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hunterpaynetoday at 5:29 AM1 replyview on HN

Sure, but by like 2 years. Lithium is rare. It sits between Cobalt and Scandium on the list of abundance in Earth's crust. And the vast majority comes from one place in South America.

They are always revising estimates up and down a bit. But Li demand just keeps rising and rising. And a single grid scale battery takes 10 years of current Li-ion battery production worldwide to build.

So do we have enough Li at current rates, sure. We don't have anywhere near enough to do anything like replacing even a fraction of FFs with renewables. I guess that's the real headline here. That's why people are experimenting with Na-ion. Putting it in a production car today, that seems...what's the word...homicidal. Making a grid stabilization battery (not for backup) with large amounts of space between cabinets to see what happens, that seems more wise.


Replies

kgctoday at 7:24 AM

That 10yr per grid scale battery estimate seems high since we have built many grid scale batteries as well as millions of EVs in recent history.