Schmuto wrote:yesplease wrote:]Lesse, Lithium Carbonate is at ~.5kg/kWh of battery, and ~$2.5/lb, so ~$2/kg. Most laptop batteries are around .1kWh, so they would require ~$.2 of Lithium. Even if Lithium prices increase by a factor 100, it would only add about 15% to the cost of your battery. In terms of URR, going up by a factor of 100 would open up recovery from ocean water, so I don't think Lithium availability is going to be a problem.
1. Your math and reasoning are both suspect.
2. Lithium Carbonate is not used in Lithium-ion batteries, so the carbonate may be waste product (depends on how they make the Cobalt compound). Lithium - atomic weight of 7. Carbonate is CO3, so atomic weight about 60. Which means that about 10% of the raw material is lithium. Considering contamination and processing losses, you might be looking at a 5% lithium final weight percent. So we take your .2$ estimate, if we trust it, and it becomes 4 bucks. Just for the lithium. If lithium increases in price 100 fold, as you suggest, then the lithium alone would cost 400 dollars.
First off, it's isn't my math, since I'm just using the leg-work of a poster in the link in my original post.
Second, the estimate for Lithium Carbonate amount needed for battery is already derived from the Li present in current batteries. From SAFT (via the link in my original post), we require ~.076kg of Lithium per kWh of battery, which, from the atomic weight of Li2CO3 (Not 10% mind you, since there are two Lithiums in that molecule) and it's constituents like you mentioned, is ~.401kg, lets say .5kg, of Li2CO3. Since you were kind enough to provide a graph of the price of Lithium Carbonate, we now know the cost of it for something like a laptop battery is around a quarter.
Schmuto wrote:3. As for URR and "opening up the ocean," you're making the Bakken argument. You know how it sounds when someone says to you, "there's more oil in the U.S. than in all of the KSA." That's how you sound to me. f we're at 200 dollar oil and your solution is to be fishing Lithium out of the oceans, then we're all good and f----d and the lithium car is the pipe dream I think it is.
Or the Silicon argument for that matter.
What we're looking at is something that makes up a relatively small percentage of costs in this context, so it's cost and the URR can increase tremendously before we run into practical obstacles in the foreseeable future (only a couple decades mind you). Higher oil prices are exactly what would drive the increase in cost and URR, since it's cheaper to use BEVs are $200/bbl oil than conventional cars, although in terms of production that means we would need to be assured of oil availability dictating $200/bbl as opposed to credit bubbles inflating it's price. If Li cost went too high, then we would probably move on to something else like NiMH batteries, even with their relatively poor cycle life.
Schmuto wrote:4. Li-ion batteries lose about 20% charge capacity per year of life, under normal conditions. That means that the average car battery pack is going to require frequent replacement.
Old sk00l large format batteries may loose that much depending on chemistry, but
newer tech, such as LFPs, only looses about 1% per year due to calendar aging and something like 5% per 1000 100% dod cycles. For the average U.S. driver at 15k miles/year with a ~100 mile EV, they'll loose something like 2% of capacity per year.
Schmuto wrote:It's just not going to happen. The EV fleet is a pipe dream in the same way that oil from shale and fuel cells and ethanol are pipe dreams.
Um, we already produce quite a bit of ethanol, but sure, everything is a pipe dream until it happens fer sure, and that includes peak oil, so why are you posting on this site again?
Schmuto wrote:Finally, explain why, after 10 years of making laptops and batteries, my cheezy 2 hour laptop battery costs 100 bucks?
Laptop batteries are an inelastic commodity for most. It's hard for most people to open 'em up and solder in replacement cells when they go bad, and w/o 'em a laptop looses a lot of it's appeal. Essentially, they're bending most people over on 'em because most people aren't able to do anything about it. The batteries only cost 'em about ~25-40 bucks, depending on capacity and what not, and everything on top of that is gravy baby. It's the same reason why a Toyota stealship would charge me $5-10 for an uncommon, but very cheap (I'm guessing about ~10 cents in bulk), o-ring.
