Slashdot Mirror
We May Not Have Enough Minerals To Even Meet Electric Car Demand (jalopnik.com)
Citing two reports from Reuters and Bloomberg, Jalopnik reports on the scarcity of metals necessary for electric cars. From the report: [W]hile demand for nickel keeps increasing, half the world's nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries. All of which is going to have seismic effect on the world's suppliers. In short: There will be winners and losers, and the winners will be the ones with the highest-grade stuff -- not unlike, I suppose, the illicit drugs market. "Some of the biggest producers of the higher-grade ores, including BHP Norilsk Nickel, Vale and Sumitomo Corp, are moving quickly to take advantage and seal long-term supply deals with battery producers," reports Reuters. "Among those losing out would be lower-grade nickel mines like Cerro Matoso in Columbia, owned by South32 Ltd and Glencore's Koniambo in New Caledonia, as well as Anglo American's mines in Brazil producing ferronickel."
What of cobalt? Bloomberg sent a writer and photographer to Cobalt, Ontario, about 300 miles north of Toronto, to find out. The town, which began life as a silver town, also is believed to have some cobalt, though no one's really found much yet. The search for a new source of cobalt isn't taking place in just Cobalt, Ontario, of course, as mining companies worldwide try to capitalize on the our electric car future. But the search is ramping up as the world's biggest source of cobalt -- the Democratic Republic of Congo, where about half of all cobalt comes from -- is increasingly unstable, making car manufacturers nervous and cobalt all the more valuable.
What of cobalt? Bloomberg sent a writer and photographer to Cobalt, Ontario, about 300 miles north of Toronto, to find out. The town, which began life as a silver town, also is believed to have some cobalt, though no one's really found much yet. The search for a new source of cobalt isn't taking place in just Cobalt, Ontario, of course, as mining companies worldwide try to capitalize on the our electric car future. But the search is ramping up as the world's biggest source of cobalt -- the Democratic Republic of Congo, where about half of all cobalt comes from -- is increasingly unstable, making car manufacturers nervous and cobalt all the more valuable.
It's worse than that; neither of Jalopnik's "sources" make the claim that "We May Not Have Enough Minerals To Even Meet Electric Car Demand". Both of the sources are very upbeat about the market prospects, yet Jalopnik (which has long had an anti-EV lean, and particularly anti-Tesla) turns it into a doom story.
More to the point, the sources say just the opposite of what Jalopnik is claiming. To not put too fine of a point on it:
Got that? In 7 years, nickel supply only needs to grow by 10-40%. Which is nothing. I mean, great if you're a nickel mining company, but not exactly the plot of a post-apocalyptic movie.
The Bloomberg article about cobalt, by contrast, was about how the rise in cobalt demand is bringing life back into a dying town. A feel-good story about the current market which, again, Jalopnik turned into doom.
Here's the basic fact: cobalt is found pretty much everywhere nickel and copper are. In most places, they don't bother to recover it because the market demand hasn't been high enough; it just gets thrown out in the tailings. As the demand and price rise (and EVs manufacturers can easily outspend almost all other demand sources for cobalt, because that ~15% in their cathodes makes so much of a difference), the only thing that has to happen is the addition of more recovery processes to existing copper and nickel mines. Most cobalt today comes from the Congo because their nickel-copper ores have the highest cobalt fractions (although contrary to popular myth, under 20% of the Congo's cobalt comes from "artisinal" mines; most come from big mines from international firms which use modern equipment and processes). But nickel-copper ores pretty much anywhere else on Earth can also recover cobalt, and will to whatever extent is needed to meet demand (in addition to the new demand launching a new wave of cobalt exploration, like that which is happening near the town of Cobalt).
How price sensitive are li-ion batteries to cobalt? Let's ignore, as ShanghaiBill mentioned, that there are entire chemistries that use no cobalt. Tesla's batteries have 0,22kg per kWh. Cobalt costs $60/kg (and this is during a time when speculators are trying to snatch up supply, so there's been a price spike). So that's $13,2 per kWh. Tesla's batteries currently cost about $180 per kWh; their primary goal is to get batteries down to $100/kWh. So although cobalt is the rarest element that goes into their batteries, it's still not that expensive of a component compared to what they can sell the batteries for.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.