I can’t seem to access the report, but this sound very much like those projections that go “take the current usage, multiply by 20x or whatever, and discover that it exceeds our capabilities”. Yay. Except that it completely fails to take alternatives into account.
On the subject of cobalt for instance, Tesla is now using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells for its mid-range models (not sure they’ve made the shift everywhere yet, but that’s their plan). LFP has worse density than the NCA (cobalt) chemistry, but it’s not that much worse, and you get a perfectly nice electric car from it. If cobalt becomes a serious constraint, we can just accept the minor range loss and use LFP in more places.
Tesla has also been working (and been partly successful) at reducing the cobalt content of NCA cells, and may be able to reduce that to negligible levels. Regardless, any reduction here means more output for the same input.
Same deal with rare earths. They’re used now because they’re cheap. But electric motors don’t need rare earths; induction motors are just hunks of copper and aluminum. Tesla has great experience with them. There are also some likely advancements with motors that are neither induction nor use permanent magnets and may get the best of both worlds.
I’ve been mentioning Tesla here but only because I’m more familiar with them. The technologies are available to everyone. The only mineral that I’d say is utterly critical is lithium, but it’s not exactly rare. Everything else has substitutes that can be used if the price goes up too much.
Many of the materials we will be in short supply of are copper, nickel, graphite and lithium. Steel will be more expensive. These are basic input materials that will be hard or impossible to replace.
Oh, and it looks like the IEA website is now down. Attempts to go back there redpond with ‘service unavailable’. I tried the home page, which is up.
On that page you’ll find a link to the ‘flagship report’, “The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions”
Why is the low end of their cobalt range 6x when we know that the actual lower limit is exactly zero? Same with “rare” earths in wind turbines.
If copper goes up in price, aluminum will become much more attractive in other industries, such as construction. That will leave the copper for places that really need its high current density.
So you’re just dismissing the report based on a couple of suppositions you are making? I’m pretty sure the IEA has taken those rather obvious factors into account.
And even if you were right, that doesn’t solve the problem of all the other materials such as lithium and nickel.
I haven’t had a chance to read the report yet. I just haven’t been impressed with IEA projections in the past (their PV growth projections being an annual laugh).
Unwarranted assumptions like a minimum of 6x cobalt use stick out as red flags to me. Maybe cobalt use will go up that much, in which case it means the mining problem was solved. But if the mining problem isn’t solved, then prices will go up and alternatives will be sought–already known alternatives, not hypothetical future technology.
The report is 287 pages, plus references, graphs and data tables.
Cobalt is still going to be used in batteries for a long time. Perhaps their 6X low end figure assumes the amount of cobalt necessary at current rate of expansion until alternatives are widespread enough to take its place. Experimental batteries without Cobalt today are umlikely to replace the current ones for a long time.
And Cobalt-free batteries are not a done deal. Tesla is vague about when it will achieve this, and there are serious engineering challenges to overcome. And, if you replace cobalt you need more nickel, whichnis also in short suppky. Cobalt also lengthens the life of the battery, improves its energy density, and makes it less likely to catch fire. These are problems that have to be overcome to go zero-cobalt, and lots of experts don’t think we have the capability to this right now.
These kinds of changes take years to go from R&D to finished products, and years more before all the manufacturers can change over to a new process. Then even more years until they achieve market dominance. In the meantime, we’ll be using Cobalt.
There’s nothing on the horizon to replace the nickel, magnesium, lanthium, steel, copper, and other materials heavily used in solar and wind generation. We do not have enough global supply for any of them if we want to meet the Paris requirements, and we don’t seem to be spending any effort at all on new mining, probably because the greens will go ballistic if we try.
No idea what you’re talking about here. Probably half of new Teslas sold today use zero cobalt in the batteries. LFP actually has better cycle life than NCA and no additional fire risk. The only downside is lower density, on the order of 15%. So at the moment, when cobalt is still relatively cheap, it makes sense to use NCA for high-end models.
As for reducing cobalt in NCA, again Tesla has already made significant reductions. It’s true that a safe nickel-based, cobalt-free chemistry is probably a ways off. But LFP still exists (and is also improving), and any small reductions in cobalt use stretch its capacity.
I don’t know if the report talks about storage, but in particular there is no reason to use cobalt in storage batteries, either for home or commercial use. Cycle life is more important than density, and in that area LFP shines. Not to mention cost.
Let’s take some of that sweet, sweet subsidy money going to fossil fuel companies and, I dunno, fund green energy, pay adults to mine in countries where the resources exists, stop building giant fucking SUVs that 99% of people don’t need. Or build them but charge a pollution rate based on their fuel efficiency.
Soon as we are truly paying for our pollution and I say this as a Manitoban who heats his house with NG, despite driving an electric car, then you will see a massive market shift to greener tech, even if we have to mine for it.
The petroleum industry as it currently exists is only 100 years, we shifted from steam and horses then, we can shift now.
Is Tesla actually putting LFP batteries in their Model 3’s made in the US? I know they’re doing it in China (some of which are exported to Europe) and perhaps in the Model Y’s made there.
As far as lithium, we don’t actually have to build any new mines to greatly expand the amount available. I believe I’ve mentioned this upthread (as has Dr.Strangelove) that lithium can be extracted from brine. There’s already half a dozen or more places where there are plans or even pilot projects to extract it from brine that’s already being brought for other reasons, such a geothermal energy. So all they have to do is add an extraction step before they pump it back underground.
I believe the answer is: not quite yet, but soon. Musk said in Feb that they plan on switching all standard range cars to LFP:
“Half” might be a bit much, it depends on the mix of models between China/Europe/US and I haven’t run the numbers there. But half is clearly achievable in the short term; the technology is fully there, it just hasn’t been deployed everywhere. And Tesla has an interest in this since it’ll cut nickel demand, which is apparently their current limiting factor (and might be part of the Semi holdup).
That reminds me of some related recent news. Tesla also makes large shipping container-sized batteries (Megapack) for grid applications. The news was that those are also going to be made with LFP soon. There won’t be quite as much power in each that they get with NMC, so they might have to add one more container to an installation to make up for that.
I wonder if they can effectively make some of that up due to the better cycle life. If they can hit the same number of cycles with a higher depth of discharge (either keeping it charged to a higher point or allowing it to be discharged lower), then the difference in density might not be so much.
Grid application installations aren’t going to be tightly space-constrained, so does density wouldn’t ever matter there. Vehicles are another story, but between efficiency gains and an improved fast-charger network, the importance even there will decrease over time.
It’s probably not a huge effect, but worse density means more land, more concrete pads, more wiring between the units, etc. I doubt it would change the costs by more than a few percent, but it’s not zero.
I haven’t seen good numbers. Tesla hasn’t really sold cars in high enough numbers until the last few years that one would expect many to be end of life. However, there’s clearly a healthy market for Tesla pack modules on eBay, usually running around $200-250/kWh (i.e., ~$1k for a ~5 kWh module). Hard to believe anyone would be taking good packs and trashing them instead of making another $10k from them. I think the modules mostly get repurposed into homebrew Powerwall-type setups.
As for other makes, I know even less, though Leaf batteries degraded quickly and so they might not be worth quite as much.
But if a particular sized load requires 20 of the more efficient batteries or 21 of the less efficient batteries to carry the same load, then there’s the whole cost of the extra, 21st, low efficiency battery. They may or may not be cheaper enough by the 20 to make up the difference.
So we’re talking about “density” as in capacity per dollar.
Anyone see the Model S Plaid preliminary performance stats? https://insideevs.com/news/507242/model-s-plaid-record-leno/
1/4 mile in 9.23 seconds at 152 MPH!!! If confirmed it would be the fastest (pre)production car in history including McLarens and the Chiron. Pretty crazy, even if it is probably $200k.
If anyone’s interested, the IEA site seems to be back up and healthy, and here is a direct link to the PDF for the doc Sam referenced above. I’ll probably give it a skim through in a bit, but it’s worth reiterating the point made above that the IEA has a terrible track record with its analysis. I’d trust them on anything factual - this isn’t Fox News here - but projecting forward … a few grains of salt are going to help.
