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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.
These aren't minerals, but elements.
The ore which they elements may be extracted from are minerals - several different kinds, none of which are mentioned in TFS.
The elements themselves are not rare. It''s just a matter of paying for the extraction. It won't make batteries hard to find, just expensive.
We simply developed improved technology to recover and refine the oil that was left between the mantle and the surface, and future generations of humans may discover recoverable quantities of petroleum products in the mantle.
All we know for sure, is that the earth's most intelligent species is ever more clever in a crisis.
Short supplies of nickel and rare earth metals? Increased profit margins for successful innovation? We'll be roping asteroids at some future price point.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I guess they expect that the groups mining the high-quality nickel will serve the battery industry *and* all other nickel-using industries? Because that seems dumb, like even a middle-schooler could probably figure out that the high-end nickel will go to expensive high-end uses, and the prices of low-end nickel will rise because the high-end nickel is no longer available for low-end uses.
But that's just me, I'm some weirdo who doesn't even feel the need to tie nickel prices to illicit drugs for a headline.
I have a hard time believing we are out of accessible nickel in the crust - maybe it's not economically competitive at this time, like tar sands weren't 40 years ago, but I think it's still there.
However, as the cost of extracting high quality nickel from the crust increases, at some point it will be cost effective to source it from space rocks. Like solar power in the 1970s, we're not there... yet.
half the world’s nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries.
1. There is plenty of nickel in the planet's crust.
2. Since nickel is an element, it can be refined into pure nickel with the application of chemistry.
3. All the elements in batteries can be extracted and reused, it's just a matter of chemistry.
Consider aluminum for a moment: despite being extremely abundant, it's rarely found in it's elemental state (which is why it used to be valued more than gold). Then we figured out how to extract it and now it's dirt cheap.
This is just click-bait alarmist bullshit.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Now if only battery manufacturers would think of this now and start building rockets and planning longer ranged space missions...
Ah, got it. So 1/2 to 1/3rd the wall-to-wheels efficiency of an EV isn't bad enough for you; you want 1/5th the wall-to-wheels efficiency with a hydrogen ICE.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
That's exactly what Elon Musk is doing.............
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."