Prices are going to SKYROCKET on lithium battery powered equipment!
- Thread starter BOP
- Start date
Clem72
Well-Known Member
You know, I always follow Chickanic for all my international trade news and opinion.
A couple notes.
#1) they didn't ban lithium sales, they wrote a law asking for bribes and already exempted China. Guess who they sold almost all of their lithium to already. China. Guess who provides us most of our lithium batteries, China.
#2) they provide like 2% of the worlds lithium. The overwhelming majority comes from, drum roll, Australia.
#3) The price of lithium literally doesn't matter. As she said, the price has gone up 10 thousand percent in the last few years, and yet lithium batteries have dropped in price significantly over that same period. Weird, right? Not really, the amount of lithium in most common lithium batteries is vanishingly small, and getting smaller every day.
#4) America does have lithium mines, we don't use them because it's generally not profitable. If the prices go up, it will be profitable (just like fracking........). Then once we ramp up production price would plummet (just like fracking.....)
You would be better off being concerned about cobalt.
Bottom line, people have been predicting lithium battery costs increases for years (decades) even on this very forum. Usually from the same couple of posters. Guess how often they have been correct. A big fat zero.
So nanny nanny booboo, stick your head in doodoo,
BOP
Well-Known Member
Found the leftist.
glhs837
Power with Control
Tesla Quietly Begins Construction of First U.S. Lithium Refinery in Texas
The signs that Tesla has begun construction of a lithium refining facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, are in the signs themselves posted near the proposed site
www.autoevolution.com
And you can maybe expect more of this from others.
LightRoasted
If I may ...
For your consideration ...
Electric car batteries made using fossil fuels. Tires made using crude oil. Plastics made from crude oil. Body made from mined metals using fossil fuels. Battery's charged up from electricity made in a power plant fueled by mined coal/oil/natural gas. All this =EV-BS.
6 of one, half a dozen of another. A zero sum game where the people are the losers.
Electric car batteries made using fossil fuels. Tires made using crude oil. Plastics made from crude oil. Body made from mined metals using fossil fuels. Battery's charged up from electricity made in a power plant fueled by mined coal/oil/natural gas. All this =EV-BS.
6 of one, half a dozen of another. A zero sum game where the people are the losers.
glhs837
Power with Control
So, regarding the batteries charged with electricity generated by fossil fuels. The thing there is that all power plants are much more fuel efficient than any vehicle engine. Even accounting for transmission losses, the fuel burned in a plant allows more miles travelled than that same amount of fuel burned in a car engine.
Is this really so? I don't care enough to research it myself, I just find that pretty amazing. I know that I'll most likely never buy another vehicle so either way it won't affect me unless petroleum products are outlawed. I'm slowly converting my fishing fleet to use more electric than gasoline.
glhs837
Power with Control
Even not accounting for scale, the fact that base load generating plants operate at a fixed rpm for max efficiency makes it so. Your car engine, even at it's most efficiency RPM, doesn't turn fuel into motion as efficiently as that huge generator.
Plug In or Gas Up? Why Driving on Electricity is Better than Gasoline
Electricity power plant emissions data and the latest assessments of fuel emissions and vehicle efficiency show 97 percent of people in the US live where driving an EV would produce fewer emissions than a 50 mpg gasoline car.
blog.ucsusa.org
Now, add in the fact that the EVs electric motor is massively more efficient at turning electricity into motion than any gas car engine is at turning gas into motion, not just because of all the heat and friction losses in the engine, the transmission is also a major loss of efficiency.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good gas engine. 700 miles in the sons 135i turbo inline six with six speed from Atlanta to here just this week reaffirms the fact that I'll always has a gas car with a stick shift in the fleet.
1stGenSMIB
Active Member
I have no personal scientific basis for this, but from what I understand/have been told/read about, all coal powered plants now basically have almost zero waste/emissions. The stuff coming out of the 'new' chimneys is simply steam. Everything else is recovered and used. One of the larger byproducts is gypsum, which is what is in your drywall you bought at Lowe's last week.
I think it is really funny that folks plug in their electric 'green' cars that are still mostly charged by coal. My understanding is until SMECO ran that new 230kV line down Calvert and over to the Hewitt substation, 0% of SMECO's energy came from nuclear..last year it was something like 17% (that number is from memory but on SMECO's site), so I think they finally tapped in to Calvert Cliffs during that run...but most of that nuclear energy goes to Baltimore.
I think it is really funny that folks plug in their electric 'green' cars that are still mostly charged by coal. My understanding is until SMECO ran that new 230kV line down Calvert and over to the Hewitt substation, 0% of SMECO's energy came from nuclear..last year it was something like 17% (that number is from memory but on SMECO's site), so I think they finally tapped in to Calvert Cliffs during that run...but most of that nuclear energy goes to Baltimore.
glhs837
Power with Control
Nationally, coals about 38%. So, not mostly charged by coal, especially when you look at where coal mix is really high, then bounce that against EV ownership. I'm a bit busy right now, but I'll bet for the most part, low EV ownership will correlate with increased coal usage for generation.
Current EV registrations in the US: How does your state stack up and who grew the most YOY?
A detailed list breaking down the most recent data involving registrations of battery EVs in the US, compared by side-by-side by state.
electrek.co
State Electricity Generation Fuel Shares
Percent U.S. electricity generated by nuclear energy within the borders of each state.
LightRoasted
If I may ...
For your consideration ...
There is always a loss of conversion efficiency somewhere within the system. The average coal-fired power plant in the United States operates near 33% efficiency. Which means there is a 66% energy loss. Now add in the efficiency lost during the transmission of electricity over power lines, through transformers, to an end user. Today's gasoline driven cars have engine efficiency of up to 35%. More energy efficiency is captured when residual energy is used to heat the car during winter. So again. 6 of one, half a dozen of another. A zero sum game.
There is always a loss of conversion efficiency somewhere within the system. The average coal-fired power plant in the United States operates near 33% efficiency. Which means there is a 66% energy loss. Now add in the efficiency lost during the transmission of electricity over power lines, through transformers, to an end user. Today's gasoline driven cars have engine efficiency of up to 35%. More energy efficiency is captured when residual energy is used to heat the car during winter. So again. 6 of one, half a dozen of another. A zero sum game.
glhs837
Power with Control
"Up to" efficiency for cars against an average efficiency for coal. Nice try. Natural gas gets up in the 60% range with only 30% heat. And we use more natural gas than we do coal. And of course, the average efficiency of American vehicles is much lower given our penchant for big heavy vehicles that get low mpg. So use 20-30% for ICE.
Natural gas power plant - Energy Education
So its not a zero sum game. Again, you do have line losses in transmission of electricity, but you also have transmission losses in ICE vehicles, between 12-20 percent depending on the vehicle.
LightRoasted
If I may ...
For your consideration ...
You a funny man. You castigate me for saying "up to", and yet, on the link you supplied it states, "The thermal efficiency of the combined cycle can get up to 60%. Moreover, these plants produce one third of the waste heat of a plant with a 33% efficiency (like a typical nuclear power plant or an older coal power plant)."
So again. It is zero sum.
BTW, EV cars still have things that reduce overall efficiency, .... weight, gearing, cold weather, air resistance, mechanical resistance, tire inflation levels, etc..
"Up to" efficiency for cars against an average efficiency for coal. Nice try. Natural gas gets up in the 60% range with only 30% heat. And we use more natural gas than we do coal. And of course, the average efficiency of American vehicles is much lower given our penchant for big heavy vehicles that get low mpg. So use 20-30% for ICE.
Natural gas power plant - Energy Education
energyeducation.ca
So its not a zero sum game. Again, you do have line losses in transmission of electricity, but you also have transmission losses in ICE vehicles, between 12-20 percent depending on the vehicle.
You a funny man. You castigate me for saying "up to", and yet, on the link you supplied it states, "The thermal efficiency of the combined cycle can get up to 60%. Moreover, these plants produce one third of the waste heat of a plant with a 33% efficiency (like a typical nuclear power plant or an older coal power plant)."
So again. It is zero sum.
BTW, EV cars still have things that reduce overall efficiency, .... weight, gearing, cold weather, air resistance, mechanical resistance, tire inflation levels, etc..
glhs837
Power with Control
I don't mind you using up to, but if you're going to use up to efficiency for an internal combustion engine you have to use up to for what you're comparing it against and you used average. If we both use up to then a natural gas plant is still almost double the efficiency of an ice engine. And we don't bother talking about the common factors that affect inefficiency for both vehicles. Those are truly zero some.
There have been some promising recent development using sea salt formulations in place of lithium.
Hijinx
Well-Known Member
Just a little story about this family in Abell.
The man says his house was set on fire by his cell phone while it was charging.
Well now he has no house.
One day one of these EV's is going to be parked in the garage of a row house and burn down the whole block of them. My advice if you have an electric car leave it outside.
The man says his house was set on fire by his cell phone while it was charging.
Well now he has no house.
One day one of these EV's is going to be parked in the garage of a row house and burn down the whole block of them. My advice if you have an electric car leave it outside.
glhs837
Power with Control
You realize that gas cars catch fire in garages too, right?
Hijinx
Well-Known Member
Gasoline cars usually do not catch fire spontaneously . It usually comes from another problem, not the battery. Usually bad maintenance.