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At Current Rates, Tesla Could Soon Suck Up Worldwide Supply of Li-Ion Cells
cartechboy writes "Lets just say Elon Musk may need to go battery shopping, like, big-time. Here's some little-understood Tesla math that could turn the global market for cylindrical lithium-ion cells upside down by 2015. It turns out the massive Model S battery takes almost 2,000 times the number of cells a basic laptop does. Assume Tesla just doubles production from its current 21K cars/year to 40K cars/year. (Something it expects to do by 2015). At that point, Tesla would require the *entire* existing global capacity for 18650 commodity cells. That assumes no other growth, no next gen model, nada. What should Elon do? Better get on the horn to Panasonic and Samsung."
Our newfound infatuation with extremely flat laptops that have about as many user-servicable parts as 2001's Monolith means that demand for 18650 Li-ion cells in laptops should be plummeting! Problem solved.
Now we just need to go liberate whoever is living on top of our lithium, and we are good to go.
If we extrapolate this curve and assume everything else remains constant, DOOOOOOOOOM!!!!
But it gets the clicks, and that's all that matters on the tubes.
Make more?
Crisis solved. I will even waive my customary consulting fee.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
So if Tesla doubles production, it would consume the entire world's production of li-ion cells. So the measly 21k cars Tesla produces use half of the world's production already? Maybe I can't read and/or do math though.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
18650 is the name of the size of cell. See this table.
We start with some seriously breathless doom-and-gloom headlines and summary, then reading the articles we find this sort of thing:
The carmaker's rapid production scale-up has prompted Panasonic to expand capacity, by reopening previously idled plants, while simultaneously committing to build entirely new production lines.
So prices had been dropping, production had been cut, but now at least one cell maker has restarted idled lines. That doesn't exactly sound like a disaster in the making.
I am not a crackpot.
I wonder which has the better profit margin, electronic devices or Tesla? Presumably that decides how this plays out. The interesting thing is that it's going to become a barrier to entry for electric car makers. The one with the highest profit margin can set the price of the batteries above the profit margin of the competition when there is a supply shortfall.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Seriously, putting an r-squared value on the chart for apparently FOUR data points? Scientist card revoked.
Basically, they're on their way to consume the li-on's share of Li-Ion cells. Sounds about right!
Ezekiel 23:20
The lithium ion 18650 cylindrical cell production has been dropping as laptop demand has dropped and as laptops are moving to lithium polymer flat pack batteries.
Panasonic/Sanyo has had to close factories. Originally, Panasonic's plants that were acquired from Sanyo were supposed to be able to produce 300 million cells in their Suminoe plant in Osaka, Japan in just stage 1.
http://www.eetasia.com/ART_8800603184_765245_NT_5f784554.HTM
That plant alone, running at full stage 1 capacity could produce enough batteries for 40,000 85kWh Model S's. The demand from Tesla is strong enough that they are expanding production again:
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-08-21/news/41433228_1_lithium-ion-batteries-production-line#
However, it really isn't the Model S or Model X that will have the issue, or even the initial production of whatever Gen 3 car that is coming. The big issue is making enough batteries for millions of EVs, and that will take some planning for the necessary expansion.
Lithium doesn't come from rare earth ores. It's in fact almost on the opposite end of the periodic table, being the first metal (after hydrogen and helium).
It's mainly found in Bolivia, which is a bit of a problem: Bolivia would like to have a domestic battery industry (higher revenue), instead of exporting raw lithium. The problem? A 20th century socialist for president, who is quite successfully scaring away international investment. As a result, the main exporter is Chile, which has smaller deposits.
In reality, bolivian government is not allowing transnational companies get the lithium for pennies, as they do in other countries who were servile to transnational power, or as happened in Bolivia before.
They are investing heavily (Bolivia is still poor, but its economy is growing steadily, while other countries were affected by the world crisis) in their own R&D, and they consider that no matter how long it takes for them to get everything going on, it's better than the alternative that letting trasnational companies get the lionshare of the profits.
Think about it, 2 alternatives for Bolivia.
A) Zero pennies now, for getting big profits in the future by controlling its own Lithium production.
B) Small profits now, letting the corporations get the lionshare forever.
They chose A, wisely IMO. In fact, that example should be followed by more poor countries, isn't this a good way to stop corporations greed to keep them in poverty while they earn huge profits on the resources of the country?
I've read there is up to 28 million tonnes (depending on who you ask) of lithium available for commercially viable mining, and the total quantity of lithium on the planet being something like 3 million billion tons (only a fraction is actually accessible, of course). Lithium is about as plentiful as nickel.
If we go with a conservative 8 grams of Li per 100 Watt-Hours of battery capacity, that 28 million tonnes translates to 355,000,000 megawatt-hours of storage - Enough for nearly six billion 60kWh Tesla vehicles. That's roughly five times as many vehicles that are thought to be on the road on the entire plant today.
Granted that only a portion of our lithium production goes to batteries, but even if we consider those other uses there is nothing like a shortage of Lithium on the horizon. The bottleneck is entirely production related.
Plus, unlike oil, lithium is not consumed when used and can be recycled.
=Smidge=