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Originally Posted by soundman98
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These issues are always a consideration. Hopefully they can find a balance. The good news is that we have a lot of lithium on the planet, so we may not need to force our way into delicate ecosystems like this example. Moreover, lithium may not be a necessary material for future batteries, or at minimum, for all future batteries.
From this article we get this quote, which is what we currently know of, so it will only grow from here:
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Owing to continuing exploration, identified lithium resources have increased substantially worldwide and total about 80 million tons. Lithium resources in the United States—from continental brines, geothermal brines, hectorite, oilfield brines, and pegmatites—are 6.8 million tons.
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https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mc...20-lithium.pdf
There is less than 300 million vehicles in the US. Some BEVs have large batteries like the 100-200 kW variety in the top tier Teslas, Cybertruck and Hummer and some have small batteries like the Golf EV, BMW i3, Nissan Leaf, etc that are sub 50 kW. Battery size in hybrids and hydrogen cars is typically sub 5 kW, which will likely exist alongside BEVs for decades. We also use lithium in batteries for grid storage, computers, phones, ceramics, etc, so our total resources won't go just to car batteries. Regardless, at 6.8 million tons, we currently have 13,600 million pounds of lithium that we know of in the US. That is enough lithium to give each car 45 pounds of pure lithium. How much lithium is in the average sized battery?
That number depends on who your asking. I have read that a 65 kW EV would have 22 pounds, but numbers vary. This prospect doesn't look good. Even if all batteries were recycled and 80% of the lithium could be recovered, then we still would need to find more reserves or do what America does best, which is use more of the world's resources than our fair share. At 80 million tons of lithium worldwide, that is 160,000 million pounds of lithium or 160 billion pounds, or 20 pounds of lithium per person, if the global population is 8 billion, which is barely enough for a Tesla for everyone. We would need to use smaller batteries in vehicles, different batteries that don't rely on lithium, find more lithium, shrink our population, etc to replace every vehicle with an EV.
Clearly, the world is doomed.