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Power Transportation Earth

We May Not Have Enough Minerals To Even Meet Electric Car Demand (jalopnik.com) 341

Citing two reports from Reuters and Bloomberg, Jalopnik reports on the scarcity of metals necessary for electric cars. From the report: [W]hile demand for nickel keeps increasing, half the world's nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries. All of which is going to have seismic effect on the world's suppliers. In short: There will be winners and losers, and the winners will be the ones with the highest-grade stuff -- not unlike, I suppose, the illicit drugs market. "Some of the biggest producers of the higher-grade ores, including BHP Norilsk Nickel, Vale and Sumitomo Corp, are moving quickly to take advantage and seal long-term supply deals with battery producers," reports Reuters. "Among those losing out would be lower-grade nickel mines like Cerro Matoso in Columbia, owned by South32 Ltd and Glencore's Koniambo in New Caledonia, as well as Anglo American's mines in Brazil producing ferronickel."

What of cobalt? Bloomberg sent a writer and photographer to Cobalt, Ontario, about 300 miles north of Toronto, to find out. The town, which began life as a silver town, also is believed to have some cobalt, though no one's really found much yet. The search for a new source of cobalt isn't taking place in just Cobalt, Ontario, of course, as mining companies worldwide try to capitalize on the our electric car future. But the search is ramping up as the world's biggest source of cobalt -- the Democratic Republic of Congo, where about half of all cobalt comes from -- is increasingly unstable, making car manufacturers nervous and cobalt all the more valuable.

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We May Not Have Enough Minerals To Even Meet Electric Car Demand

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  • Minerals? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @07:56PM (#55466963) Homepage Journal

    These aren't minerals, but elements.
    The ore which they elements may be extracted from are minerals - several different kinds, none of which are mentioned in TFS.

    The elements themselves are not rare. It''s just a matter of paying for the extraction. It won't make batteries hard to find, just expensive.

    • Re:Minerals? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thesupraman ( 179040 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @08:02PM (#55466989)

      If you can find a mine that produces any of these in pure elemental form, then I suggest you lay claim and get rich damn quick.

      Until that time, I suggest that what comes out of mines are minerals, and from those we extract purer forms, which can approach elemental purity at times, depending on requirements. This article is about the mines, so you are simply being a pedant, sorry.

      ' It''s just a matter of paying for the extraction. It won't make batteries hard to find, just expensive.'
      You think that is a useful comment? Hell, Seawater contains all of those elements! we could just extract from that!.
      Good mineral sources have order*S* of magnitude more economic value than 'an element is common' implies, as I am sure you are aware.

      The town of cobalt however is an odd inclusion - I suggest Bloombergs researcher needs up to strung up for that one.

      • Re:Minerals? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @08:25PM (#55467091)

        Neither nickel nor cobalt is needed for lithium batteries. Tesla batteries contain both, but the Nissan Leaf uses manganese instead, and there are billions of tonnes of manganese reserves.

        We will likely find both better ways to extract ore, and better ways to build batteries. Just ask Paul Ehrlich about betting against human ingenuity [wikipedia.org].

        • Re:Minerals? (Score:5, Informative)

          by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:26PM (#55467347) Homepage

          It's worse than that; neither of Jalopnik's "sources" make the claim that "We May Not Have Enough Minerals To Even Meet Electric Car Demand". Both of the sources are very upbeat about the market prospects, yet Jalopnik (which has long had an anti-EV lean, and particularly anti-Tesla) turns it into a doom story.

          More to the point, the sources say just the opposite of what Jalopnik is claiming. To not put too fine of a point on it:

          UBS estimates that 15 million electric vehicles will be on the road by 2025, lifting nickel demand by 300,000-900,000 tonnes, or by 10-40 percent of the current market.

          Got that? In 7 years, nickel supply only needs to grow by 10-40%. Which is nothing. I mean, great if you're a nickel mining company, but not exactly the plot of a post-apocalyptic movie.

          The Bloomberg article about cobalt, by contrast, was about how the rise in cobalt demand is bringing life back into a dying town. A feel-good story about the current market which, again, Jalopnik turned into doom.

          Here's the basic fact: cobalt is found pretty much everywhere nickel and copper are. In most places, they don't bother to recover it because the market demand hasn't been high enough; it just gets thrown out in the tailings. As the demand and price rise (and EVs manufacturers can easily outspend almost all other demand sources for cobalt, because that ~15% in their cathodes makes so much of a difference), the only thing that has to happen is the addition of more recovery processes to existing copper and nickel mines. Most cobalt today comes from the Congo because their nickel-copper ores have the highest cobalt fractions (although contrary to popular myth, under 20% of the Congo's cobalt comes from "artisinal" mines; most come from big mines from international firms which use modern equipment and processes). But nickel-copper ores pretty much anywhere else on Earth can also recover cobalt, and will to whatever extent is needed to meet demand (in addition to the new demand launching a new wave of cobalt exploration, like that which is happening near the town of Cobalt).

          How price sensitive are li-ion batteries to cobalt? Let's ignore, as ShanghaiBill mentioned, that there are entire chemistries that use no cobalt. Tesla's batteries have 0,22kg per kWh. Cobalt costs $60/kg (and this is during a time when speculators are trying to snatch up supply, so there's been a price spike). So that's $13,2 per kWh. Tesla's batteries currently cost about $180 per kWh; their primary goal is to get batteries down to $100/kWh. So although cobalt is the rarest element that goes into their batteries, it's still not that expensive of a component compared to what they can sell the batteries for.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by geekmux ( 1040042 )

            To not put too fine of a point on it:

            UBS estimates that 15 million electric vehicles will be on the road by 2025, lifting nickel demand by 300,000-900,000 tonnes, or by 10-40 percent of the current market.

            Got that? In 7 years, nickel supply only needs to grow by 10-40%. Which is nothing. I mean, great if you're a nickel mining company, but not exactly the plot of a post-apocalyptic movie.

            Since you're clearly failing to grasp the big picture here, let me point out the fact that 7 years isn't shit. Mind telling me what the 30-year outlook looks like with that kind of demand? Mind telling me what the alternatives are when fossil fuels are depleted? The latter is the reminder of the apocalypse we're trying to avoid here, so demand is going to increase considerably for alternatives, and the minerals they require. We're quite good at underestimating too, and a 40% increase in nickel supply in

            • The problems isn't the resources. There are plenty to manufacture all the electric cars you want. The problem is time, and time alone.

            • Re:Minerals? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by MachineShedFred ( 621896 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2017 @06:23AM (#55468329) Journal

              I wonder what the FUD stories said about lead supplies for lead-acid batteries before basically every car battery ever started getting recycled...

              • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

                > I wonder what the FUD stories said about lead supplies for lead-acid batteries before basically every car battery ever started getting recycled...

                Tesla was worried about our oil supplies when it came to petrol driven cars. The American founding fathers were worried about being wasteful with our natural resources.

                The idea that you should have something more than blind faith that the world will work out in your favor is hardly something new.

            • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Most car manufacturers would love to make 60% profit, it's a wild dream for them.

              Recycling is already pretty big and will get bigger because it is profitable. That's always been the case for anything that has significant value. Check how much wrecked Teslas and Leafs sell for, especially if the battery pack looks partially salvageable.

            • Re:Minerals? (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Ramze ( 640788 ) on Wednesday November 01, 2017 @06:58AM (#55468425)

              I'm not sure how to parse your word-salad.

              You do know that cars today are made mostly from aluminum -- which is almost 100% recycled. There's steel in there, too... which is also almost 100% recycled. EVs are currently dependent on Lithium Ion batteries. Pretty much every electronics store not only has a recycle bin for mobile electronics, but encourages you to use it, too. Why? Well, sometimes they're legally required to... but Lithium Ion battery recycling is the best thing since sliced bread to manufacturers who use them in their products. Ever crack open one of those iPhones or Samsung Galaxies? Most of what's inside by mass is the Lithium Ion battery. Recycling them isn't difficult. Do you have any idea how much cheaper it is to just re-use aluminum, steel, and lithium rather than dig it out of the ground as a raw material to refine?!?!?

              Teslas aren't made to be replaced every 3 years... most electronics aren't -- just phones and tablets as they evolved quickly... and they're just now starting to extend their expected lifespans. Computers used to be the same -- new every 2 years for every business... then every 3... then every 5... now, lots of places have 7 or even 10 year old PCs running Windows 10 just fine. The TREND is the opposite of what you describe. New technologies evolve fast, older ones tend to stagnate and flatten out growth curves and create longer-lasting products.

              Teslas have fewer moving parts and fewer parts that need maintenance, so your basic gasoline powered car has more throw-away parts. The Tesla's biggest expense and liability is its lithium ion battery packs... which they're improving & by entering the Li Ion battery business, they have a stake in improving the batteries and lowering their costs -- which will include recycling the lithium from the old batteries eventually as well. There's no reason a Tesla couldn't run for decades just fine with only swapping out older battery packs to be recycled and replaced with new battery packs.

                Further, the USA has barely scratched the surface of its mineral resources. We have confirmed rare-earth metals and lithium deposits we aren't touching -- because China is mining away just fine for cheaper than it'd be worth for us to bother... especially considering the environmental impact of mining in our own back yards. There is no shortage and no future shortage in sight -- just corporations staking claims to get the largest control over the current sources of raw materials... which is no different than any other time in history. If and when it becomes worthwhile, we'll dig for our own and make our own refineries.... but, more likely, we'll recycle what we have first -- just like with aluminum and steel... and to a lesser degree, copper and other precious metals. We do mostly send our electronics recycling (other than lithium) to China... where they use a nasty process to extract gold, palladium, platinum, and other precious or rare earth metals from motherboards. It's become more profitable to get some of those metals from electronics than from raw ore in mines already, too.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by freeze128 ( 544774 )
          After watching four seasons of "Silicon Valley", I put very little faith in anyone named Ehrlich.
        • "However, since 1993 on a rolling decade basis if the same wager had been repeated for subsequent decades, Ehrlich would have won the bet"

          There are physical (energetic) and chemical limits to human ingenuity. Between "it runs out" and "it will be there forever" there are multiple shade of grey, e.g. one of them being "the cost of extracting more become unbearable, and thus extracting that resource is a limiting factor to all economies" as an example.
        • by necro81 ( 917438 )

          We will likely find both better ways to extract ore, and better ways to build batteries.

          That was pretty much my reaction, too. When a scarce resource becomes expensive (because of, well, scarcity), we manage to find ways of using less in a product, finding new sources, or finding alternative materials to get the job done. As just one example, look at all the ingenious ways Nazi Germany managed to get around their limited supply of war materials: oil, rubber, steel, etc.

          This is more or less an axiom o

      • I believe his point was that we're not going to run short on supply anytime soon; what we'll run out of is cheap supply. A bit like petroleum: while there's a big price spike when disruption occurs, there's a lot of supply out there that can be profitably produced if the long-term average price will stay up.
        • Re:Minerals? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:31PM (#55467359) Homepage

          That's Jalopnik's spin. Which is not at all what it says in the Reuters source. The Reuters source says nothing about difficulty to match the (rather meager) 10-40% growth in nickel output required by 2025. It says that only half of nickel producers will be able to cash in on it.

          Heck, the article actually has the opposite tone to Jalopnik's spin: it's full of discussion of nickel miners with mines shutdown or about to go bankrupt due to insufficient demand / too low market price, hoping that the increased demand for nickel from battery manufacturers will allow them to stay open / reopen closed mines.

          Within a few weeks, BHP unveiled plans to retool its Nickel West division to start shipping nickel to battery manufacturers beginning in April 2019.

          The announcement marked a turnaround for Nickel West, which two years ago was in its death throes, with its workforce of 2,000 told that their jobs would end in 2019.

          Eduard Haegel, division chief of Nickel West, expects demand for electric vehicle batteries to account for about 90 percent of the division’s annual output of 100,000 tonnes within the next six years.

          Meanwhile, Vale is looking for a partner in its loss-making New Caledonia nickel complex. It has been in talks with the Chinese battery maker GEM Co, the Financial Times reported.

          “If we are not successful, we’ll have to face the reality, which is this operation is holding the company back,” Luciano Siani Pires, Vale’s chief financial officer, said, referring to the New Caledonian business.

          Plants already shut may get a second chance, too.

          Two with shots at restarting are Brazil’s Votorantim Metais, and First Quantum Minerals’s Ravensthorpe in Australia, which at today’s nickel prices cannot compete but could be profitable if the market continues to climb.

          Par for the course for Jalopnik, mind you.

      • by Khyber ( 864651 )

        "If you can find a mine that produces any of these in pure elemental form, then I suggest you lay claim and get rich damn quick."

        Yea, it ain't that simple, really. Even if it's sitting on the surface as float, the gathering and processing itself can get pricey VERY quickly. *stares at roughly 5 tons of minerals on the patio and scattered about the living room and office and kitchen and bathrooms.*

        To boot, nickel and cobalt? Pfft. Lithium batteries demand either brine water extraction or extraction from lepi

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      It will also make recycling a matter of extreme importance. Spent billions mining the stuff, use it once and then dump in into a land fill, pretty fucking stupid. Reality is want valuable mine sites, look no further than rubbish dump. Of course really smart Americans dumped theirs into the sea because fuck fish that people eat and fuck recycling (quit dirty solution producing a quick dirty end). Sending those valuable elements back overseas because you didn't want to deal with the cost of recycling, well, l

    • And, just like with any other mineral extraction, as the price goes up, more expensive sources become economical to mine. Capital becomes available for improving technology. Technology improves, bringing extraction and refinement costs down. And the band plays on.

  • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @07:56PM (#55466969) Journal
    I know, I know, an odd parallel, but bear with me.

    We simply developed improved technology to recover and refine the oil that was left between the mantle and the surface, and future generations of humans may discover recoverable quantities of petroleum products in the mantle.

    All we know for sure, is that the earth's most intelligent species is ever more clever in a crisis.

    Short supplies of nickel and rare earth metals? Increased profit margins for successful innovation? We'll be roping asteroids at some future price point.

    • by darkain ( 749283 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:07PM (#55467263) Homepage

      Now if only battery manufacturers would think of this now and start building rockets and planning longer ranged space missions...

    • I also believe that we will not run out of oil any time soon. One reason to believe this is because we are seeing more efficient uses of it worldwide. One example is not burning it for electricity when there are other sources of energy far more suited for it, saving the oil for transportation. Saudi Arabia has learned this.
      https://www.yahoo.com/news/sau... [yahoo.com]

      Saudi Arabia plans on building more than 17 GW of nuclear energy capacity by 2032. That's roughly 100 MW of nuclear power capacity built per month for

      • I, for one, am not that thrilled with the notion that the Saudi Kingdom is building reactors in the middle east and we are politically hamstrung against advancing the technology here in the U.S. Saudi Arabia may have the outward appearance of stability, but they're not as far removed from constant conflict [wikipedia.org] as it seems.

        Great point that the conservation of petroleum resources due to efficiency improvements is a large factor in stretching reserves.

        Combining the likelihood of improved techniques for recovery w

  • by shess ( 31691 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @08:04PM (#55466999) Homepage

    I guess they expect that the groups mining the high-quality nickel will serve the battery industry *and* all other nickel-using industries? Because that seems dumb, like even a middle-schooler could probably figure out that the high-end nickel will go to expensive high-end uses, and the prices of low-end nickel will rise because the high-end nickel is no longer available for low-end uses.

    But that's just me, I'm some weirdo who doesn't even feel the need to tie nickel prices to illicit drugs for a headline.

  • by MangoCats ( 2757129 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @08:06PM (#55467007)

    I have a hard time believing we are out of accessible nickel in the crust - maybe it's not economically competitive at this time, like tar sands weren't 40 years ago, but I think it's still there.

    However, as the cost of extracting high quality nickel from the crust increases, at some point it will be cost effective to source it from space rocks. Like solar power in the 1970s, we're not there... yet.

  • by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @08:14PM (#55467047)
    US nickels have an (illegal) melt value of $0.041...so store some. if nickel goes up, great. if not, still worth $0.05.
    • Very interesting [coinflation.com]
    • Right, but... how are you going to make a profit? Unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of five-cent pieces - the sort of transaction that might raise a few flags at the Mint - you probably don't have enough potential profit to pay for melting them down and separating the metals.

      If you need a million-dollar bankroll to make a hundred dollars, you're in the wrong business.
    • Please take all my nickels (and pennies) and do something useful with them.
      They are useless and clog up my life.

    • You seem to have forgotten that nickels (the coins) are 75% copper.

      • You seem to have forgotten that nickels (the coins) are 75% copper.

        A quick search for "nickel melt value" would have told you that $0.041 is based on the 25% nickel content.

        • A quick search for "nickel melt value" would have told you that $0.041 is based on the 25% nickel content.

          Err, No! [coinflation.com]

          1. Calculate 75% copper value :
          (3.1026 Ã-- .00220462262 Ã-- 5.00 Ã-- .75) = $0.0256498
          2. Calculate 25% nickel value :
          (5.5036 Ã-- .00220462262 Ã-- 5.00 Ã-- .25) = $0.0151665
          3. Add the two together :
          $0.0256498 + $0.0151665 = $0.0408163

          Apparently, you either can't use Google o

          • Apparently, you either can't use Google or cannot read. Which is it?

            You're deflecting, and understandably so. Let's review:

            1. GP said that nickels have a melt value of $0.041.
            2. You pointed out that nickels are 75% copper, apparently fancying yourself to be clever.
            3. I suggested you confirm for yourself that the melt value of $0.041 was based on 25% nickel content, not 100%.
            4. You did so and posted a link.

            Seems like we're all in agreement except for the you being clever part.

      • You seem to have forgotten that nickels (the coins) are 75% copper.

        His $0.041 valuation is based on a 5 cent coin (called a Nickel) being 25% Nickel at $0.026 and 75% Copper at $0.015.

        • You have that back to front:
          Nickel value: $0.0151665
          Copper value: $0.0256498

          So the melt value of a nickel coin today is dominated by the value of the copper. Of course this could change.

  • Alarmist bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @08:26PM (#55467099)

    half the world’s nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries.

    1. There is plenty of nickel in the planet's crust.
    2. Since nickel is an element, it can be refined into pure nickel with the application of chemistry.
    3. All the elements in batteries can be extracted and reused, it's just a matter of chemistry.

    Consider aluminum for a moment: despite being extremely abundant, it's rarely found in it's elemental state (which is why it used to be valued more than gold [wikipedia.org]). Then we figured out how to extract it [wikipedia.org] and now it's dirt cheap.

    This is just click-bait alarmist bullshit.

    • This is just click-bait alarmist bullshit.

      Isn't that about the only reason to hit /. these days?

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. The author is so clueless, it is really amazing.

    • half the world’s nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries.

      1. There is plenty of nickel in the planet's crust. 2. Since nickel is an element, it can be refined into pure nickel with the application of chemistry. 3. All the elements in batteries can be extracted and reused, it's just a matter of chemistry.

      Consider aluminum for a moment: despite being extremely abundant, it's rarely found in it's elemental state (which is why it used to be valued more than gold [wikipedia.org]). Then we figured out how to extract it [wikipedia.org] and now it's dirt cheap.

      This is just click-bait alarmist bullshit.

      Perhaps what is truly alarming is your assumptive ignorance.

      We can reuse today. We don't, because we humans happen to suck at recycling. That's not because we suck at chemistry. It's because we suck at policy and enforcement.

      And we suck at predicting the future, so multiply demand predictions by 5x.

      Oh, and we also suck at estimating the bloodlust of Greed N. Corruption, so multiply future nickel refinement costs by 20x. Perhaps then we can start estimating the practical feasibility and cost of EV solut

      • We can reuse today. We don't, because we humans happen to suck at recycling. That's not because we suck at chemistry. It's because we suck at policy and enforcement.

        I agree with that. However, to begin flailing about the amount of nickel we have now is far more likely to undermine far more important efforts like moving people over to EVs. When we run begin running into supply issues then we can address them far more easily because there becomes a monetary incentive for doing so. When the price of X increases efforts to reuse and reclaim it from old Y will also increase. Landfill mining is a real thing because metals are easy to reclaim.

    • by swb ( 14022 )

      Are you discounting the resources involved in refining low-grade nickel into high-grade nickel? I don't know what's involved in nickel production, but I can't help but feel that "the application of chemistry" is factually correct but so lacking in detail that it might mask hard problems.

      Like what's the multiple of required mined low-grade ore to get high-grade nickel? Are you having to mine 2x, 4x, 10x tons more ore? Is the ore refined at the mine or does it have to shipped to smelters to get refined an

      • Just because the industrial process is phyiscally possible doesn't mean the end result is valuable enough to attract the capital to produce it.

        If we are truly going to "run out" of nickel that we need then the rising price of nickel will solve that problem.

  • by ka9dgx ( 72702 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @08:54PM (#55467203) Homepage Journal

    Robert Murray-Smith has an interesting Youtube channel [youtube.com] where he's doing all sorts of amazing things with graphene and other forms of carbon, including building an all carbon battery.
    We might not need any metal (not even for the plates) in a few years time.

    • by Khyber ( 864651 )

      10 second charge, 2 minute operation time on an inductive motor. That's not bad. Micro-drones would fucking LOVE this. LED lights would fucking LOVE this.

  • I thought we moved from NiMH batteries to Lithium ion in cars. Only the lowly no EV range hybrids use nickel. Correct me if I am wrong.

    • I found a better article on the elements that go into batteries. The Tesla CTO is quoted as being worried more about Cobalt. Though the Tesla batteries do contain Nickel, but the Nissan Leaf does not.

      https://electrek.co/2016/11/01... [electrek.co]

    • by Khyber ( 864651 )

      Actually some nickel chemistries have great promise, the problem is their whiskering tendency, which makes them have utterly shit charge/discharge cycle counts.

  • While it doesn't make sense to mine landfills for just this stuff, it might make sense to mine landfills for this and other materials. Pity we really kinda suck at recycling.

  • by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:21PM (#55467327) Homepage

    I'm surprised that the Sudbury region of Ontario isn't mentioned - the town was built on nickel (there's even a giant Canadian nickel coin monument).

    Does this mean that the Ontario nickel isn't high enough quality? Couldn't it be refined to meet the needs of the battery manufacturers?

  • by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @09:24PM (#55467341)

    Better build more probes.

  • In other news, the author of the article is full of it and really, really clueless of how things actually work. He seems to be completely unaware that technologies get refined over time and that this happens particularly when there is high demand for a good produced by a technology.

  • by pcjunky ( 517872 ) <walterp@cyberstreet.com> on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:29PM (#55467511) Homepage

    Nickel is not required for many Li-Ion formulations. It makes batteries that have the highest power density however it's not the most durable formulation.

    Lithium Iron Phosphate ("LFP", LiFePO4) is the formulation used in the Segway. Note the complete absence of Nickel.

    Lithium Manganese Oxide ("LMO", LiMn2O4) is another used for electric vehicles that has no Nickel.

    I have seen sponsored posts on FB for companies trying to sell investments in Nickel with this same threat that it's needed for electric vehicle market. It's not. Scam.

  • The elements in used batteries won't evaporate to nothing. Of course, as more and more batteries are needed as the number of electric cars increase, some of the supply of the necessary elements can be obtained from recycled batteries. Recycled batteries may never meet demand, but after a long time the supply may meet much of the demand. Look at the recycling of lead acid batteries to provide the necessary lead to make new batteries.
  • by Saija ( 1114681 ) on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @10:51PM (#55467581) Journal

    A little offtopic, but: Columbia? WTF? The name of my fucking country is Colombia! with an O

  • by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 31, 2017 @11:27PM (#55467667) Homepage Journal

    They don't know how to read these articles and understand the words that aren't directly-related to the vehicle itself. They are essentially board-level grease monkeys, not component-level grease monkeys. And this type of reporting demonstrates it very clearly.

  • It's no "Mr. Fusion", but a brit by the name of Robert Murray-Smith has a series of processes to turn everyday trash into carbon, graphetize it and turn it into cheap batteries that rival lithium ion.
    Here is his latest update https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • Looks like the Democratic Republic of Congo is going to need to be liberated through aerial bombing and troops on the ground real soon.

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