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.
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.
Minerals? (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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)
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)
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:
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.
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To not put too fine of a point on it:
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
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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)
I wonder what the FUD stories said about lead supplies for lead-acid batteries before basically every car battery ever started getting recycled...
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> 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.
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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)
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:Minerals? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because mineral extraction companies don't go looking for rights for new sources until their existing ones are exhausted? It's common to have sourcing years worth of supply ready to go - just purchase the equipment and hire people to operate it. This plays into the old trope of "there is only 50 years worth of known Uranium reserves!" - that's not because there is only 50 years worth in the Earth, it's because they stopped surveying when they had 50 years worth of uranium at current usage rates, because it's not useful to find 100 years worth and keep it in a filing cabinet for 50 years.
When the known sources even remotely dwindle, they send out the geologists. And look! More sources! Because Nickel and Cobalt are really common, to the point where Cobalt is often treated as a waste product from extracting other minerals it is found with.
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not so quick read it all (Score:2)
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.
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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
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Well, it's self-evident that we're keeping more alive than we are killing.
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Re:Minerals? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Par for the course for Jalopnik, mind you.
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"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
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> Well you dumb Trump faggots say shit about stringing people up for being wrong or liars all the time, don't you? Until it's YOU.
You're projecting.
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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
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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.
Yeah, in the 70's we were running out of oil, too (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Yeah, in the 70's we were running out of oil, t (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if only battery manufacturers would think of this now and start building rockets and planning longer ranged space missions...
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http://i.imgur.com/axJmn.gif [imgur.com]
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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
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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
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> I'd think that anything that predates WWII is far enough in the past that it has little relevance on today's political climate.
"Ancient history" is relevant to both our region and theirs. The state of politics in both reflect political traditions with very deep roots. That entire region suffers from the fact that it's the remnant of the Ottoman Empire. It suffers from wars, ethnic strife, and a tendency towards tyranny due to the democratic traditions it DID NOT develop since the time of Mohammed.
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Are you suggesting the IPCC controls the climate via spreadsheets?
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Just like Stalin said, it isn't your vote that matters, it's the people who count the votes that matter.
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Actually, it's the 800lb gorilla of OPEC that's keeping prices down right now. Our ability to engage in fracking has nothing to do with that. It's actually that 800lb gorilla in the ME that's tanked our own domestic fracking industry because of the afforementioned manipulation of global oil prices.
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They said that too in the 70s. You're just repeating the cycle fool.
You know what fools also say often?
"Oh, don't worry. That will never happen."
Ironically, this will also be the epitaph of humanity.
Any other users of nickel? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Time to mine some asteroids? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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People like to gloss over the fact that building "clean energy tech" is dirty nasty business. We don't get any of this stuff for "free". It all has a pollution overhead you really can't get away from.
It's just that some people are happy to kid themselves as long as they aren't seeing the diesel fumes and breathing them in.
sell dollars buy nickels (Score:3)
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If you need a million-dollar bankroll to make a hundred dollars, you're in the wrong business.
Re: sell dollars buy nickels (Score:2)
Please take all my nickels (and pennies) and do something useful with them.
They are useless and clog up my life.
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You seem to have forgotten that nickels (the coins) are 75% copper.
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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.
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Err, No! [coinflation.com]
Apparently, you either can't use Google o
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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.
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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.
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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.
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US Nickels (5 cent coins) are 75% copper and 25% nickel.
You'd need five ($0.25 at face value) to get just 5 cents worth of nickel at today's prices. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that price rise.
The only thing we need to take away from your clarification here is understanding just how much copper we're pissing away with nickel by minting fucking nickels. The sudden irony of "nickel and dime you to death" is like a slap to the face.
And I have little doubt that the government would take them out of circulation and change the composition long before things reach the point that it becomes economical to melt them.
I have little doubt that your confidence in the government is utterly false. If you thought pressing nickels was wasteful and pointless, might I remind you the government continues to lose money minting fucking pennies.
Alarmist bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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This is just click-bait alarmist bullshit.
Isn't that about the only reason to hit /. these days?
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Indeed. The author is so clueless, it is really amazing.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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Thank You.
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That would be the only rational explanation for this nonsense.
All carbon batteries are on the way (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Wait, Nickel? What about Lithium? (Score:2)
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.
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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]
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Actually some nickel chemistries have great promise, the problem is their whiskering tendency, which makes them have utterly shit charge/discharge cycle counts.
Landfills (Score:2)
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.
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I think it's a fairly poorly kept secret that most recycling is "wish-cycling" -- it winds up getting landfilled because the demand for the materials is too low to make it economically viable. Municipalities require it because politicians gin up the public's environmental sentiments and everyone feels good filling up the bins with cans and bottles, but a large percentage of it just gets landfilled.
And nobody mentions the environmental costs of a completely separate recycling truck to pick up the recyclables
What's wrong with Canadian Nickel? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re: What's wrong with Canadian Nickel? (Score:3)
You've not enough minerals (Score:3)
Better build more probes.
OMG, we are going to die! (Score:2)
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.
Nickel not required (Score:3)
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.
What about recycling used batteries? (Score:2)
Columbia? (Score:3)
A little offtopic, but: Columbia? WTF? The name of my fucking country is Colombia! with an O
Jalopshit (Score:3)
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.
But we can just use garbage instead. (Score:2)
Here is his latest update https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
DRC about to get some freedom ASAP (Score:2)
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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Stop wasting this stuff (it might be useful for something more important in the future) on consumable car batteries and go straight for hydrogen. There's a massive supply of it in the wet stuff.
Car batteries are hardly "consumables", you know. The recycling costs of these elements is certainly lower than the cost to dig them out of the ground and refine them. If their price increases enough to make a hydrogen system financially viable, the batteries already being used will be fairly "mined" for the valuable materials.
Re:Hydrogen. (Score:4, Informative)
If you think it's bad for batteries, how about the platinum they need for the PEM membranes in fuel cells? While the required amount has been reduced it has not been eliminated and as far as I can tell no suitable substitute has been found that reacts with both hydrogen and oxygen to catalyze the reaction. Also, over time the PEM membranes break down and lose platinum into the water. Hydrogen fuel cells are dead, except in Japan where the government is pushing it heavily. The materials used in batteries are not consumed and are readily recycled.
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no suitable substitute has been found
This is the big "gotcha" in technological advancement. Some of the things we do work solely because of some unique property of a particular element for which there is no substitute. This is where the laws of supply and demand break down. Normally increasing price causes additional supply to be produced, but what happens when there simply is no additional supply to be had no matter the price?
Re: Hydrogen. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, got it. So 1/2 to 1/3rd the wall-to-wheels efficiency of an EV isn't bad enough for you; you want 1/5th the wall-to-wheels efficiency with a hydrogen ICE.
Re: Batteries are a bridge (Score:2)
My bet is on Aluminum batteries for the long run. Nearly perfect charge storage. Plenty of it. Totally recyclable. Lightweight. Won't corrode the container. Doesn't lose charge over time (much).
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They'll probably also use some potato extract in there.
Re:Batteries are a bridge (Score:5, Informative)
Except that they don't take an evening to charge. The Model 3, for example, charges at about 420 mph in the bottom half of its SoC on Tesla superchargers. And according to EPA docs it's capable of taking up to 525A, which is more like 700-800mph peak.
Yes, they take an evening to charge at home, but what does that matter? You take ten seconds to plug in, and then you don't think any more about it; your car is full the next morning.
As for weight: the Model 3 SR is slightly lighter than average for its class. The LR is heavier than average but far from the heaviest. Either way, there's nothing excessively heavy about them.
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Exactly. I'm not driving a full electric yet, but I used no gasoline today, and I'm charging at home from a 20A 120V socket. My car is already fully charged after today's driving.
And it doesn't take 10 seconds to plug in, it's maybe three if I'm being slow about it..
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I try to be fair. For example, I don't say "it takes 1 minute to fill a gasoline car" because you have to factor in the time detouring to the station, decelerating, pulling into the pump, getting out, paying, waiting for confirmation, taking the gas cap off, getting the pump, then filling, then doing most of those steps in reverse to get back en route and up to speed toward your actual destination. Which makes gasoline filling times more like 5+ minutes. But if you're going to be realistic about all gasol
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Exiting and re-entering the freeway takes a while, especially during commute traffic. Most Americans have long freeway-based commutes.
Re: Batteries are a bridge (Score:2)
Miles per range per hour of charging?
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That's precisely the point - the larger engine models. Most entry-level luxury vehicles - your BMW 3-series, Audi A4, Mercedes 350, etc - come in many variants. The lowest power gasoline versions? Yeah, they're usually around 1600kg. But when you start getting into the high power engine options, the TDIs, the hybrids, and on and on, you start addi
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Yes, versus a couple seconds. Why you want to have to spend 5+ minutes detouring to a gas station, in whatever weather, paying high prices and breathing in carcinogenic evaporating gas drip fumes, rather than spending a couple seconds plugging in in the comfort of your ow
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At highway/motorway speeds, every 150 miles you should take AT LEAST a 20 minute break. That means 450mph recharge is more than enough.
I agree. There's a problem with that though. If I'm on a trip with an EV then I'm stuck watching the car charge for 20 minutes. Unless the place I stop also has a place to eat, and food I'd actually want to eat, then I'm watching the car and then going further down the road to eat.
If I have a gasoline car then I'm filling up in a few minutes and gone to find somewhere to eat. If I have a hybrid then I'm filled up in no time and I still have something that will charge up overnight for my daily commute.
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I agree. There's a problem with that though. If I'm on a trip with an EV then I'm stuck watching the car charge for 20 minutes. Unless the place I stop also has a place to eat, and food I'd actually want to eat, then I'm watching the car and then going further down the road to eat.
Not to mention, very few people want to eat a meal every 2 hours (150 miles / 75 mph).
Watching a sitcom on a streaming service during charging breaks would become a thing (Netflix & Charge?).
A better solution which only works if people could be trusted around high voltages - overhead lines over one roadway lane, and a pantograph to reach it, so you can drive and charge (sortof like trackless trolleys). Just remember to drop the pan before exiting the lane.
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Batteries have problems that cannot be solved, the primary are weight and time to recharge.
You statement is about as dumb as those of the article. If you take theoretical battery energy densities (theoretical maximum recharge rates are basically unlimited), you will find that are massively better than what is needed. If you look at batteries that can actually be manufactured at this time, they are below what is needed for many applications, but there is no sane reason to believe there will be no improvements. Your "cannot" only shows you have no clue what you are talking about. Now, if we had the
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I suspect at some point we will have hydrogen fuel cells.
What? We already have them. Oh, you mean in cars. That's not happening. Hydrogen is very difficult to store and transport, unless bound chemically to something else. I'll get back to that.
The storage of the hydrogen is likely to be the killer app for carbon nanotech, as we don't want to substitute one waste of metals for another.
The best way we have to store hydrogen now is when bound to something else. Water works well to "store" hydrogen, as in being bound to an oxygen, but that's not much for a fuel. Binding hydrogen to a nitrogen or carbon works well as a fuel though. There's a reason why there is so much research into fuel cells that
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I suspect at some point we will have hydrogen fuel cells.
What? We already have them. Oh, you mean in cars. That's not happening.
Hydrogen is a dumb fuel, but it's already happening. You can lease the Honda Clarity FCV in California and last I heard, they were giving away up to $15k in free fuel every year. Honda and GM have a partnership which is supposed to make hydrogen fuel cells affordable in the next generation. While Honda is putting vehicles on the road and getting acquainted with the issues involved in putting hydrogen fuel cell cars in the hands of customers, GM is putting their efforts into a military program involving modu
Re:Batteries are a bridge (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are a boondoggle. You just need to read about it to know why it makes no fucking sense at all. Last I heard they weren't selling the Honda Clarity FCV to anyone, it's fricking expensive, they only rent it for experimental purposes to collect the user data.
The technology the Honda Clarity FCT uses IIRC is basically compressed hydrogen gas storage in a composite wrapped tank, and a PEM fuel cell (which is made with platinum). The platinum content alone makes the car outrageously expensive to manufacture.
You might say: "But cheesy, there are other fuel cell technologies." Sure. there are SOFC fuel cells, great for stationary applications, on a car they run too hot and are too brittle. Or Molten Carbonate fuel cells. Also terrific for stationary applications, but require minutes to heat up before they even generate power. It's a boondoggle. I won't even mention the hydrogen gas storage and transportation issues because, well, I don't feel like it. You can read about it in the web.
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PS: Ok, I didn't know there was a 2016 model. So I guess it's available for sale now. But it basically still costs $60k.
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Then again at least in the UK it also seems to be lease only. Even for the 2016 model. So... What gives?
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Then again at least in the UK it also seems to be lease only. Even for the 2016 model. So... What gives?
They are not sure that maintenance will not become a boondoggle, so they are only offering a lease. But they are offering it under excellent terms, so that there are takers. Maybe it will all come to nothing. I don't think so though, I have a higher view of Honda's competence if not GM's.
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Yep... it sounds like it's time for the US to "bring freedom" to the oppressed Congolese people, so we can get those lucrative mining rights before the Russians and Chinese do!
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Good luck militarily occupying a thick jungle the size of western europe that's already covered in brutal militant groups.
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Hover over the UID. I thought this was a tech site?
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"EV's" have a larger environmental footprint, than gas powered vehicles.
You are going to need to provide an accurate citation for that.