Quote:
Originally Posted by kevman
Educating post.
Can you share more on how the mining industry will supply the raw materials to hit that 6TWh target? Are there enough projects in the pipeline to support that? That's a phenomenal growth rate for any industry.
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That's the rub, in' it?
Lithium prices in 2010 were USD$5180 per metric tonne. In 2021 it reached $17,000. It's now over $60,000. Recently Musk tried to rally mining companies to the cause noting that lithium mining is about as cheap as minting money at this point. There's significant mining in the pipeline, but it's not enough and it takes 10+ years from assessments and permiting application to shovels in the ground.
Interestingly, Lithium is only 10% or less of the battery and the battery prices are still going down, so I don't think that'll slow down production too much. In fact, the ~63kg of lithium in a Tesla Model 3 still only costs $410 at those lithium prices. Meanwhile, the total production cost per car for Tesla went from $84,000 in 2017 to $36,000 this year (despite increasing their prices significantly!)
We'll need a lot more nickel and manganese too. There's more than enough lithium in the world as it's literally everywhere. The trouble is it's always in trace amounts, so you usually have to try to find and mine spodumene (essentailly dried up and "fossilized" clay), or use water in old sea beds and dry it up, but that takes a lot of land, fresh water, and power.
There's a really interesting new mine here in Canada called Snow Lake Lithium Mine that is trying to be Carbon neutral and environmentally safe (
https://snowlakelithium.com/).