The big concern over electric cars has been demand, but the greatest threat could be upstream supplies (i.e. the stuff that is required to make the cars). There are some interesting data points out this that point to both a decrease in the price of lithium to near record lows in the short-term and a possible supply crunch in the long-term.
Speaking of data, EV carmaker Faraday Future apparently sees a conspiracy out there to destroy the company’s value but provides no proof. A major used car dealer closed shop this week and the big question is whether this is meaningful info or a one-off case. Finally, fleet sales data is out and it looks promising.
You’re getting a whole week of Hardigree TMDs while Patrick is, apparently, being held hostage in a hydrogen plant in Germany. Let’s finish with some numbers!
Lithium Is Cheap Again, Though Maybe Not Forever
The main competing battery chemistries for electric car applications are, currently, NCM (lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide) and LFP (lithium iron phosphate, also known as LiFeP04). Both of these battery chemistries are lithium ion batteries, but one (NCM) uses a lot of rare earth materials. They each have their advantages and disadvantages, but both require a lot of lithium to build. For example, a Tesla Model S battery has over 100 pounds of the stuff according to this Electrek article.
As more and more lithium mining capacity has come online over the last decade, lithium prices predictably began to fall, at least until 2022, when it suddenly shot back up due to supply constraints. Reuters reported that Chinese battery makers made a bet earlier this year that lithium prices would fall by more than half. Well, guess what, according to influential industry analysis firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (subscription required), prices are down below the pivotal $100/kWh mark, or about 33% off since March of last year. This isn’t a halving of peak costs (which would see prices at about $70 per kWh), but it’s an improvement.
This is good news for electric car prices long-term if the trend continues. What’s the bad news? Here’s some important projections from the CEO of Benchmark:
+ Benchmark Base Case: 3.1m tonnes
+ Benchmark High Case: 5.3m tonnes
+ Benchmark Lithium Supply Constrained Case: 2.5m tonnes
In good ol’ American tons, that’s about 5.8 million tons of lithium necessary on the high end. How much was mined globally outside the United States (there’s only one current commercial-scale operation in the U.S. and they don’t release the data because it’s just one company)? About 130,000 tons according to the USGS annual report. While this was about a quarter higher than 2021, you can see the potential issue.
On the lower end of this estimate, it’s assumed that the world will need a little over 3.4 million tons. The supply constrained case, i.e. the amount we might be stuck with because we can’t make anymore, is about 2.8 million tons. Should we believe Benchmark? It’s sometimes difficult to judge these massive global intelligence firms, but the company is often cited by journalists and lawmakers.
As the company’s CEO Simon Moore points out:
You can’t have your high and base cases without getting lithium out of the ground quick enough. At some point that has to happen quicker than the battery capacity and gigafactory build out. It is not yet. Then you have the challenge of both quality and quantity of lithium – you can’t use all lithium in an EV battery. The great raw material disconnect is coming and with a bigger cliff edge than before.
This is yet another challenge for legislators wanting to switch to EVs only. Unless automakers can drastically reduce the amount of lithium used per vehicle, that shortfall could mean millions of electric cars that can’t be produced.
Faraday Future Blames ‘Suspicious Activities’ For Its Bad Stock Price
Electric carmaker Faraday Future has not had a great product rollout, which might explain why the company’s stock price has lost more than 90% of its value in the last year. Another explanation? Apparently sabotage.
Faraday Future Intelligent Electric (FFIE.O) on Thursday said it has recently observed a series of “suspicious activities” which the electric-vehicle startup believes suggested a “coordinated effort” to undermine its valuation.
The EV maker alleged efforts to spread misinformation and manipulate market sentiment.
Faraday did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ query seeking details on the claim.
The company seems to be talking about short-sellers and other groups that use social media and online news sites to manipulate publicly traded companies. So, yeah, it could be that. Or it could be that they’ve barely delivered any cars and is going to have to completely redo its recent financial filings. It’s a mystery!
Off Lease Only Files For Chapter 11
About 545 people are out of a job this week after the small national used car chain Off Lease Only had to close its doors following its inability to service its floorplan loan, which was provided by Ally Financial. Here are some more details from Automotive News:
Off Lease Only’s business model – which centered on used vehicles less than four years old and with fewer than 40,000 miles – lost viability as supply chain disruptions of the last few years reduced availability of new vehicles and prompted dealers to compete for limited used inventory, which drove up wholesale prices, according to Wilson’s declaration.
There’s a lot of speculation on Twitter surrounding the role corporate leadership played into the company’s performance, but there’s too much noise to say for sure what happened. While some of the company’s problems could be self-inflicted, Automotive News has a sobering round-up of the overall used car marketplace:
Subprime auto lender American Car Center shuttered its operations earlier this year amid more Americans falling behind on their vehicle payments. U.S. Auto Sales, a used-vehicle dealership chain in the Southeast, closed all 39 of its locations and furloughed its employees without pay in April.
Shift Technologies Inc., an online used-vehicle retailer, indicated last month it is in need of more capital as it reviews strategic alternatives for the business. In June, public dealership group Sonic Automotive Inc. cited lower used-vehicle availability and higher wholesale pricing as its reasons for suspending operations at eight of its EchoPark used-only locations and an unspecified number of delivery/buy centers.
Some of this feels inevitable as both the prices for used cars were inflated and the supply of used cars predictably dropped.
The Commercial Fleet Business Is Back, Baby
With the automotive semiconductor shortage came a fairly predictable decline in fleet sales as automakers prioritized higher margin vehicles. While the market hasn’t entirely caught up, there’s been a year-over-year increase of 22% in fleet sales for the first six months of 2023 according to intelligence firm S&P Global. Here’s some more data:
- The lease/rental industry is the fastest-growing vocation in 2023 after being the toughest hit by the pandemic. Fleets like Penske, U-Haul, and Enterprise saw 40-60% decreases in new registrations during the pandemic, but are having their largest year since 2019.
- Last-mile delivery was one of the only vocations to seen new registration increases during the pandemic and continues to shine with companies like Amazon tripling new registrations from 2019.
- Class 5 showed the only decrease in registrations. Cab-chassis and incomplete pickups had the most inventory during the pandemic – resulting in a flattening of the curve in 2023.
EV registrations were also up, with companies like Ford, BrightDrop, and Rivian delivering more electric vans.
The Big Question
Here’s a question that’s going to be difficult to answer, what do we run out of first:
- Lithium carbonate
- The gigafactories needed to turn that lithium carbonate into battery packs
- Customers who want those electric vehicles
Photos: FedEx, Faraday Future, Benchmark Minerals, Kevin Williams
Something that might help the supply-constrained world is building cars of a reasonable size, weight, and power, instead of 6 ton SUVs with sub-3-second 0-60 times (and as a bonus, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting run over by an apartment building while crossing the street).
But instead get run over by a condensed apartment building that you can’t hear coming….
I think most EVs have around 40lbs of lithium. But lets say there’s an average 60lbs. That’s 200,000,000 cars if your tonnage is correct. Is there a 2 for one sale going on? Also – Lithium batteries can either be re-purpose (Nissan does nice things with retired EV packs), or the batteries can be 95% recycled, and the materials reused – including the Lithium. Did battery power drills and lawn mowers create this much angst? Oh, and those batteries can be recycled too. A lot of Lithium floating around.
As a society we’re really gonna need to get our business together re: the whole circular economy concept. We’ve operated for a very long time basically pulling stuff out of the ground and then throwing it in piles, and now we’re starting to run into problems with not enough stuff in the ground and too much stuff in piles.
Time to mine the piles.
For sure. One exception is aluminum. Most of what we use is recycled, because making it is so energy intensive. Could be the same with battery materials. Redwood has gotten billions in funding for its project, at a time when venture capital is hard to come by.
“The big concern over electric cars has been demand” Happy September 8 everybody! As many EVs and PHEVs have been sold so far this year as all of last year, which was the record before the year before, which was the record before….
Everyone criticizes Toyota for continuing to flog hybrids instead of going all-in on electric. This is a good reason why they may be vindicated on that strategy.
Everyone criticizes Toyota because they came out with an EV that has less range than the cheapest competitor offerings.
There are some other chemistries coming online that may take some pressure off lithium. I can’t tell from the writeup whether those totals are for minerals intended exclusively for EV purposes, but even there we may see some lightening of the load. Sodium (for EV and building applications), flow batteries (for buildings) and sand batteries (utility-scale heat storage) all can absorb a fair amount of demand and reduce pressure on the lithium industry.
Sodium in particular is an exciting prospect; sodium is CHEAP.
For sure.Those and other tech will absolutely help the situation.
Someone please make a sodium off grid battery.I want one soon!
Let’s just put overhead lines on all major roads. Then a little wand on top of your car that hits the electric line and powers it. Only need a battery to get from your house to the electric line, then to you destination. It’s your own personal tram, no weird strangers you might accidentally socialize with. And no one will know your blasting the new Olivia record!
The cars should also have huge bumpers on them and make carnival sounds!
With fresh ideas like that, I’m going to need you at my start up TramX
I look forward to the engineering that reliably gets the pole from something like a Miata up to lines that clear oversized loads with a decent safety margin.
Window cleaning pole + good tape, done.
You put the power in the road, like a hotwheels track. The wand hangs down from the undercarriage. Like a penis.
You have me looking forward to a copper shortage. Copper prices are already inflated. Wiring all the roads within a reasonable time would make tomorrow’s lithium shortage into a distant memory.
not as stupid as it sounds; some highways in germany have already had pantograph lines installed for electric trucks. you’d just need an extra tall pantograph stuck to the roof of your sedan.
It’s been done: https://thebolditalic.com/hacked-prius-running-on-muni-power-lines-the-bold-italic-san-francisco-80cdbe55d68e
My Off Lease Only story:
Someone described Off Lease Only (OLO) as the as the Spirit Airlines of car dealerships, and it makes sense: They could be the cheapest, and they had a huge variety of cars; but you have to read the rules, check the car with a fine-tooth-comb, and go in with caution.
In my case, I bought a 10-month old Volvo XC40 Recharge EV with 5k miles on the clock a few months ago from them for daily-driver/dadmobile duty. It was priced more than $20k less than a new one, $8-9k less than a comparable CPO’d one, and $6-7k less than a plain old used one in comparable condition. Also to note, it still had plenty of factory warranty left.
It had both clean carfax and clean autocheck, however due to the risk of delay in reporting accidents, and OLO’s reputation for selling frame damaged cars, I wasn’t 100% sold on just that. So during the test drive (they allowed solo test drives, but you had to leave your license and a credit card behind), I went straight to my mechanic who did a PPI and gave it a clean bill of health. So I agreed to buy it, and the next day, while still under OLO’s return policy, I drove it to a franchised Volvo dealer for a post purchase inspection. They also gave it a mostly clean bill of health – TCAM was dead, but the new car warranty covered it.
However, remember: the Spirit Airlines/Gamestop analogy. They sell cars for cheap because they operate a low cost model. That means that their reconditioning of this car was limited to washing the car and (poorly) removing a parking permit sticker from the windshield – that’s it. Not another cent or bit of effort more.
So after that, I had to take care of the things OLO didn’t. Namely, it’s a modern Volvo. Like all modern Volvos, it required every key the car had to be able to set it up properly and get full functionality out of the car and the mobile app. Since this one only came with one key, I needed to get a new second key and have the car reprogrammed to just those keys.
Beyond that, the XC40 Recharge has a staggered wheel setup, and at one point in its life, someone rotated two of the tires incorrectly, meaning the passenger side tires needed to be shifted to the correct axle (front to rear/rear to front). And finally, it needed an alignment and the other basic stuff I do on all cars I buy used (detailing, cabin air filter, wiper blades, tint installation, etc). I DIY’d the stuff I could, and had the Volvo dealer do the things i couldn’t.
So other than buying the car, I spent approximately $1200 on doing the two inspections, the reconditioning that OLO should’ve done, and the few things I wanted to do. The Volvo dealer also did the TCAM under warranty and gave me a C40 loaner while they did all of this.
I also got an extended warranty for $1800, because Euro EV = potentially expensive repairs (my wife is an insurance attorney and read the entire thing before giving me the blessing to buy it).
So all in, another $3k to have the car sorted and protected.
But now let’s go back to the actual purchase process:
Overall, the store was pretty laid back for a crowded used car dealer. They didn’t push any add-ons, they didn’t pressure me to take their financing, and they were quite fair on my trade-in (although the appraisal took a lot longer than most places).
Yes, the place was a bit of a zoo: it was more crowded than most dealers I”ve been to, and the F&I/sales manager were balancing more customers than what I’ve seen at other dealers, but given this, I felt that they had me in and out reasonably quickly. Given how laid back they were with the crowds, they must be seriously zen people.
But now, for two caveats: I was there at the end of the month, and even used car dealers have sales goals. There was another XC40 there with a few more miles on the clock. However, it had some aftermarket options. So I just casually asked the sales rep that if we do the deal, if he’d move that stuff over. He agreed, so for no additional cost to me, they moved the other XC40’s OEM Volvo roof rack crossbars, Tuxmat floor mats, OEM Volvo rear rubber cargo mat, and 3D maxpider frunk mat over to my car.
Also, the car was missing its factory EVSE (charger), and I wasn’t in the mood to try my luck again and go fishing through their other EVs to see if they’d also throw one in Fortunately, I have a spare EVSE from my previous car, so that was a wash.
So let’s do the math.
By going with the Spirit Airlines of dealerships, and paying for the reconditioning and an extended warranty out of pocket, I saved approximately $17k vs buying it new, $5-6k vs buying it CPO’d, and $2-3k vs buying it used elsewhere. On top of which, I got them to add an additional $700-800 worth of accessories.
All in, it took a bit more effort on my part, and there was definitely some risk, but my wife and I love driving the car, and my kiddo adores riding around on it, and giggles form his car seat when I punch the throttle for a second and the instant torque moves him around.
Pretty much my only complaint is that it came previously from a front-plate state, and I hate front plates. So I put on a souvenir license plate on the front from a surf shop back home.
Pics: https://imgur.com/a/Qud5JKa
I had no idea Freedom Tons were bigger than Commie “tonnes”. Losers can’t even spell it right. USA! USA!
This is not a ringing endorsement of the US education system.
USA! USA!
It’s the other way around. It takes more Freedom Tons to equal Commie Tonnes, therefore they are smaller.
Not when using Freedom Math! We get more tons per ton. USA! USA!
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, “why do Americans continue to reject the units everyone else uses for science?”
Many people refuse to learn. Why do many countries continue to drive on the wrong side of the road?
Definitely seeing many Amazon-Rivian vans in my neck of the woods. My local Amazon drive says he loves the Rivian.
There’s a YouTube an Amazon driver made when he started using the Rivian. The electric part is cool of course, but even better are all the clever design features to make his job more efficient. Rivian really took advantage of the opportunity to improve the step van for package delivery.
Lithium is the one everyone talks about, but electrifying everything taxes the supply on a whole host of mainline materials including copper, nickel, cobalt, chromium, graphite, and zinc. So, either we massively scale up like our lives depend on it. Like some kind of imagined war. Or we don’t electrify everything, and things in 2030 look very similar to what they look like today.
Yeah, there’s more pounds of copper in an EV than Lithium. Copper resources are possibly 10x that of Lithium. But each new charging station requires 15+ lbs. Perhaps the hot profession of the future is a miner. Ooo the big 3 can convert all their workers into miners when replaced with robots, they should put that in the new contract.
And every meth addict knows that copper is worth money, so all the public chargers need to be hardened or the cables will disappear
Make the inner case live.Several of societies problems fixed in one go!
There is a third option seemingly no one wants to talk about: electrify the 70% of energy consumption that doesn’t move and accept that the energy density of fossil fuels that makes it so good for transportation will be something we figure out how to replace later. That requires zero million tons of lithium.
I must admit i’m confused.
What uses 70% of total energy yet isnt somehow already electrified?
Be confused no more!
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
I am delighted to share with you what I consider one the the BEST websites on the internet, Our World in Data. The article I linked is lengthy and I would recommend reading all of it, but I’ll first direct you to the pie chart of greenhouse gas emissions by sector, which is the first big graphic you’ll see as you begin to scroll down.
I probably should have said “70% of energy-sourced greenhouse gas emissions“, because that is actually what is analyzed here (meaning carbon-free energy like nuclear, wind, and solar are not part of this analysis, but the emissions from manufacturing and installing those pieces of infrastructure are). Energy accounts for 73.2%. Transportation energy accounts for 16.2%, making the non-transport-related share of energy emissions 78%. The non-transport-related share of total emissions is 84%.
You have to read the explanation in the text to see that, of the 11.9% of emissions originating from road transportation, 6/10ths come from passenger road transport, including busses. Odd choice to include the busses here, but OK… more digging for more sources puts the share without busses at about half, so light-duty passenger cars, trucks, & motorcycles – the kind consumers drive – account for 5-6% of total emissions, with 94-95% coming from “everything else”.
If every car, bike, and (light) truck on the planet were converted to a BEV via magic wand tomorrow, with zero carbon emissions from the magic manufacturing process, and every magic BEV came with a magic carbon-free solar station to charge it, the net reduction in GHG emissions would be 5-6%. With the electric grid’s current carbon efficiency, it would be 2-3%.
And yet the entire world can’t stop arguing out how to put a 2,000lb battery in every driveway, because the only thing humans understand is conspicuous consumption. Spectacular levels of capital, both financial and political, have and are being spent to put this at the front line of the culture war, and it’s all to distract you from the fact that we are, in fact, doing very nearly nothing. Every BEV subsidy is enough to FULLY cover the cost of a furnace->heat pump retrofit that would avert more lifetime emissions than a BEV.
Related enlightening reading, if you are so inclined:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/10/10/20904213/climate-change-steel-cement-industrial-heat-hydrogen-ccs
We don’t run out of any, we continue to hit non linear shifts that allow more growth and fewer and fewer people are able to benefit from it.
If we start building sedans, hatchbacks, and sports cars instead of giant trucks and SUVs, and streamline the crap out of them and build them to be less massive to reduce the amount of materials for a given amount of range, and the things are actually designed to be repaired instead of locked behind proprietary software/tools that only dealerships have access to, we will have more than enough resources to build vehicles for everyone who needs one.
For every 212 kWh Silverado EV with 400 miles range, you could build *eight* 26 kWh Solectria Sunrise-like vehicles with 200 miles range, *twelve* 15 kWh Aptera-like EVs with 200 miles range, and *one-hundred* 2 kWh one-seater micro-EVs or Ebikes with 100+ miles range. The Silverados are designed to last just long enough to meet the warrantee period, and then all of those materials end up in a landfill or being used second-hand in reduced capacity, whereas the vehicles COULD be designed to be repairable with basic tools to mitigate this.
The way EVs are being built is not a solution to any of our problems, and is a total waste and misuse of the technology. Screw corporate profits. We need to think long-term, over the next century, how we’re going to keep people mobile without running out of scarce resources. There is no other planet we can live on and extract resources from with the current technology level and for the forseeable future within the lifetime of the existing people on this planet.
If there is ever an application for ICE and diesel going into the future, it is for vehicles that need to haul massive loads and tow things, like oversized trucks and SUVs. Making these electric is stupidity. For basic people movers where the goal is moving people around for as little energy as possible as inexpensively as possible, EVs are perfect, and the EVs available should reflect that. EVs, having greatly less moving parts than ICE vehicles, should also be built to be repairable to take advantage of their simplicity and potential for increased longevity vs. ICE. An EV that can last a human lifetime is more than possible.
I know I’ve been sitting around waiting for a small, preferably 2-door hatchback, EV. 200-250 miles of range, quick-ish charging times, and crazy 0-60 times is all I ask for.
Well, all of that and for it to be $30K or less.
Very doable. Something with a CdA value around 0.3 m^2, a mass of about or under 3,000 lbs, and 250 horsepower would do everything you’re asking for. The battery pack would be 30 kWh or smaller to make it happen.
Aptera isn’t quite that car, but it is the closest thing to what is being described that has a serious chance of entering the market.
A small, power-dense battery would allow for extremely fast charge times, about like filling up a gasoline ICE using the latest Superchargers. It would also reduce queues because people would be able to be on their way much faster.
So you want the new FIAT 500 EV – which runs just a bit over your budget at under $32,000 (Euro conversion to USD) for 118 mile range, or over 200 mile range for $36,000
Over $36k for 118 miles is too much. Add the fact it’s a Fiat and well…
$32K for 118.
$36K for 220.
FIAT motors and batteries will be the same as Jeep, Dodge, Alfa, Opel/Vauxhall, Citroen, Lancia, Peugeot…
That’s the real tragedy
…or Mini Cooper EV for about the same money – – for 4 door EVs, look at Renault Zoe, Honda E, Vauxhall/Opel Corsa, Peugeot 208.
Oh – but except for the Mini, we can’t get those here in the US because FREEDOM and BIG TRUCKS.
I agree with a lot of this. However, the issue is that too many people don’t want that. The best thing we can do to help make cars like that available (and much of the environmental movement for that matter) is to find a way to create a new national narrative that vehicles like that are all one needs.
Look at any number of commenters on this site and other enthusiast sites, and they’re not going to be happy until they have a full-size pickup that can tow their camper 600 miles, and only have ~10 minute recharge every time they’re out of electrons. No other use case is considered.
When I talk to friends and family about this, not many want an electric car with “only” 250-300 miles of range, and not much of my reasoning can change their minds. Most of these people aren’t car enthusiasts, so I feel like they are an OK representation of the public at large. Until the narrative around cars changes, no one wants to give up their current situation for one they deem inferior. It’s a hard sale to convince someone to give up a convenience when the threat of continued use of said convenience isn’t in their face.
Bingo.
I’m definitely one of the people you’re talking about here, and I don’t see my vehicular usage as abnormal in any way, at least for the exurban/small town area that I live in:
-Harsh winters
-A few road trips a year
-Towing a few thousand pounds on occasion.
-Hauling 3 kids and their stuff
Would it be possible to swap one of my vehicles for an EV? Yeah maybe, but it requires sacrifice for minimal upside. With its high purchase price, an EV is not likely to save me much money overall, even considering fuel and maintenance and it makes any kind of long trip more difficult.
Asking people to get by with 95% of their use cases covered, and hand wave the other 5% away is the height of foolishness IMO. No one wants to spend $50,000 or more on something that can’t do everything they want it to do. People buy for their edge cases, period.
Not going to lie, you’ve said the same enough times that I’ve seen, it’s absolutely what I used as my template above!
And what you said about pricing is the one thing I can’t overcome in discussions like this. I could easily have one (maybe both) of the cars in my garage be EV, however EVs aren’t really in the price range for what my wife and I want to afford. If we ever get to the mythical ~$30k EV, even with only 200-250 miles of range, I’m in like Flynn.
This whole issue reinforces in my mind that PHEVs
areshould be the next step. People don’t give up much, and it can get people used to plugging in every night, and start to break down that mental barrier of range anxiety.There’s a lot of work to do on this front. It needs to be on the scale of a moon-shot like the 60s. I think we’re heading that way, just more slowly than we should be, IMO.
Greatly reducing recharging times would be the other possibility, but as I understand it there are real limitations with doing that safely and while preserving battery life.
I could live with a 300 mile EV if it could be topped up from 0-100% in 5 minutes.
industry appears disinterested in swappable batteries…
Consumer me is disinterested in swappable batteries, seems like playing russian roulette with my drive.
With good reason IMO.
Imagine taking a brand new car off the showroom floor on a long road trip, and getting as your swap a 5 year old battery with thousands of charging cycles on it.
Even beyond the range degradation, now you have a car under warranty with a major component in it that wasn’t installed at the factory. Either the manufacturers need to run the swap programs themselves or there needs to be some major quality control.
A genuine, perhaps fun ask: time yourself at your next piss ‘n’ caffeine stop and see if it’s 5 min like it seems it is, or secretly 15.
Realistically speaking, that means you want a 500-600 mile EV with ~1 MW fast charge capability, and you will only use the bottom 1/2 to 2/3rds of the capacity when you need 5 minute refills.
About 25 years ago, when I was just learning what technology was, I recall watching some TV news segment explaining an exciting new computer system that could read text from a page and turn it into digital, searchable text, not a picture of text. Living in the future! They then went on to explain that it was over 99% accurate! They then continued to go on to explain that it was not yet considered ready, as 99+% accuracy translates to several errors per page.
The hand-wavers destroy their own credibility when they say 95% of use cases covered is enough. 95% means you will have an unmet need about once every 20 days.
> find a way to create a new national narrative that vehicles like that are all one needs
When congress managed to get bubba in a tizzy over the commies on the other side trying to take their stoves away, that isn’t ever happening.
“The commies are coming for your trucks and taking away your livelihood and the American dream of towing your boat to the lake!!!11!”
Or people could drive their stupid Silverados but they are PHEV instead of EV.
A PHEV pack to give a Silverado a 50 mile plug-in range would be enough to give a long-wheelbase streamliner sedan of 3,200 lbs with the CdA of a Solectria Sunrise a 150-200 mile range.
It can be done, but it is awfully wasteful… And the Silverado will be about 400 lbs heavier as a result.
Yeah. It was not a well thought out comment. Overall, I support PHEVs and hybrids as a way to decrease emissions now(ish) when so many are opposed to or afraid of BEVs. But large trucks are a different story than cars and CUVs when it comes to electric propulsion.
tl;dr: my bad
I’m very much with you on this, but how do we change the habits of a whole country?
Since Hollywood loves remakes and been out of ideas for 20yrs. Waterworld should be remade, with the Villian floating around in a cargo ship full of lithium batteries instead of oil. The bad guys can be referred to as Zappers instead of Smokers.
And… the “MUTATION!” possessed by The Mariner would most definitely involve some type of electric-eel ability to charge his catamaran, in addition to the gills behind his ears.
Hey buddy, you wrote “LiFeP04″. It looks like you used a zero where you should have used a capital “O” for oxygen. It would have been really good of you could have made the “4” subscript. I hope your high school chem teacher doesn’t see this! 😉
My SWAG (superbly wild-ass guess) is there’s not enough lithium mining to meet demand. On the flip side it could be like fiber optic cable or solar panels where companies get into it and make a ton of product all at once. We’re not seeing a lot of news but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
I had no idea Off-Lease Only was a chain, there’s one near me that looks like a sketchy independent used car dealer, believe they’re even housed in a former convenience store/gas station building
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Woohoo!
Yes
Apparently I’m late to the party, but it’s a good day!
Hello, is it me you are looking for?
Yep. They were a regional chain. They operated 5 stores in Florida (Miami, Ft Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Orlando, Tampa-area) and one in Texas (Houston).
They were the Spirit Airlines/Gamestop of used car lots in that had a large variety and potentially lots of good deals, but you needed to be smart.
Ah, so the one around here must not be part of them and they just failed before they could sue for infringement
The lithium issue can be tempered by a few things:
– the biggest is recycling
– true fast charging
– once true fast charging exists, the “need” for 100’s and 100’s of miles of range is gone for most.
The stats are clear, the vast majority of people would be able to do their daily driving with a range of 60 miles or so. Possibly less if worksite charging becomes the norm. With fast charging (and enough chargers) charging on long trips becomes a mild inconvenience.
With fast charging, charging stations can look like toll booths. Take an exit, the lanes multiply into charging booths, a robotic arm plugs in, 2 minutes layers, unplugged and off you go. Rinse and repeat every hour or so.
Yeah, most, not all.
Hey buddy, my commute is 800 miles each way, and I need to tow eight 20-foot logs of oak both ways for my job. Then I need to pick up my boy Darryl from his after school soccer practice from the middle of Mojave desert.
Oh wow, you city folk have pretty short commutes.
MY daily commute is 1000 miles each way towing 10 tons of granite blocks and my boy, also named Darrryl but with 3 r’s because he is bigger than your boy, plays soccer in the Kalahari desert.
We all have unique use cases. I work from home and only have to pick up my daughter Durleen from ballet practice at the strip club down the road every night at closing time.
Oh you’re her dad? That’s awkward
Recycling is Really Hard, and Really Really Hard if you are competing on price with a product that ‘just’ has to be dug out of the ground. You have to pay for the salvage of the battery (labor + overhead), pay for transportation to the recycling facility, pay for pretreatment (labor + overhead), pay for the pyrometallurgy / hydrometallurgy lithium extraction (labor + energy + materials + OVERHEAD), then refine the extracted materials back into something useful again… you get the idea. Compare that with raw Lithium extraction (fill a pond in China with water and wait for it to dry…) and you can see the problem.
I’m not saying that recycling Lithium (and other precious materials) from used batteries shouldn’t be done, or that the commodity pricing won’t eventually make it up to the level where recycling will be economically viable – to the contrary, I’m saying it *will*, but I ask you to imagine what that raw material cost will have to be in order to level out. Now imagine what that means for overall battery cost / kWh, and the impact that will have on the eventual affordability (or not) of lithium battery EV’s.
My personal opinion is that the downward price pressures from economies of scale and innovation won’t outstrip the upward price pressure of logarithmic demand growth against a fundamentally limited supply. Until we come up with a battery chemistry with sufficient power density and cycle lifetime that’s made out of something literally as common as dirt (sulphur is an exciting candidate, as someone mentioned above), EV adoption will be hamstrung by cost. Given that even the most promising battery chemistries take a minimum of 20 years between invention and industrial production, I predict there will be a lot of frustrated potential EV owners priced out of the market between now and ~2050.
“The Big Question”
Depends on whether the world sees the light and focuses on smaller battery PHEV/REX offerings.
I have an irrational fear about battery mineral availability. After 2035, when numerous states and countries outlaw the sale of new ICE vehicles, consumers may be forced to buy cars with small batteries and short ranges or wait months for vehicles with full sized batteries.
I expect mining and recycling will make significant gains over the next 10 years. I just hope supply can keep up with demand without skyrocketing prices.
Lithium is a salt, and is one of the most plentiful minerals on the planet. The problem isn’t it’s availability (it’s easy to find and mine), but that there aren’t yet enough refineries. Refined lithium is what is in short supply. Once there are sufficient refineries, lithium for batteries should become abundant and cheap.
This is an interesting comment- and I have heard this second hand before as well. Like the poster above, I have a fear when batteries are becoming thrust into such demand. After all, the things are made up of “rare earth materials”. I am not a environment fanatic by any means but these concerns do give me pause. Any reading you’ve come across about this process becoming mainstream, not destructive to mankind and eventually cheap?
I know people don’t want to hear too much from Elon, but FWIW he’s said a fair bit about it: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-entrepreneur-advice-lithium-refining-like-minting-money-2022-7
Yeah, some like to point out the estimated Lithium reserves around the globe. Bolivia is a popular example, but the country has no mines and no current plans to grant mining rights as of now. China has been in talks with them for a long time, maybe Bolivia is waiting for the best deal/bribe or maybe they are sensible and don’t want their country turned into an environmental disaster. Like I have said for a while how long until wars are fought over EV resources…
Lithium is found in good supply in the US — no need to import it, from what I understand. I don’t think that mining it is expected to cause anything too environmentally disastrous, as mining goes. (Not sure if refining it creates any problem byproducts, though.) The bigger concerns are the rarer metals that some battery chemistries need (like cobalt). The good news is that better chemistries are more often being used, which minimize or completely eliminate those rare metals.
US has estimated Lithium reserves of 13M US tons, 150lbs per EV thats 173M EVs, there are almost 300M cars in the US. So no there is not enough, and thats just cars.
Not sure, but I think that “reserves” means lithium that has been mined (or maybe intended to be mined) from designated mining locations. Some of what I’ve read says that there are lots of potential mining areas that aren’t yet factored in (and that doing so could be a boon for investors). I’m just relating details from articles, and claim no expertise — but I think that’s the gist.
The 13M number includes everything, actually should of called it resources. US reserves 1M, resources 12M.
Whoa there! Beware misusing the term ‘rare earth metals’ or ‘rare earth materials’. While it might sound logical that uncommon metals from the earth are all rare earth metals, that is not the case. There is a specific group of mostly lanthanides plus yttrium and scandium that are defined as rare earth metals. They are hard to refine and hard to distinguish from each other.
Neodymium, praseodymium, and samarium can be used to make ‘rare earth magnets’ which are natural strong magnets.
Lithium is not rare or a rare earth metal, it is an alkali metal.
Proof that this is the best commentariat on the damn internet.
Thanks! I gotta put that chemistry degree to use every now and then!
Thacker Pass has 3.7 million tons of known reserves. Other lithium mines planned for Nevada have unpublished — that I know of — reserves. Lithium is abundant.
Redwood Materials is building a 1 million square-foot lithium battery recycling plant near Tesla’s Nevada giga factory. Lithium-based batteries will be recycled and not landfilled.
The question isn’t whether there is enough Lithium. The questions are whether industry can refine Lithium and manufacture enough batteries at sufficient quantities.
Known world wide reserves are 110M US tons. If on average an EV uses 150lbs of lithium, there are 1.5B cars in the world, it would be just enough to replace every car with an EV. That leaves nothing for trucks, buses, etc. That is assuming we can and will mine it all, possibly then driving our EVs through a MadMax wasteland.
That’s also assuming every vehicle is replaced with lithium based chemistries and not sodium or aluminum. (And we don’t resort to ocean mining, which is dumb but technically possible)
Over the 50 years it will to take to replace the world’s entire fleet with electric vehicles, there is more than enough resources available. Willpower is the bigger issue
True, I think about all the mining operations (Potash, Phospate, Sodium, etc) I have seen in the midwest and think how many times this is required worldwide for EVs. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture to think of a 10x, 100x, increase in mines of all EV minerals needed.
Seawater contains 230 Billion tons of the stuff.
Desalination that is already occurring in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Florida, Texas and California – as well as almost every large ship that travels the globe – produces salts that contain lithium as a byproduct.
Then there’s our own landfills – containing lithium as well as aluminum, iron, steel, copper, silver, gold, etc….
I guess it’s time to start paying me for my used lithium batteries instead of taking them for free or charging me. There are a LOT of lithium batteries out there right now that could probably be recycled.
Are notifications working now?! Testing… please reply to this.
For every 100 batteries you give to Tesla, you can recieve 5 ‘Musk bux’ towards Tesla merch.
I want some short shorts, a S3XY T-shirt, and a flamethrower!
We are already running out of people who want to buy the current crop of EVs.
I don’t believe it’s possible to square the circle of the following true statements:
1) Current EVs cost too much because lithium is expensive.
2) Current EVs don’t offer enough range because more range needs more lithium.
3) Lithium is a limited commodity.
Either a rethinking of ICE bans and/or a new battery chemistry that can provide long range at low cost is necessary.
PHEV all the things!!
40-50 miles of range means 95%+ of all trips would burn no gas.
I have no problem with electric and BEVs, but if this is really about the environment, and not making certain folks richer…..PHEV is the answer.
Yes please. My commute needs a 40ish mile battery range to take care of the day. But my road trips are all 450+ miles. Give me a battery for every day and an ICE for the long trips and I’ll be happy. Shame there are so few good options.
Im all about that PHEV train. Its the solution with the least compromises. Less battery (less weight, less cost, fewer materials) but all the benefits of EV how the vast majority of people use there vehicle WITHOUT having to completely adopt a new lifestyle.
My dad just got one and is loving it. He hasn’t touched gas on his commute in weeks.
The thing about “PHEVs for all, they work for everyone” is that it’s still asking people to pay a premium for a feature they can’t all use to the full advantage necessarily. Not everyone can charge at their residence, their work, etc. Use it as a hybrid then, fine, but it’s going to be a struggle to ask people to spend thousands more. We’re only now at a point that regular hybrids don’t have a major premium over standard ICE and consumer perception still needs to catch up to that.
My mom hopes to trade her 2019 X5 in on a new Volvo XC60 PHEV in the next year or so. She’ll go from upper teens/low 20s fuel economy for all her local errands to doing them all on electric power. She goes out of town once a month or so to visit family in a rural (no charging infrastructure) area ~150 miles away, so it makes sense for her to go the PHEV route. Yes there are EVs that could theoretically do her family visiting rounds (~400+ miles) all on one charge but she lives in KY where summer temps can hit 100 and winter temps below 20, not great for range, and again, charging infrastructure in that part of the state simply doesn’t exist.
So much this! Toyota can’t keep RAV4 Primes in stock, mainly cause they don’t make enough, sad when Jeep builds more 4Xe than Toyota does Rav4 Prime, but would really like a PHEV Maverick, or even Bronco. People complain about complexity but is it any worse than adding all the emissions junk back in the 70s? If done right like the Prius and Volt it removes the less reliable style transmission even.
Totally agree. But. Current US legislation needs to change for this to be a thing. PHEV just doesn’t pull the OEM’s fleet far enough toward the “low hydrocarbon” goal, unless they can PHEVitize(TM) the entire fleet at once. Otherwise, they need BEVs right now to balance out the ICE vehicles.
“Faraday Future Intelligent Electric (FFIE.O) on Thursday said it has recently observed a series of “suspicious activities” which the electric-vehicle startup believes suggested a “coordinated effort” to undermine its valuation.”
The drop in their stock value has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they were years late in delivering their first customer vehicle.
Crossing fingers and toes that we can commercialize sodium-ion batteries in time to avert a battery-production crisis. Beyond fracked geothermal, I don’t expect we’re going to do anything regarding baseload power production so we’re going to need tons of batteries for grid stabilization as well.
Redox flow batteries are finally gaining commercial momentum for stationary storage. Vanadium variants of course, but zinc-bromide is a surprise hit too.
For grid stabilization, we’ll have lithium, sodium, redox, gravity/hydro, and possibly fuel cell storage. Having more options is ideal here.
I expect NG will be used for baseline power for a long time.
Sadly, I have to agree. I’d love to see more nuclear in the mix.
Yeah, I’ve been following the V batteries for a few decades and really hoping Zn-Br takes off. They’re perfect for the purpose but unless they get some manufacturing volume they’re going to be competing with volume-manufactured Li batteries, which will win just because of familiarity.
Magnesium batteries are making breakthroughs as well as sodium. But, Like you said, it’s a fingers crossed kind of thing.
I expect even the staunchest anti nuclear NIMBY activist will eventually concede nuclear power is better than constant blackouts.
No power for weeks at a time, especially during extreme weather events has quite the sobering effect.
Great, go ahead and build a plant then! Go molten salt thorium breeder cycle or CANDU if you can’t source some MOX or HEU. It’s really simple and easy, I hear.
I get so tired of the “we could have a beautiful nuclear future if it weren’t for YOU NIMBYS” folks. Y’all fall for the scapegoat every time.
ERCOT has frequent blackouts even when it’s got abundant renewable power feeding in. One of our biggest issues is grids, not baseload generation.
Sure. I’ll soon be able to buy own micro reactor for couch change from Alibaba as the Chinese are now one of the fastest adopters of nuclear power.
The question is: Can I count on you not to NIMBY me?
At this point in the conversation I wouldn’t trust you with a chainsaw.
OK NIMBY.
The NIMBYs ain’t the problem; the lenders and the PUCs have been burned by too many 500%+ overruns. 50 years since a nuke came in within a billion of its cost promises, they take 10 years to build, and the LCOE’s twice PV + batteries.
That’s because as you point out so few US reactors ever get built. Each one is a custom job with costs and challenges to match. Standardize reactor designs, streamline regulations and costs will drop just like they do for everything else. The Chinese and Koreans are already on it. India will follow.
Besides it’s not like most major project haven’t also gone massively over budget and delayed yet we keep throwing money at bombers, submarines and other things that arguably are a lot less practical for the public good. For example how much have we thrown at the International Space Station and what’s come of it? Or for that matter NASA of late? NASA’s current annual budget is $26B, what do they promise for that?
Well lessee:
“NASA’s budget request for fiscal year 2022 reflects a topical range of priorities. The four highlighted priorities are:
Addressing the climate crisis nationally and internationally.This includes a next-generation Earth system observatory, sustainable flight partnerships, and university research.
Restoring America’s global standing.The Artemis missions to the Moon, the International Space Station, and international partnerships all fall under this category.
Promoting racial and economic equality by increasing the participation of historically underserved communities in STEM. This also includes landing the first woman and person of color on the Moon through the Artemis missions.
Driving economic growth by leading American dominance in emerging markets and space technology. There’s also more than $280 million allotted for investments in small business innovation research.”
https://www.zdnet.com/article/nasas-budget-was-24b-in-2022-heres-how-it-spends-the-money/
So fix climate change, restore America’s image, promote equality by “increasing the participation of historically underserved communities in STEM” and drive economic growth.
You know what else can do all that? Nuclear. With a lot more actual public good come from it. I’ll take cheap, reliable power over yet another overpriced new bomber or sending more people to the moon on a feelgood maybe to die just to do a robot’s job.
Up till now the nuclear can has been kicked down the road in favor of coal, then natural gas. Well we can’t keep doing that. At some point fossil fuels will run out and/or the gasses they generate will overwhelm the climate. We’re already at 8+B people and maybe another 2B+ coming. They’re going to want a nice life too and that takes a lot of energy. Renewables won’t be nearly enough, hydrogen is a cynical joke and as this article points out we’re already short on battery materials. Nuclear will have to be a much bigger percent of the mix.
The only other option is austerity and that will not go over well.
We should definitely not look to geothermal. We have to keep those BTUs in the ground and out of the atmosphere. We have to develop atmospheric thermal and use that ever increasing source of heat for power generation. Screw carbon capture, the real need is for thermal capture!
If Sense Prevails (huh, right…) studies have shown Coal-to-Nuclear conversions (reusing the infrastructure of an existing / retired coal power plant and replacing the heat source with a nuclear reactor) to be economically advantageous as long as the operator is big enough to swing the investment. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/doe-report-finds-hundreds-retiring-coal-plant-sites-could-convert-nuclear
If we replace baseload gen with nukes, max out solar/wind variable production, and manage peaks / weather events etc. with fast response natural gas powered plants, we’d all be better off. Unfortunately infrastructure wheels grind very slowly…
Oh look. A company that’s a scam is accusing the market that’s outed them as a scam of being a scam itself. That’s some 2nd graders arguing over a ball on the playground ass energy. Most of these godforsaken EV startups are just one giant con.
And wouldn’t you know it-I see another argument for greater adoption of PHEVs and traditional hybrids! I forget what Toyota quoted (I think that they could make 8 of those for each EV?) but the fact is that lithium is a finite resource that’s extremely carbon intensive to extract. It takes tens of thousands of miles of EV ownership before their carbon footprint becomes less than that of an ICE vehicle.
But what if we could just, you know…make several more vehicles with that same amount of finite lithium that still drastically reduce emissions, work right now, and don’t require any lifestyle adjustments or additional infrastructure? Gee, that sure seems like a decent idea to me!
I am not anti EV. Far from it. But what I am against is the ridiculous, premature dog and pony show and series of unnecessary mandates they’ve come with. The more we figure out about BEVs the worse they’re starting to look, at least right now. I’m not going to speak for 10 years from now, and I’m still firmly in the “we need to reduce our reliance on cars in general” camp overall. But I’ve had it with the shunning of the good in pursuit of the perfect. PHEVs and traditional hybrids are the answer, they’ve been the answer, and they will remain the answer for the next several years.
Ya know, you can just say, “I don’t want to buy a BEV” and leave it at that.
Why would I do that? It’s not that simple, and I wouldn’t even say I don’t want to buy one necessarily. My wife’s car is next up and is going to be a PHEV for sure. When it’s my turn several years down the road there may damn well be a BEV that I want and can make work.
I don’t see this an either/or, pick one side or another type of thing like the internet makes it out to be. You can be critical of the current crop of BEVs without being anti BEV.
Except no, you cant. Because dipwad politicos who know fack-all about the actual needs of their constituents keep trying to pass “BEV only” laws and regulations that are going to absolutely screw over the average Jane and Joe, and really screw over the poor (as usual).
Despite what talk show hosts and angry redditors might try to feed you with their Chicken Little routines, those “BEV-only” laws include PHEVs, fuel cells, and more.
Some of them do for now, some of them (like my home state) are in fact BEV only targets.
They do, but it’s a lot easier to hit the legislative targets by leaving most of the fleet as is and cranking out a few BEVs. If they’re going to be compliant, with hybrid and PHEV, they would have to essentially convert all ICE vehicles.
It does require a lifestyle change. Plugging in. That’s too much of an ask for some folks, even those with the option.
https://www.greencars.com/news/drivers-arent-plugging-in-their-plug-in-hybrids
Which is absurd considering you can get by charging most PHEVs on a 120 volt wall outlet
That’s literally twice as absurd for the 220V Europeans referenced in the story.
IMO the solution is to offer conventional electric oriented, small efficient ICE/powerful E motor hybrids for folks who don’t have reliable, regular access to low cost charging (apartment dwellers, street parkers, etc) and REX/PHEVs to those who do. Extra points for V2H capability at a very reasonable cost.
Someday I’d love to see this taken to an extreme, even if just as a prototype using every gas saving trick in the book. Hit and miss, cylinder deactivation, steam heat recovery, fixed RPM, phase and lift timing, whatever. Lets see how far we can get on a gallon of gas, how cheap, safe and reliable the tech can be, and how well it can be mass produced.
While I agree, all of that is extra cost. A BEV is just so much cheaper and simpler to make, with the single exception being the battery. Solve the battery issue the same way we solved COVID and defeated Hitler… the Federal Government. We can’t wait for private industry to figure this out while still being fiduciarily obligated to turn a profit.
I don’t think it would cost that much. A Prius starts at under $30k, most of the things I’m suggesting are just a modification of what’s already there, some is just software. Toyota also has a HUGE parts bin to draw from so it may not be reinventing too much either.
Such a hybrid may require fewer cylinders (see BMW i3 and i8) which would be simpler.
“Solve the battery issue the same way we solved COVID and defeated Hitler… the Federal Government.”
As someone who watches a LOT of WW2 documentaries I feel obligated to point out “we” didn’t defeat Hitler, the Russians did. America certainly did it’s part, we supplied the allies, especially Russia, with war materials until they got their own industries back up and running, we fought along with the British commonwealth, France and various resistance groups on the Western and Southern fronts but it was Russia on the Eastern front that broke the Germans.
There are also historians who argue it was the entry of Russia into the Pacific theatre that finally convinced the Japanese to surrender and that the atom bombs were just a convenient excuse to do so:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_War
As for Covid, well I’ll just leave these here…
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/23/trump-bleach-one-year-484399
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/timeline-tracking-trump-alongside-scientific-developments-hydroxychloroquine/story?id=72170553
https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/hydroxychloroquine-effective-covid-19-3536024/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States
My neighbor pulls an extension cord out the window to charge their street-parked RAV4 plugin hybrid. With barely any effort they probably never pay for gas.
My dad literally runs an extension chord from the garage to the driveway to charge his X5 50e and will sometimes use public chargers when available. The only time he’s touched the gas engine is on road trips so far. Would it be nice to have a 240 volt charger? Definitely, but necessary? No sir, and that sucker has 44 miles of all electric range.
Early in 2021, a friend’s sister foolishly decided she wanted to replace her barely used (14,000 miles) RAV4 Prime SE with a Venza. My friend really doesn’t like his sister, but with an old 2005 Corolla and a growing family, I strongly suggested he ask what she wanted for it.
She came back with $27,000. I told him if he didn’t buy it, I would. This surprised him, as he knew I needed no such vehicle.
In 2022 he averaged 170mpg over 16,000 miles with how local most trips are. Moreover, he got it for $27K, whereas if she traded that in to a dealership, they likely would’ve been asking $45K+ to whoever ended up buying it, and got it without any hesitation from anyone else.
Has a cheap-to-run family conveyance he’ll likely be driving until 2035-2040, and got to totally dunk his sister (without her knowing it) at the the same time.
Yeah but in the winter I have to decide between charging and my Christmas lights. /s
If you had a Tesla, you could charge the car and have it play TSO while flashing its headlights. Two for one!