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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.
Neither nickel nor cobalt is needed for lithium batteries. Tesla batteries contain both, but the Nissan Leaf uses manganese instead, and there are billions of tonnes of manganese reserves.
We will likely find both better ways to extract ore, and better ways to build batteries. Just ask Paul Ehrlich about betting against human ingenuity.
Robert Murray-Smith has an interesting Youtube channel where he's doing all sorts of amazing things with graphene and other forms of carbon, including building an all carbon battery.
We might not need any metal (not even for the plates) in a few years time.
I'm surprised that the Sudbury region of Ontario isn't mentioned - the town was built on nickel (there's even a giant Canadian nickel coin monument).
Does this mean that the Ontario nickel isn't high enough quality? Couldn't it be refined to meet the needs of the battery manufacturers?
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That's Jalopnik's spin. Which is not at all what it says in the Reuters source. The Reuters source says nothing about difficulty to match the (rather meager) 10-40% growth in nickel output required by 2025. It says that only half of nickel producers will be able to cash in on it.
Heck, the article actually has the opposite tone to Jalopnik's spin: it's full of discussion of nickel miners with mines shutdown or about to go bankrupt due to insufficient demand / too low market price, hoping that the increased demand for nickel from battery manufacturers will allow them to stay open / reopen closed mines.
Par for the course for Jalopnik, mind you.
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
Tolerance is fairly new to Westernized societies & judging by the rise of rightwing extremists since the 80s, things may be moving backwards.
Timothy McVeigh & Anders Breivik were good white Christians & the AltRightWingNuts were only too pleased when Trumptards were trying to spread the rumor that Vegas mass murderer & good ol' boy with a bump stock Stephen Paddock was an ISIS agent.
Not to worry, there's plenty of crazed murderous assholes to go around
How did this 'comment' by an unnamed source' even get here? It displays no name, not even A. C., on my screen.
Because mineral extraction companies don't go looking for rights for new sources until their existing ones are exhausted? It's common to have sourcing years worth of supply ready to go - just purchase the equipment and hire people to operate it. This plays into the old trope of "there is only 50 years worth of known Uranium reserves!" - that's not because there is only 50 years worth in the Earth, it's because they stopped surveying when they had 50 years worth of uranium at current usage rates, because it's not useful to find 100 years worth and keep it in a filing cabinet for 50 years.
When the known sources even remotely dwindle, they send out the geologists. And look! More sources! Because Nickel and Cobalt are really common, to the point where Cobalt is often treated as a waste product from extracting other minerals it is found with.
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