[Barrera]

> PowerCo will use the prismatic unified cell architecture in its batteries which allows for use of different cell chemistries. The cells will be manufactured from 2025 with the factory planned capacity to be 40 GWh which is enough to supply 500,000 electric vehicles. By 2030 PowerCo plans to have all six European factories up and running with a combined capacity of 240 GWh. The unified prismatic cell harnesses synergy effects and can offer manufacturing savings of up to 50% when compared to current batteries.

I didn't see anything in this announcement about where raw materials will be sourced from. It looks like the idea is to support multiple chemistries, but it's far from clear where the materials for all those batteries will come from.

[greenthrow]

Do they announce where they will source the aluminum and steel when they open a new car plant?

There is an odd fixation with battery materials due to fossil fuel and nuclear anti-battery propaganda.

[linsomniac]

The impression I get is the supplies for batteries are rather more rare than the aluminum and steel, so if current companies are having problems sourcing them it seems like a worthwhile question to ask.

Whether it's in this factory or Tesla or whomever, there is going to be increasing demand in any case.

[greenthrow]

That impression is a deliberate result of the aforementioned propaganda. Lithium is one of the most plentiful resources on earth. Nickel isn't too hard to come by. Cobalt is the one that's difficult but it is the smallest part of lithium nickel cobalt batteries and progress is being made on reducing and eventually eliminating it (and it is recyclable, as are the lithium and nickel.)

The idea that batteries require rare and hard to source materials is a fabrication. This should be self evident by the way battery production has skyrocketed over the last decade while prices keep dropping at the same time. If material sourcing was hard, that wouldn't have happened.

[gregwebs]

The price of lithium has gone up 5x recently because the market has realize there is a scarce supply and a rapidly expanding demand. The price of batteries is increasing now instead of declining like they have done in the past.

In theory lithium is abundant in the Earth's crust. In practice, although the market is incentivizing more production now, it takes close to 10 years to bring a new mine online (7 years is doable). There was a glut of these materials in 2020, but by 2025 we will see a major bottleneck. Here is an analysis of the situation: https://youtu.be/5v-DTS-ibow

[greenthrow]

And yet battery prices keep falling over all. It is not a real issue worth worrying about unless it's your job.

[BlueTankEngine]

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/7/7/lithiums-insane-c...

I think it is pretty clear that your position is simply incorrect. If it was so easy to acquire Lithium why has the price increased so dramatically?

[greenthrow]

If the price of Lithium were an issue why would the price of batteries keep falling?

[panick21_]

You are misunderstanding things here.

> That impression is a deliberate result of the aforementioned propaganda.

No its not. Very much pro EV are saying the same things.

> Lithium is one of the most plentiful resources on earth.

Nobody is denying that. That doesn't mean there is not an imbalance between new projects coming online and demand for lithium.

Lithium is not like an Iron mine. Lithium is more like a specialty chemistry and despite it being very common, its very uncommon to have high grade ore. That means lithium projects have to convert low grade ore to very high quality lithium and unlike with other materials, there are no standards. Your lithium output has to be certified individually by each battery/car maker. This adds a huge amount of difficulty in terms of bringing in new product.

If you follow the lithium industry over the last 5 years you will see how incredibly difficult it is to bring on new projects and almost nobody except the established players have managed it. Pretty much all lithium startups have failed to deliver what they said a couple years ago. Even the lithium majors have not expanded as fast as they said.

So if your analysis is limited to 'there is lots of lithium in the crust' then that's a terrible analysis. What you need to compare is the amount of hungry battery factory being built compared to the amount of new lithium mines.

You can build a giga-factory in 3 years, a new lithium project takes 5 years optimistically, and often 10 years.

I recommend this podcast if you want to learn the details of the lithium market, its both market analysis but also interviews with pretty most lithium majors and minors: https://www.globallithium.net/podcast

> Nickel isn't too hard to come by.

Nickel will not run out and battery makers will be willing to pay a premium compared to stainless steel. Even there is an issue where for batteries you need high grade and it will require quite a bit of investment to build facilities to do that conversion. However, that's likely not a limiting factor.

However when we are talking about environmentally friendly, nickel is a huge issue. Almost 100% of nickel growth comes from incredibly dirty mining in Indonesia.

There are significant nickel projects in North America but developing those takes many, many years and have to battle up-hill.

> The idea that batteries require rare and hard to source materials is a fabrication.

No its not, its a real series problem and industry experts pretty much universally agree on that. But of course there are people who overstate this even more to make anti-EV propaganda.

> This should be self evident by the way battery production has skyrocketed over the last decade while prices keep dropping at the same time. If material sourcing was hard, that wouldn't have happened.

As Musk and others have stated. The constant extreme price drop is over, lots of the easy gains from manufacturing are taken. Currently prices are going down because density is still improving slowly. However now that we have gigafactory style production, the cost of the manufacturing is increasingly small and to make further price drops materials prices need to drop and that is not happening.

Battery materials will be a limiting factor for EV roll out over the next couple of years. That is just the reality of the situation.

[tuatoru]

Also due to the recent spike in the price of nickel, as Russia is (used to be?) one of the major exporters. (There's more nickel than lithium in nickel-based lithium batteries.)

Edit: and cobalt is mined in the Democratic Repuplic of the Congo, which seems to be held in opprobrium by Western countries.

Iron and phosphate are much easier to come by.

[formerkrogemp]

> and cobalt is mined in the Democratic Repuplic of the Congo, which seems to be held in opprobrium by Western countries.

The DRC has been snubbed by the west for decades. China has made key investments there and control a few of their major mines, as well as the trains and ports along the east coast of Africa in Kenya and Nairobi. Of course the west isn't happy with this arrangement, but they had decades to work out a similar arrangement and didn't.

[Cipater]

The largest cobalt refinery in Congo, which is the largest cobalt refinery in the world, is owned by a Swiss company with its HQ in Canada.

[MrMan]

nickel is back down

[panick21_]

No its not propaganda. Its about that the best minerals people all predict that lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite is gone be in shortage.

Given the amount of new battery factories, compared to the amount of new mines, you will see a shortfall.

That is why its important to actually consider those things.

[hwillis]

> Its about that the best minerals people all predict that lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite is gone be in shortage.

6% of nickel is used in batteries. 2.7 million tonnes annually are produced, enough for billions of kWh of batteries.

The majority of spheroidal graphite for batteries is synthetically produced because it has better performance. It can be made trivially from virtually any carbon source, including biofuels.

Lithium is more common than lead. Mines are coming. It is set to be wildly oversupplied.

Cobalt use has been dropping by nearly 50% per generation. It's readily mined outside the DRC, which is just the cheapest.

Some people somewhere need to worry about metal production. The same as people need to worry about polypropylene or vinylene carbonate. People did not worry about indium supplies when the iphone took off, or how it would impact tantalum, or whether we'll have enough quartz to make solar panels. It's not important for the PUBLIC to consider these things; they're trivial in comparison to eg charging infrastructure.

[panick21_]

As I mentioned in my other post. With nickel the demand from other industries is also growing and batteries need high grade. Of high grade nickel is a lot and gathering high grade from current mines coming online is an issue.

However, nickel is the most unlikely to actually cause shortages, but it is still a price risk.

> The majority of spheroidal graphite for batteries is synthetically produced because it has better performance. It can be made trivially from virtually any carbon source, including biofuels.

Natural is usually cheaper and with extreme price pressure you will see that many car makers want to continue to use natural even if its worse in some aspects. The predicted split is about 50/50 this decade. Again, this is price risk.

> Lithium is more common than lead. Mines are coming. It is set to be wildly oversupplied.

You are disagreeing with all expert forecast on the topic. Are you an expert on the field? What is your qualification. If its so easy why are the mines not already here?

There are literally 100+ battery factory in production, all need huge amount of lithium. If you look at all major lithium producers and their expansion plans, its way below that need.

> It's not important for the PUBLIC to consider these things; they're trivial in comparison to eg charging infrastructure.

Of course no supply chain issues are public issues. But that doesn't mean it wont impact the public.