we long exceeded the "safe" energy storage threshold for lithium ion meaning that our batteries can be considered ticking time bombs prone to spontaneous combustion.
Also lets not forget that the plans for nuclear fusion also call for lithium in a non renewable application via using it for nuclear transmutation to produce tritium for the chosen fusion process based on energetic concerns. Thus if fusion succeeds there will be a constant demand for nonrenewable depletion of lithium
Lower than the cost of not mining it
It doesn't matter aslong it is more abundance of them then fossil fuel which is limited
If lithium supply doesn't meet the demand, then sodium ion batteries could be used instead since sodium is A LOT cheaper than lithium.
I’ve had this very question for years. As well as the cobalt supply. Thanks for addressing it.
One thing to consider is possibly that one EV may require 2 sets of Lithium batteries over its life, so that might double some of your demand projections, if not already considered.
Have had my EV for coming up to 5 years without any degradation. at the moment I feel that my car will fall to pieces before the battery needs selling to household storage.
How could the number 3 element on the periodic table run out?
Hey alex, I don't know if you've been following, but they announced that they've discovered what is quite probably the largest lithium deposit in the world. It's located in the American Northwest. And it's in an easy-to-mine form.
Excellent video, well thought out and presented. This is one of the most informative and well presented channels on CZcams.
Did you consider any of the developing competitors to Lithium that are at various stages of development based upon Magnesium, Sodium and Sulphur etc? As has been mentioned in other posts, not all applications require the 'lightness' of lithium (home & grid storage is a good example) so the lower energy densities (but increased safety) of sulphur for example won't be an issue.
Some of these other chemicals are vastly more abundant and cheaper to extract, some even will work with the existing Lion or LifePo4 production processes and facilities. There is a strong chance that Lithium based batteries will be overtaken by a cheaper more cost effective alternative within the period you have covered, at least for certain aspects of the demand for batteries. Here's hoping something like this does happen as we don't want to get into a squeeze like the one that seems likely.
One other trend that could reduce the demand for EVs is a larger emphasis on public transportation, particularly in large urban cities where several ton vehicles being utilized to carry a single individual when you can have hundreds of thousands of people going the same way for significant distances at any given time. A lot of cities both in the US and Europe have been focusing recent infrastructure efforts at reducing car usage, while there has been more awareness and push in the online space towards less car-dependent infrastructure.
Should new EV production be unable to meet demand, whether that be because we fail to recycle enough lithium or scale up production quickly enough or are unable to reduce the cost to produce lithium or significantly reduce EV production costs leading to a situation where cheap new cars with decent range stay dominated by ICE cars until bans stop their sale leading to a lack of supply for that market, or general EV production is unable to scale to meet the surge in demand come 2030 and 2035. In such scenarios, especially if it starts to extend for multiple years, more individuals would look for alternatives such as bussing, trams, and biking for their local use needs while utilizing older cars, trains, and planes for their rarer long-distance needs. I don’t know if this would end up being just a small piece of the puzzle or a major shift in how we live (I suspect that’s highly dependent on gas prices going forward and whether increased volatility and continued EV shortages convince more people to invest in alternative transportation, as well as how large of a lifestyle shift Gen Z decides to go compared to previous generations where in the US especially have largely been ignorant about the potential of public transportation as a realistic and decent transportation option for ordinary people who can afford cars and not just those unable or unwilling to drive).
Will certainly be interesting. I do hope that we’ll get better lithium recycling though and electronic waste recycling in general.
I spend most of my time in NYC and never drive there. We use the subway and my OneWheel, so totally agree. But the NY subway is underfunded and deteriorating, it floods every year, has so much break pad particulates in the air it’s toxic and is often delayed. I’d love nothing more than to see serious investment into the subways, but I tried to avoid wishful or political thinking here, and just give you the current projections and mandates divorced from any personal biases.
Yea you're dreaming if you think US infrastructure is getting people anywhere haha
@@CoolWorldsLab I still wonder if the chosen projections take changes in city planning and transportation into account. Ongoing climate change will also have a huge impact on people even wanting cars or being able to buy them. I don't think car sales will still grow as large as they used to. Modes of transportation will change.
More people have to take the orange pill.
The racial demographics of modern cities are extraordinarily alienating, making the daily usage of public transportation a daring and dangerous adventure.
@@daisy9181 I'm not going to argue that public transportation (especially in the US) does not have some serious downsides, and right now is typically only utilized by economically poorer individuals who are more likely to engage in unsafe drug use, and that public transportation is often dirty.
I do have two things to say though. 1. Public transportation is dirty because only poor people use it and as such no one wants or is able to pay money to clean things up when messes inevitably happen. Think of it as the difference between going to a public bathroom in a nice area of town as opposed to the sketchy area of town. A public bathroom in the nice area of town is much more likely to be clean, and less likely to have sketchy things going on inside, despite both technically being open to everyone. As more money is put into building and improving public transportation, more wealthier individuals will be willing to give it a chance and the more that use it, the more people will be willing to spend money to further improve and clean up public transportation.
2. Those problems say more about the state of American society and social problems within cities than being critiques of public transportation specifically. It says we have a large portion of people who are homeless, poor, and engaging in unsafe drug usage for one reason or another. The difference between everyone driving and everyone riding public transportation or walking is that with the former all of society's ills are hidden away in our own little metal cubicles.
In short, if you don't feel comfortable riding public transportation, that is an indication that we should be doing more to make it and our societies better, not to throw away the idea altogether. Public transportation has a lot of advantages that driving can't match, and to be frank, driving can only support a very low population density without leading to a need for massive roads, taking up space that would be used for housing and dramatically increasing average commutes and driving up housing prices for those in inner suburban circles as people prefer not to have to drive 30+ minutes to go places. Even Houston, with all its sprawling and massive roads, still has to add a new lane every few years because the highway becomes completely clogged. So while I don't think public transportation is necessary to decarbonfy our transportation network, I do think it would help, and to whatever extent we are able to reduce car usage, especially in our largest metropolitan areas where car usage makes the least amount of sense, will help with other issues like noise pollution, average commute times, and hopefully housing prices (though there are obviously a lot of other factors that have led to high housing prices so I'm certainly not going to promise that we'll all have affordable housing if we just start building public transportation and higher density housing to go along with it, though it likely wouldn't hurt).
Love your videos Professor Kipping! Paul Kaup with STEM+C…I also own a Tesla Model 3. Your video is by far the best video I have seen on the subject of Lithium and battery technology. Thank you for all you do.
Thanks Paul! It’s great knowing your car isn’t hurting the planet (even if it hurts our wallets for the up front cost right now!)
Damn you rich
Thanks David, another great post! I was interested to note that you mentioned solar / home storage as an application at the start of the episode but then focussed on EVs. I would love to hear more analysis on the reality and future of domestic energy capture and storage since I think this will become pertinent over the next few years. Given that supply of lithium is going to be a problem and that more of us will want home energy storage, what is the potential for sodium ion batteries - I understand they have many similar properties as well as there being a greater abundance of sodium, and whilst they are less power dense, that doesn't matter too much for static applications. But only if you have time 🙂
An excellent and informative primer on the challenge of finding economically extractable sources of lithium.
Very interesting and relevant subject. Really well explained.
Loved this video, both as a science geek and one that has been working in economics.
Personally, I see the deficit being there (after all the price of lithium has spiked as a result of all the mandates), but I wonder whether it will be as big as that. EVs are complicated to scale, due to how difficult it is to scale everything up from the powerplants all the way to the recharge stations.
With this said, batteries are likely more scalable than synthetic fuels, at least in the case of cars. In other areas (like planes) the energy density makes chemical fuels orders of magnitude better
An huge and hard to predict other question is: what will the impact of other technologies be. If other battery technologies take a huge chunk of the EV market than it would help reduce some of the lithium demand.
Such a well done video!! Thoroughly analyzed. I did feel really nervous every time he was speaking into the camera while driving! Please be safe!
Great video and love the channel. I wish you would have (maybe a next video) touched on Li mining, its expansion to meet current and future demand, and the impact on the environment.
For an astronomer,this is a rather thorough economic analysis 😁
He's what you'd call "super smart". 😁
Solves brilliantly the economics of the Li shortage issue, mind you, none of us knew we had such problem to start with; and all by starting the analysis with “I’m not an economist, but…”. Love this channel!
It most certainly is not because it's based upon Californian politics. In the UK, for example, public opinion is against the adoption of EVs by 2030 because the UK currently doesn't produce enough energy to meet our current demands, let alone the demands of increased EV. Until a country is able to produce the energy needs involved in EV take up EV take up will remain low, and while a country's populace is struggling to pay bills and having to chose between eating and energy bills, public opinion will remain firmly against this.
@@saladinbob exactly and just like every other video pushing the unworkable fantasies of so called green energy. Not 1 mention of money. Not 1 graph on prices. not even a hint at a basic financial cost analysis .
It really isn't.
I'm really shocked that we haven't seen a bunch of massive solar powered desalination plants popping up to farm both super high quality clean water and brine for lithium and metal harvesting. It's a win win situation as lithium demand rises and the demand for more fresh water rises.
Desalination is extremely energy intensive and solar does not have the dynamic range to power a desal plant reliably. More over being next to the ocean usually means more clouds and fog. Nuclear is a far better option for desalination as it could provide both fresh water, mineral extract, and electricity.
Transporting fresh water is not easy and the energy might make more money doing something else other than desalination?
In hindsight, we can safely say "dont worry about it ". American car makers already announced a reduction in EV production due solely on lack of consumer interest. Several foreign car makers have already announced similar forecasts. Everyone saw EVs as a cheaper alternative UNTIL greedy states realised the estimated loss in revenue from gas taxes. So they upped the sales tax and annual tag tax (by triple digits) on EVs, this effectively killing any growth in momentum of sales.
i like this, somebody who keeps the all the predictions clear, so nice !
Dr. Kipping--you're my hero.
And because of that, I'm very nervous about your driving while recording. I'm sure it feels safe, but if one stray neuron and one stray canine don't anticipate each-other, we'll have nothing but stray tears for years to come.
Meanwhile, I will conserve on lithium just as I've been conserving on fossil fuels!
Haha thanks for your concern Denny! If it makes you feel any better the car was essentially driving itself, adaptive cruise + steering control.
@@CoolWorldsLab Since you mentioned the curve will flatten out after some projected turning point, why did you opt to stick to exponential models rather than logistic ones?
@@CoolWorldsLab How embarrassing; I should've figured you'd be a few steps ahead of me. Sorry for indulging my genetic worry alleles.
On a more serious note--remember to eat your figs and beets!
The personal car will soon be something only owned by the rich people.
For the rest of us "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy"
Umm.Not owning a car means you don't own nothing? Lol
There's an omission here. Lithium is primarily a stopgap measure to get EV going. Hydrogen is the long-term goal and the production of hydrogen is getting less expensive by the hour, while investments in renewable energy is growing. Fluctuations in electricity consumption means we always operate at an enormous loss, that could be stored as hydrogen, making use of otherwise wasted electricity. The problem with HEV has been that there hasn't been enough demand to finance the infrastructure. But the BEV market is pretty much financing the HEV market. Also, the benefit of BEV is dramatically reduced with car sharing, where the car will just go home to refill once in a while, letting some other HEV take its place.
Beyond informative💥. Brilliant upload, doc!👍
Tip of the hat to all involved.😉
Good thing taking all that lithium out of the ground is a super green endeavor. Super green. No toxic lakes anywhere. Perfect environments, just, perfect stuff.
Some things which might further complicate the picture for future lithium demand:
- Unlikely, but possible: Significantly reduced dependence on private vehicles due to major investment in more extensive public transport systems.
- More likely, but with less impact: Large scale power storage forgoes lithium batteries in favour of alternatives like pumped hydro, sand and molten salt batteries.
- Wildcard: Development of price competitive carbon neutral fuels suitable for use by the majority of existing fossil fuel vehicles.
@@realitycheck908 Nuclear energy, which I agree is cleaner, better, faster, cheaper, and safer, doesn't replace the need for lithium. It complements lithium batteries by providing a source for all that energy going into the batteries.
There is no way a "carbon neutral" fuel can serve as an adequate substitute for nuclear energy + lithium batteries. For starters, carbon-neutral carbon fuels don't exist. When fuel containing any amount of carbon is burned, it creates carbon dioxide (that's the definition of combustion -- oxidation of the carbon). There is only one possible thermodynamic process involving enough energy to extract that carbon back from the atomsphere: photosynthesis. So basically you have to grow plants and turn them into fuel. But growing plants at industrial scale requires petrochemical fertilizers, and is far from carbon-neutral. Secondly, even if we did magically create carbon-neutral fuel, combustion is inherently a highly polluting activity. The non-CO2 pollutants emitted by cars are devastating to human health. Combustion pollutants kill about 100000 times more people than nuclear accidents. Even if you include deliberate nuclear strikes in the latter count, combustion pollutants are still 1000 times deadlier. Clean fuel does not eliminate combustion pollutants: poisons such as nitrogen dioxide are produced whenever anything is burned in air containing nitrogen.
@@realitycheck908 Basically you can't put a nuclear reactor in a car engine. Well, you can, and the car would work, but it would also kill everyone in a 10 mile radius from radiation poisoning. Nuclear reactors require thick shielding, which is possible in a power plant or an aircraft carrier, but not on a car. Also it would be stupidly expensive. So you still need lithium batteries for cars.
Thank you for mentioning carbon neutral liquid and gaseous fuels. Seriously. I work on the engineering side of energy conversion/storage, and I'm pretty dismayed that so many of our leaders are treating battery-electric as some sort of fix-all silver bullet solution. Thing is, energy storage via battery has very real issues of its own, many of which are pretty inherent. So, rather than try to shoehorn battery-electric into every conceivable application, I would really like to see our leaders get a bit smarter with their green energy policies, policies which will only be poised to create sustainability problems of their own if we don't distribute the energy storage burden among a diverse array of technologies. My take: such diversification would be very well served by including a decently sized fraction of synfuel ICE and hydrogen ICE.
@@briank4972 100%! Couldn't have said it better myself.
@@realitycheck908 Nuclear Fusion actually complicates the lithium picture in a very significant way as the reactor technologies in development which are based off fusing deuterium with tritium due to the very short half live of tritium are dependent on the use of neutron bombarding Lithium as a source for more tritium to continue fueling their reactors.
This process only works so long as there is a supply of lithium to transmute and thus if this kind of nuclear fusion materializes as a means of energy production lithium becomes the limiting reagent for fusion power based off fusing tritium and deuterium.
This notably is a 100% destructive process for lithium and there is no way to replenish this element so it is not compatible with lithium battery storage because it needs that lithium for fuel.
i feel like most only think about how the car itself affects the climate etc, but nobody ever brings up the question of how big the diffrence is between if we include the process of creating the energy needed to charge EV's and so on. are there any statistics of that? would be quite interesting to see the diffrence when we include every step of the way with energy production, gas production etc
This is why battery manufacturers are looking at using sodium instead of lithium for EV batteries. With good reason: sodium is very commonly found from sodium chloride salts in salt mines and seawater found worldwide.
Aside from EV, transitioning to Solar and Wind will also need increasing amount of batteries to store power, especially for home rooftop solar. So the real demands will be even higher.
The batterys goes to a "second life" when they can no longer b used in the EVs, they can collect energy from solar powers and recharge your EV.
That means that there are less batterys to recycle and when the recyclers dont get any batterys they market will suffer. All recycling need a crazy amount of energy. The demand will skyrocket so i have already amning towards buying lithium shares. The other problem is that Lithium aint the only rare metal in the battery. I cant really see the future in EVs. it must be something else thats more sustainable and need less energy to manufacture..
Static batteries like PowerWalls or Mega Packs don't need to be light, so heavier (and cheaper) elements than Lithium can be used.
lol solar and wind are not able to handle world energy needs, not even close
Stationary storage can and does already use different cell chemistries since energy density is not as important as in a moving vehicle.
The more I watch this channel and follow some of the smartest scientists in the world, the more I feel good about humanity's civilization. We just need to stop killing ourselves and learn how to disagree better. Another great video from Cool worlds as always
All good sentiments I’m sure, but any of this future tech will not be available to the masses, you and me, we will be the slaves of the elites. As we are becoming day by day right now. Get those eyes open people!
Lithium projects in Québec : North American Lithium, Newaska Lithium, Sayona Mining, Musk Metals, Allkem, etc.
Never thought Cool Worlds would be a place to come to for stock investment tips. Glad I subscribed!
Technology companies will never change their profit driven habits of forever rolling out the latest gadget's for consumers to buy.
But, if technology companies instead made devices, and gadgets that were built to last for a minimum of ten years then we could manage a future lithium crisis by being responsible with our limited resources.
Thankyou for another great video Cool Worlds, and stories like this should receive more media coverage, as this is going to affect, and have a detrimental impact on us all 🔥👍
Great video. To me this seems to be one of the two most urgent BUT actually solveable short to midterm problems. The other one beeing silicon. Given the fact the we'll only ever use exponentially more artifical intelligence and HUGE amounts of computing power in the future. I'm quite certain that because silicon and lithium products are so inherently interconnected in our current and future world of electronics, that one would find great simillarities if such a video / analysis would be made on silicon.
Thank you so much David for this great analysis, it's always a joy to watch your videos.
Now I'll head off to start investing in lithium, silicon, and nickel production and recycling, after that colossal fail of cryptocurrencies. Oh wait, what a coincident, there is a huge correlation between these, what???
Silicon is one of the most abundant elements on earth, just like lithium. Silicon just lies around as sand in deserts. But the largest amount is not used in chip production, but in the production of solar cells.
That is true, but extracting silicon and refining it to the level of pureness it's needed, is a very complicated and energie intensive matter. Still you're correct, but I meant it more in a "Demald will far outstrip supply" kind of way.
@@BMXaster I'm a bit more "optimistic" and trust in capitalism to never let demand outstrip supply. But we'll see.
The last 6 years investing in lithium stocks has been wild. Highs, lows, very lows, and then the past 24 months have been transformational. On top of that, the mainstream notice this is now getting is incredible.
I appreciate your informative video. I like how you provide information that other people are not talking about. I have yet to see a video on the toxicity of the mining of lithium and how we are going to improve our power grid to charge the batteries. Solar and wind power is good but the sun and wind is NOT always there to provide power.
*opens a tin on baked beans* no sun so need more gas until sun comes up again
Great programme! Very thoughtful and informative.
I wonder if Sodium may well supplant Lithium in a lot of battery applications in the next 2 decades. Lithium-Sulfur batteries may mean that we need less Lithium for a given amount of energy storage as well, meaning that we can reduce the amount of Lithium we need for applications.
I also wonder if the Salton Sea is considered in near term production. It apparently is a massive source of fairly accessible Lithium.
You do lose some energy density with sodium but it may supplant lithium is lithium supply can’t keep up, as we suggest could happen here. I don’t believe the Salton Sea is included in the supply projections.
@@CoolWorldsLab it sounds like stationary energy storage applications are going to be the first big market for sodium. Energy density is lagging but perhaps that can be improved with more investment.
@@pipertripp Sodium will eventually move into energy storage but will take a long time to scale up. We’ve had 30 years of experience scaling and developing lithium ion.
Well the Salton Sea is an active rhyolitic volcanic system (there is an active magma chamber down there which supplies the geothermal power and irregularly erupts every few thousand years) and rhyolitic volcanism due to how crystal fractionalization works within a magma chamber is the most chemically enriched natural source environment for lithium for the same reason the Andes are so effective. There are other interior basins within North America's basin and range province a major set of geological extensional rift complexes and crustal thinning with an arid climate meaning much of the lithium has been trapped due to the lack of outlets.
For this same reason other dry silica rich volcanic provinces such as much of East Africa, much of the Middle east(the dead sea is a rift lake and lift associated crustal extension and occasionally volcanism are ever present geological forces there. The Armenian highlands lake Van is another good place to look into since lake Van was formed due to the active Nemrut volcano
Note I'm following the USGS definition of active rather than Turkey's since by their definition any volcano not currently spewing magma is dormant and its last eruption was only in 1650 so it is absurd to call it "dormant" since it is about par for the eruption frequency of such silica rich magma systems.
There also is some suitable volcanics up in Alaska particularly the Land of a thousand smokes from the Novarupta eruption from Katmai's magma chamber as the region is arid enough that it probably hasn't had all of its salts dissolved out.
Indonesia has lots of volcanoes but climatically its tropical environment and close proximity to the ocean means it is all to easy to leech out the minerals into the wider ocean system. There is also active rift complexes between the Amur plate and Eurasian plates responsible for the formation of lake Baikal but that has so much freshwater input that the salts are extremely diluted (the lake is freshwater) and even if it was economical the lake is such a unique and ancient ecoregion that any such efforts could have devastating consequences. Antarctica is another active complex but aside from a few particularly active volcanoes like Mt Erebus most of the activity is deep beneath the ice and will be freshwater saturated environments so not really suitable.
Australia has very little volcanism but the continent has been dry for so long that there isn't really anywhere for the salts to go. So Yeah the arid and long volcanic history of the American Southwest (Its been volcanically active out west since at least the Jurassic but the peak activity was the Tertiary ignimbrite flare up episode which is analogous to the modern Andean Ignimbrite flare up episode, and thus altogether it actually is probably one of the best places on Earth for Lithium mining.
@@Dragrath1 Thanks a lot for great geological information!
I live in France, and we have two known deposits of Li, which could cover all France's present and future needs for Li. One is some underground brine layers in Alsace, the other some rock deposits in Massif Central, a former volcanic region. I read that the first one would be relatively easy and economical to exploit, while the second one would be more expensive to mine, and more questionable for environmental reasons.
Great video on the possible future pathways of lithium supply and demand. One thing that you did not mention that would have been interesting for you to explore is the likelihood that the demand for private vehicles may not increase alongside personal wealth as much as it has in the past due to more and more people around the world realizing the negative impact that automobiles have on every aspect of our lives, and not just the climate. Noise pollution, tire pollution, the space that cars require, traffic congestion, accidents. I would attribute this realization to the CZcams channel NotJustBikes that showcases how cities can be better designed if you don't prioritize cars as the primary mode of transportation. And with the majority of the world's population in the coming decades becoming more urbanized, I would expect governments to develop new cities around public transportation, although for existing cities in places like the U.S. it will be a little harder.
One thing not considered is the limitations of the existing electrical grids. Chances are improving this will require still more lithium.
I am curious also how Finland will address the problems in range, particularly in such a rural country
I think the electrical grid is not the big problem, as most EVs can charge at night where there is less demand overall on the grid.
Norway has the highest % of EV sales in the world, basically all new car sales are EVs some months... Very spread out and very cold... Is it not harder to find gas stations in remote spaces as well? Many gas stations are dropping gas and switching to only electric charging, the busiest gas station for Shell in the UK was switched over to only electric chargers and they improved their profits within a month. More gas stations will fail or switch as there is less and less demand for gas. (gas car sales have been dropping like crazy the last few years). We are just a few years away from gas cars being the ones with range anxiety, trying to find a gas station... Regular electrical outlets to use in an emergency are already way more spread out than gas stations... As for the grids, UK grid did a survey and found that their current grid would be fine even if all cars were electric right now... It will actually help balance the grid as most car charging would be done when there is less electrical use, help smooth out the spikes and dips...
Thank you for the great video, it is an extremely well conducted research on the matter.
It is strange how we switched from lead to lithium for building batteries. What I don't like of lithium batteries, is that they operate well outside the thermodynamic window of stability, since their 4 Volt terminal voltage; the lead acid battery rely on a very stable window of operation - where the oxygen overpotential, the change solubilità of lead sulphate with temperature, and all others parameters, seems to be made with a magical match.
Regarding the availability of lithium, Australia has very very large amounts of the metal, if they only decide to upscale their mining operations.
Once more, thank you Professor Kipping.
A salute from an exceedingly warm UK...
There are good reasons lead acid are not used more... Compare weights, costs, energy density, etc... The tech survives for certain applications, newer tech is needed for other applications... If you look at the whole picture, it makes sense...
If prices for electricity keep exploding like they do right now in Europe, due to the shortage of cheap natural gas, the development might go less quickly than anticipated / planned. I think it would be a smart idea to also consider alternatives like Hydrogen or maybe even e-Fuels. Also pushing level 5 self-driving cars could have a significant positive effect in many ways: fewer cars occupying less space and needing less materials for production, fewer accidents and lower energy consumption.
The higher the electricity price goes, the quicker we switch into renewables. The shortage of natural gas is a short term pain and long term benefit.
I am a chemical engineer with 7 years of experience in the "green" hydrogen sector. I can say with certainty that you can forget about hydrogen and e-fuels for cars. Both solutions are way, way too expensive, as well as energetically inefficient.
Green hydrogen production will be mopped out for decades by industry, and e-fuels can certainly be synthesized, but only for "do-or-die" applications, due to their cost.
I am however with you on the topic of self-driving cars. I can't wait for my Tesla to drive itself... at least on highways, where it's so boring to drive. Unfortunately, Europe is not a priority for Tesla's FSD.
@@st-ex8506 can you provide some reasons? I'm not so well informed about these technologies. I know that Hydrogen for cars is very difficult as storage is an issue. e-Fuels could also help as we simply will not have enough Lithium resources to do more as ~30% of new vehicles as full EVs. And that will not be enough to reach the climate goals.
@@nothingisreal6345 First, let me demonstrate that there is more than enough exploitable lithium for both electrifying the world's entire road vehicle fleet, as well as for the necessary storage for converting the all the grids to 100% renewable sources:
The total battery capacity for doing the above is estimated to be 300 TWh. Assuming it is done with LFP chemistry batteries (very conservative hypothesis, as grid-storage batteries, 2/3 of the total, don't need to be lithium-based). You need, with today's technology (another conservative hypothesis) 81 g of Li per kWh of battery capacity. So, for 300 TWh, you need 300 x 10^9 * 81 = 24.3 x 10^12 g = 24.3 million metric tons. That's obviously a lot, but...the KNOWN exploitable reserves of Li were in 2020 a bit over 21 million tons, and those reserves increase every year thanks to prospecting. The US Geological Survey estimated the world's reserves at 25.5 million tons in 2010!
Once all those batteries have been manufactured for the first time, the Li for the new, replacement batteries will come entirely from recycling.
Now to the hydrogen/e-fuels/batteries problematic:
First, e-fuels are nothing else than hydrogen reacted with CO2 to produce alkanes comparable to gasoline, diesel fuel or Jet Fuel. You first have to produce the hydrogen, than converting it to hydrocarbons via the Fischer-Tropsch process. First, the green hydrogen is expensive to produce (we'll come back to that), but the FT process is also very expensive. Without going into details, e-fuels will cost around $10/USG, just to produce. I let you judge of their economic feasibility.
Then to H2 vs battery storage.
Let's take 1 unit of clean renewable power, let's say 1 MWh. When using that power to produce hydrogen to then power a fuel-cell car, only 22%, or in 220 kWh, reaches the car's wheels.
Let's take the very same amount of clean renewable power, but use it to recharge a BEV. In this case 73%, or 730 kWh, reaches the car's wheels.
BTW, in the case of e-fuels, that efficiency is only 13% or 130 kWh.
Sources for that calculation are very numerous, and differ little as to the result. Have a look at this link:
insideevs.com/news/332584/efficiency-compared-battery-electric-73-hydrogen-22-ice-13/
But the disadvantages of hydrogen do not stop with energy efficiency, there many many others such as:
- Difficult to store and transport. (hydrogen tanks are very bulky, eating into a car useful space, much more than batteries).
- Dangerous to produce, transport, store and use. Hydrogen is highly explosive (at least 2 hydrogen-filling stations have already blown up, one in Norway, the other in California.
- Hydrogen filling stations are VERY expensive, hence a big hurdle to generalizing them.
- Fuel-cells require substantial amounts of much rarer and expensive metals (Pt and other Pt-group metals) than batteries do. With today's technology, you need 40 g of Pt per car... costing $1200 per car at today's Pt price. However, there is BY FAR not enough Pt to equip all cars with fuel cells.
- Car performance: the performance of the car is limited by the fuel-cell output, not so in a BEV. The Toyota Mirai, for example, has only 155 horsepower, vs 325 for the ENTRY-LEVEL Tesla Model 3 (which is lighter than the Mirai)... not to mention the 1000+ horsepower of the Model S Plaid!
- You can't refill a hydrogen FC car at home, while an EV recharges at home while you sleep.
- Hydrogen is today 10-20 times more expensive per mile, than the electricity for a BEV!
- I might be forgetting a few...
Only advantages: a slightly longer range, and a faster refill... provided you don't have to drive an hour to find a filling station.
Good analysis on an interesting topic. Though this all depends on that lithium batteries will remain the primary way to store energy in the future. Who knows what the future might hold of new technology.
One final word:
For your own and others sake, eyes on the road while driving! Got me scared there for a moment, looking way to long into the camera!
Take care. Drive safe!
Astrophysicists are smart enough to drive while filming and looking directly into the camera. Cuz the car was a story telling device. Glad you didn't crash
DUDE.... WE WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF LITHIUM!!!... its dirt 4,000 mile to the core!
Batteries can be recycled almost 100% recapture the lithium so I think we will need to see a very fast ramp up of recycling operations and incentives to customers to leverage those options. Also there is a lot of work going on around moving batteries away from lithium too. The use of Graphene in Aluminium Ion Batteries and Graphene Supercapacitors are both very exciting future technologies.
Such a policy requires vision, courage, and intelligence, and is therefore doomed to fail in any democracy.
Batteries are lasting so long (basically most will never drop below 81% of original capacity even after millions of miles worth of charging and discharging) and have so much demand as second use that there is not enough for recycling companies that already exist and are trying to grow... Obviously that will change as batteries get ever older ad more plentiful, but for now, the recyclers that exist would be able to use and would love to have access to more batteries to recycle...
These videos are always well researched and executed at a very high level.!
good analysis. Shows why the best approach to EV's vs ICE is to let it occur naturally without mandates and subsidies. Wreaking the transportation economy through mandated transitions will be a disaster for the economy and ultimately the transition. Of course, disaster may be the goal
One size fits all… America abandons trains for cars, America abandons fossil fuel cars for electric cars. Thinking ahead is not so easy. Thanks CW.
I am invested in some lithium stocks, though I wonder if some new technology might derail the explosive need for Li - for example graphene aluminium batteries
Excellent video. Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video. Note that there are a number of other battery technologies being developed which may be as efficient as lithium batteries and cheaper and with a chemistry that would not be in danger of being depleted.
Lithium is incredibly plentiful... And it is an element that we are not burning as a fuel, what we have already mined is more easy to access and refine again from recycled material than it is to mine and refine new material... And, yes there are different chemistries coming, already in use, I am simply pointing out that lithium is not the limiting factor...
If not for lithium, we would still have swappable batteries in cell phones.
Instead, tech companies (Apple) have made it difficult to replace batteries forcing users to throw them away as e-waste.
With electric vehicles being mandated by 2035 in California, this puts additional loads on an electrical grid that's already struggling with current demands.
There are also issues with fighting fires caused by overheated batteries and proper disposal of used batteries.
That was beautiful. Thank you! :)
Add this to the myriad problems that will be rendered moot if and when we perfect fusion power. Then it likely won’t matter how energy intensive it will be to use seawater. This applies to water purification as well.
We quite certainly won't "perfect" fusion power before 2035 (the horizon of most of this video). And even if we do it does not mean that fusion power will necessary be much cheaper than other sources of energy (we can't know yet).
With thorium we would have 1000s of years of power left. We have the tech now to have virtually unlimited energy
If we do it might usher in a new era of innovation rather than this perpetual iteration we've been stuck in for at least 50 years if not more.
Ideally we would not need to face a crisis to see innovation. I feel that scientists and channels like Cool Worlds are pushing the right message: think long-term, learn as much as you can, and create a better future by making changes now.
We have all the information we need to move into pure electric cars, use Na batteries, etc. Lithium ion batteries can be recycled in great amounts.
I agree with you that a crisis might spur us to change the current market (fossil fuels and hurting the climate).
We need to support those who are pushing innovation, but not for profit. We should push for innovation for the sake of the future itself.
Just Catching up🔹Thank You so much for the Outstanding Content
👍🙏❤👋🔹Love & Strength
Another mindbogglingly huge issue in terms of its scale that we have to face in regards to the increasing demand of EV's is electricity production and the power grid to transfer it. That is a absolute massive infrastructure undertaking.
Something he completely sidestepped.
This calls into question his integrity. Failing to mention the existential problems regarding the electrical grid and it's ability to succour , meet the needs of EV's is analogous to expounding the virtues and benefits of solar panels yet ignoring the sun
Thanks for presenting this, I have had concerns about this and all rare earths. I'm not a chemist, but could we enrich He to produce the LI we need? or would that be cost prohibitive? As we move out into the solar system and beyond we need to learn to recycle everything including space critical components etc..
Rare Earths Elements are not rare, it's just that they occur is small amounts and because up until now, no one wanted them, no one has bothered to either look for them or mine them
This Li-question is related to the fact that humankind should have a plan how to survive ar least for 100000 years. All raw materials will end and mining "elsewhere"...not going to happen anytime soon. Also: there is no humankind alltogether...religion alone etc. makes real collaboration not possible. Another thing is the fact that there is at least 50% too many people. I always thing ufo coming (without seeing from earth) and their first thought is "where the fuck everybody are driving/flying etc.. ?? :)
We could solve all the problems in the world if we could transform elements lol.
@@RussianBotLvl Well. Not exactly in the direction needed for lithium but there's fusion. Or rather there might be in the future.
The video is actually generally wrong. There's already efficient recycling happening of lithium ion batteries, it's just not at a significant level yet as there's very little lithium batteries to recycle yet.
lithium is part of the problems...
suppose we convert every vehicle in use today into an electric vehicle, where and how in the world can we support cleanly such infrastructure?
if we're not getting this electricity from renewable resources, we're only masking the fossil fuels problem.
Yes, the whole thing is still mostly fossil fuel based, only we have added a new layer of complexity to it. There’s also the big question of recycling, otherwise of course we well run out. Recycling without toxifying the environment. There’s much more to say, question and consider on this topic.
@@sIXXIsDesigns I wasn’t questioning if it can be done, but rather that it should be done.
Love that driving the car shot, great content value.
Great video - wouldd love to see a similar analysis applied to graphite.
Thankfully all EV''s are charged by plugging into the grid which is coal run. Also lithium batteries are God awful for the environment when the cars are eventually junked. Also most EV cars can't run past 10 years or at most 15 years.
All true, EVheads are completely delusional, they just want to feel good about themselves because they drive an expensive but inferior mean of locomotion.
You could electrify the motorways and the streets in the city. Am pretty sure this could reduce the amount of lithium as well, and you cold also reduce the charging time of the batteries (saving weight, and energy for charging).
Yes, let's reinvent trolleys instead of just dumping the personal cars 😅
@@diffore We all will drive trucks and buses in the future instead (standard height) 😁
Top notch work, thank you!
Best reason I’ve seen for us to pursue HFCV’s (hydrogen fuel cell vehicles) as well as BEVs.