
Ten years left to redesign lithium-ion batteries? - sohkamyung
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05752-3
======
ggm
Oh god, another Erlich/Simons bet is needed: what's low is the level of rare
earth exploration and exploitation not absolute supply. Is there a supply
chain problem? Yes. Are we approaching a mad-max hell war for the last
vestiges of humanities wonder mineral? Alas.. no.

The ten years meme is based in a false premise. The article even says
Australian known sources are only utilised at 14% and yet predicts a long term
supply problem without asking what other sources might be discovered.

From the article _A lithium-ion car battery with a 100 kg cathode requires
6–12 kg of cobalt and 36–48 kg of nickel_ so work on 10kg without improvements
and same article says at current economic models only 10 exp 8 tonnes
economically extractable. So 10 exp 10 batteries. (1000 kg per tonne)
10,000,000,000 batteries. One car for everyone alive... And that's before
normal levels of production efficiency, scavenging nice cobalt rich sources
like old batteries or even the intent of the article: new sources and new
technologies.

~~~
l_camacho84
Australia is not utilising only 14% of their resources, they have only 14% of
the known world resources. More than 50% is based on Congo were the work is
performed in miserable conditions. We are all happy that we still don’t reach
peak oil, but if we don’t change the way we think about progress and economic
growth, in a world with finite resources will have severe consequences.

~~~
ajross
Unlike petroleum, batteries are almost 100% recyclable. Our "peak battery" is
bounded at the product of "peak population" and per-capita battery need, both
of which are fairly constrained. Not really the right analysis.

~~~
justinator
> Unlike petroleum, batteries are almost 100% recyclable.

Not using current technology. You can't recycle lithium (for example) using
smelting. It's also not very profitable.

It's still very much an unsolved problem.

I would love to be proved wrong!

Edit: I don't know why this is being downvoted. Using current recycling
methods, the lithium is not recyclable (the cobalt is). I then asked if I am
not correct, to please correct me.

So if not recycled, what's currently happening to lithium batteries in all our
electronics and car batteries (etc)? Is it just handled as hazardous waste?

~~~
xyzzyz
Are you suggesting we know how to extract lithium from a random mix of many
minerals, but getting it out of the used battery is beyond our capabilities?
That’s not very believable.

The real issue is that, just as you hint, it’s actually cheaper to get lithium
from mineral rich dirt, than to set up collection, disassembly and recovery
operation for existing batteries. We can do it, it’s just not most
economically efficient way to get raw lithium. If lithium goes up in price, it
might become viable.

~~~
justinator
> That’s not very believable.

Can you point me to a recycling facility that's doing this?

~~~
ajross
No, because it's far cheaper to mine it. As mentioned above, you've been
fooled by the name of the technology and are looking at the wrong part of the
periodic table.

~~~
justinator
> No, because it's far cheaper to mine it.

OK, question answered.

> As mentioned above, you've been fooled by the name of the technology and are
> looking at the wrong part of the periodic table.

I asked about lithium recycling. How am I being fooled?

~~~
ajross
Because who cares about lithium recycling? We don't need recycled lithium to
maintain battery production. Realistically it's one of those resources like
iron or aluminum or phosphorous which we can't meaningfully "run out of".

(Though I threw that last one in deliberately: we're pulling P out of rocks
and throwing it into the biosphere at an unsustainable rate right now, and are
going to have to radically adjust the way we do agriculture fertilization in
the coming decades. But even then there's going to be plenty of P around, we
just have to change the sources we use to extract it.)

~~~
justinator
Because then this is pretty much a false statement:

> Unlike petroleum, batteries are almost 100% recyclable.

Although they can be, they're not.

That's a big point in electric cars, that I think gets swept under the rug in
the green-washing of electric cars: the main widget that makes electric cars
electric cars is discarded as hazardous waste.

It's too costly and impractical to recycle them. We essentially want to
replace a billion gasoline cars with electric ones, and the tech. to recycle
those future billion batteries doesn't really exist.

Just a point I wanted to be cleared up.

~~~
xyzzyz
_the tech. to recycle those future billion batteries doesn 't really exist._

You're still missing the whole point, which is why you are being downvoted.
The technology to recycle the future billion batteries exists today, and will
improve in future. The issue here is that at a current price point it is
simply not competitive compared to extracting raw lithium from ground. As the
most accessible and profitable fields run out of the material, and as the
demand for lithium grows, the price will go up, which might make the battery
recycling economically viable.

Compare it to our current wood usage: the wood we use for furniture production
is usually recyclable. You could take a wardrobe, disassemble it, and after
some recutting and sanding you might use the wood for some other project.
However, doing this in the end costs much more than using new materials,
because collecting used furniture for recycling purposes, and labor needed to
disassemble it and prepare wood for reuse is simply too much for it to be
worth it, especially as it cannot be manufactured in a process as automated as
making plywood, MDF, 2x4s or hardwood flooring is these days. Same with
getting lithium from batteries: we could do it, but you'd have to pay extra
for it.

------
endymi0n
As one of my favorite comedians once put it: „Analysts are people who tell you
what the world will look like in 15 years if nothing changes. Now do you
REALLY want to know how long your toenails get if you don‘t cut them?!“

Movement here will come from a number of factors:

\- Demand increases, which will: \- open up more mines (nicely summarized in
the long commentary in this thread) \- incentivize better extraction
technology

\- Supply will decrease, which will make Cobalt more expensive, which in turn
leads to: \- battery chemistry with way less cobalt needed (already happening)
\- better recycling \- technology accessing hidden reserves (oil shale and tar
sands anyone?) \- research into complete alternatives like pressured air,
hydrogen, redux flow batteries etc.

We‘ll be fine and renewables will win in any case by now.

~~~
agumonkey
I don't like over confidence in any resource access, that's probably what oil
digger thought 100 years ago.

~~~
simias
Doesn't this example go against your point? I've been hearing that we were
nearing the end of the oil supply since I've been a kid but the date keeps
being pushed back. As the demand for oil grows the price goes up and new
methods to extract more oil from the ground become profitable. Now current
projections seem to target the 2050s at the earliest.

~~~
xigma
This is also exactly what is holding back synthetic fuels from becoming
profitable.

Fossil fuels will eventually lose out over synthetic fuels, but not until
prices rise substantially.

~~~
jessaustin
How are "synthetic fuels" produced? If it's anything like synthetic
lubricants, it's still fossil fuels, just with more energy-intensive
processing.

~~~
xigma
From a theoretical standpoint, virtually any source of carbon could be used,
you could even make it out of the carbon already in the atmosphere:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-
carbon/scie...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-
carbon/scientists-say-cost-of-sucking-carbon-from-thin-air-could-tumble-
idUSKCN1J325H)

------
another-one-off
The Broken Hill Proprietary Company, BHP, comes from Broken Hill, Australia.
It is one of the largest mining companies in the world.

Now what is interesting about Broken Hill is I have it on reasonable authority
that the area as a whole has had "20 years of remaining reserves" for the last
60 years, because the explorers only bother to go out and 'discover' new parts
of the deposit when they get below 15-20 years of reserves.

This is an interesting anecdote to my main point - the cobalt price seems to
have jumped like a salmon about 12 months ago, but bringing a new mine online
can take about 5 years. Even assuming we don't make this 10 year time frame,
who really knows what deposits might have become profitable to mine with even
a doubling of the price.

High prices isn't a signal that we have run out, it is a signal that more
mines are needed. It is likely the market will heed the signal.

~~~
pyre
> _High prices isn 't a signal that we have run out, it is a signal that more
> mines are needed. It is likely the market will heed the signal._

It is a signal that there is a high demand, and not enough supply (whether
naturally or artificially -- e.g. diamonds) to meet that demand. That's it.

Building more mines can only happen if the resources _exist_ to mine. This
idea that "the market" is a magic wand to wave at problems really needs to
stop. As far as "the market" is concerned, the electric car industry could
collapse because it failed to innovate past resource shortages.

~~~
xigma
>> Building more mines can only happen if the resources exist to mine.

The resources _do_ exist to mine. Only a tiny fraction of rare earth minerals
are actually being mined, because _it 's not economical_ in most places.

~~~
skybrian
The article is not about rare earth metals.

------
xigma
The headline is made to sound like: "Oh no, we are running out of cobalt!"

Yeah, not really. Just like with "oil reserves", there's a common
misconception that we'll "run out" when they are depleted. However, "reserves"
are just those resources that can be extracted economically at _today 's
prices_. When demand increases, prices rise and reserves "magically" increase.

That's exactly what will happen here. "Rare-earth materials" aren't actually
rare in the sense that precious metals are rare. They're just uncommon
compared to other minerals. If prices rise, eventually China will decide to
increase exports and other countries that aren't literally warzones (like the
DRC) will chime in.

So, we have ten years until those batteries will become somewhat more
expensive, making research into alternatives more promising. There is no
urgency here.

Then of course there's the questionable idea that electric motors will replace
combustion engines because we're "running out of oil", which is why we
supposedly need all these batteries in the first place. My bet is that
synthetic fuels will become profitable far earlier.

~~~
Reason077
_> "there's the questionable idea that electric motors will replace combustion
engines because we're "running out of oil""_

Right. Electric motors will replace combustion engines because they're cheaper
to operate, offer better performance, require less maintenance, don't emit
toxic pollutants, contribute less CO2 emissions, they're much quieter, and
they offer a better driving experience.

Sooner or later they'll be cheaper to manufacture, too, due to reduced labour
required, component commonality, fewer moving parts, etc.

~~~
xigma
Some questionable assumptions there:

\- cheaper to operate

An enormous amount of electricity would be required to actually replace all
combustion engines in just regular cars, plus a lot of investment into
infrastructure to charge all these cars. Higher demand, higher prices.

\- offer better performance

Are the best-selling cars today those with the best performance? No, they're
the ones offering acceptable performance at the best price.

\- require less maintenance

That's assuming that maintenance cost is a big deciding factor in a car. Cars
are assumed to be depreciating assets, when maintenance becomes too expensive
they are replaced. There's some argument to be made here for certain vehicles
like Taxis with a lot of usage, but the general consumer will not highly value
or even accurately estimate maintenance.

\- don't emit toxic pollutants

Most consumers don't put a premium on this. Modern combustion engines don't
emit a lot of pollutants anymore, but even then it would take government
intervention to force people away from them.

\- contribute less CO2 emissions

Again, most consumers don't put a premium on this, but government intervention
could change that. Synthetic fuels of the future may well be carbon neutral
though.

\- they offer a better driving experience

...assuming you're not running out of battery.

~~~
Reason077
_> "An enormous amount of electricity would be required to actually replace
all combustion engines in just regular cars"_

Not as much as you might think. In the UK, for example, electrifying all
ground transport would add only on the order of 25-30% to current grid demand.
That's similar to the amount that grid demand has _declined_ in the past
decade due to energy efficiency, despite population growth.

Ofgem, the UK's energy market regulator, recently confirmed that there is
enough grid capacity available for widespread adoption of electric vehicles,
provided a significant portion of charging happens at off-peak times.

 _> "plus a lot of investment into infrastructure to charge all these cars."_

Yes, but this is actually pretty cheap compared to the massive infrastructure
requirement for H2 or synthetic fuels. With electricity, the production and
distribution infrastructure already exists.

------
Reason077
The NCM cells most commonly used in electric vehicles have already
significantly reduced their cobalt content in recent years. Moving from NCM
333 (33% cobalt cathode), to 622 (20%), to 811 (10%).

Tesla claims to use even less cobalt in their 2170 NCA cells than the best
NCM811 chemistry.

As for nickel, a billion tonnes of known commercially-viable reserves ought to
be enough for all the world’s vehicles to be electrified several times over.
And all these minerals can be recovered and reused from recycled batteries.

------
KingPrad
My first encounter with a "just 10 more years" projection was while writing a
paper on zinc in middle school. My reference book about mining and metallurgy
discussed declining reserves and that the world would be entirely out of zinc
by 1985 without careful conservation. Except I was reading the book in 1995,
and it was published in 1975. It became an interesting point in my paper.

If this writer didn't work for a company that will make money off his
ridiculous assertions, I would be baffled how an educated adult could write
such an article.

~~~
euyyn
> If this writer didn't work for a company that will make money off his
> ridiculous assertions

You mean the authors of the Nature article? Only their affiliation to Georgia
Tech is listed. Or the author of that book on zinc?

Ooooh at the very bottom:

> Competing Financial Interests

> G.Y. is a co-founder, chief technology officer, a board member and a
> shareholder of Sila Nanotechnologies, the company commercializing silicon-
> based anode materials mentioned in this Comment article.

------
nickik
The problem with Rare Earth is that the West collectively acts like 3 year old
who are to dumb to solve incredibly simple problems.

Rare earth contained lots of Thorium and that has to be handled as nuclear
waste and that means you have 1000s of tons of nuclear waste on your hands.
This is of course completely idiotic because Thorium not really a big problem
as it is not radioactive.

The few Rare Earth mines that do exist only extract the lower group so you can
avoid the Thorium.

Because the US drives policy for the whole West, there is basically no Rare
Earth mining in the West.

China on the other hand understands that the more expensive rare earths are
outside of China the more likely people will manufacture in China.

While I am 100% with Simons (one of the best economists ever) the unlimited
stupidly of government is stopping a real market solution.

There was quite a bit of effort to change this and it got traction in congress
because many people are really concerned that all US military equipment
depends on rare earths from China.

See:

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7QNZ56j-HM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7QNZ56j-HM)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwF93wnRQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwF93wnRQo)

~~~
dbingham
As someone currently dealing the consequences of being far too cavalier with
long term environmental pollutants like PCBs and lead, I would argue that
behavior you're describing as being that of a "3 year old" is actually a good
example of government sanity, not stupidity. It's reasonable long term caution
to avoid creating a bigger problem in the future.

The true 3 year old behavior on display here is the market behavior you're
advocating: ignoring a potential long term problem in favor of a short term
gain.

Environmental toxins are not something to be cavalier about. Once soil gets
contaminated, it's damned hard and expensive to clean up. Land is one of the
single most limited resources we have. We can ultimately live with out lithium
ion batteries. We can change our behavior, use other electrical sources, or as
the article argues for, find other sources of electrode material.

We cannot live with out clean soil in which to grow healthy food. Or on which
to live.

~~~
opportune
What does soil have to do with this? You think they’re just going to put the
thorium in fertilizer or drop it all over the country from the air?

Lithium ion batteries are incredibly important if we want to make a fast
transition to green energy. The environmental calculus is 100% in favor of
finding a thorium disposal site and making rare earths / lithium cheaper _now_
, rather than being picky about where minerals are mined and pumping way more
CO2 into the air due to the delay

Localized thorium pollution is something that we can manage and deal with.
Global warming, especially if it reaches a runaway tipping point, could
displace a billion people, cause massive famines, and destroy tens of
trillions of dollars of infrastructure and assets. Also consider that
localized thorium pollution would probably be on-par with the pollution from
washing coal, which is what would be replaced

~~~
misterprime
>Global warming, especially if it reaches a runaway tipping point

Thought we reached that a long time ago, and yet things haven't really
changed.

~~~
opportune
we have somewhat, in that a significant amount is going to happen even if we
switch to 100% carbon neutral energy tomorrow. I’m thinking more about a
Clathrate Gun kind of event

Also things have changed. Something like 10 of the hottest years on record
have been within the last 15 years. Global warming is not simply a modeled
prediction, it is very much measurable and ongoing

~~~
misterprime
>Something like 10 of the hottest years on record have been within the last 15
years.

Is that based on straight up measurements, or based on measurements that were
adjusted based on a realization that the measuring method was flawed to begin
with? Aren't the adjustments based on a best guess by people that may have a
bias?

------
grecy
> _We use less than 3% cobalt in our batteries & will use none in next gen_ \-
> Elon Musk

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1006968985760366592](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1006968985760366592)

~~~
xigma
Don't put your money on that.

~~~
Robotbeat
The current 3% battery cobalt level already confirmed by 3rd party tear down
analysis. "Next gen" could be years away, sure. But there are PLENTY of
_existing_ lithium battery chemistries which use no cobalt whatsoever.

~~~
xigma
There's a big difference between 3% cobalt and _no_ cobalt. Cobalt is
important for safety, skimping on it to save some money is a big risk.

I'm not saying it won't happen, just that I wouldn't put money on it.

~~~
Robotbeat
LiFEPo batteries, which are notable for their safety, use zero cobalt. There
are other ways to accomplish these goals.

------
bloomthrowaway
> Recycling cannot replenish supplies. Lithium-ion batteries last for 15–20
> years, 3 times longer than the 5–7 years for lead-acid batteries

Over 90% of car batteries are already recycled. Assuming this stays constant
when batteries get bigger(why wouldn't it), we'll hit steady-state on
materials about a decade after electric cars become dominant.

Due to recycling, this whole article is baseless. Eventually we'll only need
to mine enough to make up for a the few percent of batteries that aren't
recycled. Car batteries are already recycled at extremely high rates, and
there's no reason to believe this will change.

------
jackfoxy
I haven't studied this problem, but I suspect _reserves_ of metals (and
anything else that gets mined) is technically defined the same way oil
_reserves_ are defined, which renders this kind of headline nonsense.

Even in the pessimistic case, we run out of money before we run out of
_reserves_. In other words, price elasticity always brings more _reserves_
online. _Reserves_ are defined as what can be provably economically extracted
given proven technology and current economics. And the _proven technology_ is
only what has been proven in a particular field (or mine, or battery recycling
facility), not proven anywhere in the world.

------
joking
This is supposing that we want big cars with big batteries, In the cities the
mobility is moving toward small personal vehicles, and if you have bigger
commuter needs, I hope that in the future the highways can be electrified and
the cars would only need the battery to get from the highway to your home.

There are not enough minerals to make batteries to replace all the current
cars with their current autonomy, but a change of transport paradigm could be
feasible.

~~~
majewsky
> I hope that in the future the highways can be electrified

Obligatory remark: Let's also put the cars on metal rails instead of on
asphalt to reduce rolling friction. And maybe instead of small cars, we could
use large wagons or chains of those that could transport a lot of people at
the same time.

~~~
magduf
No, those are called trains, and while they're great for shuttling a large
number of people between two distant points, or along a line of points, they
really suck for moving a large number of people between countless arbitrary
points that are arranged in 2-dimensional space like a grid (or a metro area
that's spread out in all directions).

What you really want, to replace private cars, is SkyTran: tiny cars for 1-2
people, suspended from metal rails (which have a maglev effect to eliminate
friction altogether), that are completely autonomous and take riders directly
to their destination within a metro area. Each one operates independently, so
you don't have to worry about what other users are doing or waste time going
to stations that aren't your destination.

IMO, it's shameful that we haven't done more to explore PRT (personal rapid
transit). It could really revolutionize city and suburban life and eliminate
the need for so many people to own cars, while also saving people so much time
with commuting (since such a system, fully built-out, would have far higher
capacity than our current road system).

------
asah
Worth reading:

[https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/21/cobalt-stocks-
what...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/21/cobalt-stocks-what-
investors-need-to-know.aspx)

------
baybal2
3-4 new polymetalic mines can easily double the global cobalt supply.

The story with cobalt is the same as with REEs and Lithium - they are
everywhere, but few big companies dare to mine them expecting the business to
go bust the moment China or Congo resort to further dumping

For Nickel, global supply is being dominated by a price cartel, doing the same
thing.

~~~
baybal2
Ironically, in Nickel, the only company that somehow manages to lives outside
the cartel scheme is Chinese.

------
nutjob2
It's peak cobalt! Just like peak oil.

~~~
3pt14159
I remember trying to explain basic Econ 101 to a classmate while in third year
engineering. Peak Oil was a religion back then.

The same isn't true for the environment. Unlike Peak Oil where economic
incentives simultaneously would encourage smaller cars with more efficient
engines while also directing research into more advanced oil retrieval (or at
the very worst biofuels) the environment is not something the market will
automatically solve. Quite the opposite. It will push up against it until
there is sufficient political resistance to overcome market resources
attempting to maintain the status quo. We have a real problem, but it isn't
oil or cobalt.

~~~
xigma
Polluting the environment is damaging _someone 's_ property (private or
state), for which they will eventually demand restitution. It's part of market
forces.

Conversely, a certain amount of pollution/environmental destruction is a price
people are willing to pay.

~~~
nickik
That is all nice and true in theory. But property rights don't exist from
nowhere, they need to be created by private actors or governments.

Global property rights issue will not be solved by simply law-suit the way you
might fix a noise problem. Governments are not only not establishing property
rights they would actively prevent anybody that did.

If your read the literature on the economics of property rights and Ronald
Coase own writings you will see that he did not believe simplified version of
the 'Coase theorem' that was formalized by Stigler.

~~~
xigma
The point is not that "the market fixes everything", the point is these are
still market forces.

Even in a completely free market, _you can get screwed over_.

------
erikpukinskis
With respect to electric cars the actual energy density is only half the
story.

Efficiency can be gained with pack efficiency, aerodynamics, weight reduction
of the vehicle, including smaller low occupancy vehicles enabled by the
Mobility-As-A-Service model, and removing material with the help of better
computer simulation and modeling, more efficient energy recapture systems,
energy efficient accel/decel algorithms, denser destination charging network,
skate systems like Boring Loop, all of which can decrease battery size which
itself increases efficiency even further.

Similar to density in chip design, as density hits fundamental limits, other
axes of power can help keep improvement at least linear.

------
aurizon
We need to work on super-springs, so you can wind up your car... LOL Right now
there is a lot of lithium in the earth, much is not economic, but as lithium
prices rise, more mines will become economic. Cobalt, as well as lithium will
become far more highly recycled. Battery innards will be improved to reduce
Cobalt use. Lithium use can not be reduced very much per KW hour, as the
chemical changes oxidation state in a charge/discharge cycle. Lithium is both
light in weight and has nearly the highest possible voltage swing of ~~3.7
volts (versus 2 volts for lead and 1.2 volts for Nicads and NiMh which are
many time heavier per KWHr in addition))

~~~
magduf
>Lithium is both light in weight and has nearly the highest possible voltage
swing of ~~3.7 volts (versus 2 volts for lead and 1.2 volts for Nicads and
NiMh which are many time heavier per KWHr in addition)

IANAchemist, but this makes me wonder if there's some other chemistry out
there, either undiscovered or deemed uneconomic, that offers even better
performance than lithium.

~~~
aphextron
>IANAchemist, but this makes me wonder if there's some other chemistry out
there, either undiscovered or deemed uneconomic, that offers even better
performance than lithium.

There are, but of course there's tradeoffs. Lithium is the best all around
cathode choice for economical reasons, but Sodium and Potassium are being
explored as well. The real gains can be found in new electrolyte chemistries,
though. My money is that we will be using lithium for the foreseeable future,
and that advances in electrolyte chemistry will get us to the $100/kWh point.

~~~
magduf
I wonder what the problems with sodium and potassium are. Sodium, for one, is
an _extremely_ common element on Earth's surface, which I can't say for
Lithium. Potassium is also very common. You can get all the sodium you could
possibly want just by drying out seawater. By contrast, lithium supply seems
to be limited to a few places such as Bolivia.

~~~
aurizon
[http://hyperphysics.phy-
astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Chemical/electrod...](http://hyperphysics.phy-
astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Chemical/electrode.html#c1)

------
gadders
As I heard an economist say once:

"The best cure for high prices is high prices."

~~~
cestith
As a Houston resident who hears a lot of news about oil prices and demand for
goods from the extraction support industries, there's evidence of this every
day.

Not everyone grasps self-limiting cycles and feedback signals at first. I like
to point them to this old proverb about the Mullah Nasrudin.

[http://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=4&poet=706&poem=34...](http://voetica.com/voetica.php?collection=4&poet=706&poem=3443)

------
GeekyBear
An assistant professor at UCSD just announced a new method for recycling
cobalt in lithium-ion batteries.

[http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-lithium-
ion...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-lithium-ion-battery-
recycling-20180316-story.html#)

------
tombert
I know that the popsci media can overblow this, but wasn't there some
optimistic results for super-capacitors that wouldn't rely on any of these
rare-earth metals? I'm seriously asking, since looking this up tends to bring
up links to crap-sites like IFLS and whatnot, so I don't know if the hype is
warranted.

~~~
Theodores
Glad someone asked.

Supercapacitors are the thing that halves the requirement for these lithium
iron batteries that we are supposed to be running out of. The good news is
that fantastic work is being done in this area, making those Tesla things
rather quaint old technology.

It is all going on in Estonia and you are well advised to watch this recent
episode of Fully Charged to see what a wonderful place Estonia is and why it
should be where you next go on holiday:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ2Eo6wl5r0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ2Eo6wl5r0)

So, 'spoiler alert', a supercapacitor in a vehicle compliments the battery and
stores the energy from re-gen and gets you away from the lights at super fast
speed without having to have some huge Tesla-esque American sized battery
providing the oomph. It is win win as the vehicle is lighter.

The other benefit of supercapacitors is that they can also be used to provide
smoothing of electricity supply, e.g. when the cup final is on and everyone
goes to turn their kettle on at half time.

As mentioned, watch the Fully Charged episode about Estonia and what lovely
people there are there, including a few doing great things with
supercapacitors.

~~~
hwillis
> Supercapacitors are the thing that halves the requirement for these lithium
> iron batteries that we are supposed to be running out of.

That's patently false, though. Skeleton claims they have legitimately
impressive power/weight ratios, but that's totally irrelevant to vehicles. The
current batteries can push short bursts of well over 2 kW/kg. Even the
smallest cars (the Smart FourTwo has a 50-100 kW engine) can be powered by
tiny batteries (10-15 kWh). Cruising range is the deciding factor in battery
size, and capacitors are totally irrelevant to that. The electric FourTwo
could be fitted with a 10 kWh battery, but nobody really wants <35 miles of
range. At that point it makes far more sense to have an electric bicycle.

To really drive the point home, there are readily available batteries that
have 5x the specific power of the batteries used in EVs, and only ~20% less
capacity. They aren't used, because the extra power is not required.

[1]: [https://www.skeletontech.com/skeleton-
blog/ultracapacitors-o...](https://www.skeletontech.com/skeleton-
blog/ultracapacitors-or-batteries-infographic)

------
ptero
TL;DR: Battery demand grows. Best current tech uses nickel and cobalt. Their
prices grow and at the current growth trends demand outstrips supply within 20
years. We should fund research (in the author's area) to find better
alternatives (e.g., using iron and silicon). This is valid but not surprising
and hardly catastrophic. This is not "10 years left to find an alternative".

But what turned me off is scaremongering and naive justifications. For
example, "In Africa, some mine owners exploit child workers and skimp on
protective equipment" (this is true, is a problem, but has no relation to the
article; they do not even claim that children mine Ni or Co), etc.

My 2c -- the title is clickbait-y and the content is lacking for nature-
caliber writeup (I only read it because it referenced nature.com).

~~~
Kagerjay
I thought nickel-colbalt has a significantly lower specific energy / energy
density than other lithium-polymer batteries. They might be cheaper to make
(or maybe not so much anymore), but they have a large space form factor.

I don't know of any laptop today that's using a nickel cobalt battery. Those
ones usually allowed you to remove the battery pack from the laptop. Now there
all based on lithium-polymer now. Same with smartphones.

I did some research in lithium polymer batteries a few years back. I
distinctly remember there being almost 10 or so variations of lithium polymer
mixes being used in battery production.

~~~
hwillis
No, LiPo (which really means li-ion with gel or polymer electrolyte) has a
lower specific energy (kWh/kg) but higher specific power (kW/kg).

> I don't know of any laptop today that's using a nickel cobalt battery. Those
> ones usually allowed you to remove the battery pack from the laptop. Now
> there all based on lithium-polymer now. Same with smartphones.

They all use NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) cathodes. LiPo batteries have the
exact same cathodes and anodes as normal li-ion, just a different electrolyte.

> I did some research in lithium polymer batteries a few years back. I
> distinctly remember there being almost 10 or so variations of lithium
> polymer mixes being used in battery production.

There are ~10 main chemistry families, but hundreds of mixes.

~~~
Kagerjay
thanks for the clarification

------
w-m
The inclusion of the metal price graph[1] is very strange. What are they
trying to tell with that? To me it demonstrates that nickel and cobalt prices
are currently right where they should be in the market (considering the
concentration), compared to the other metals. So if cobalt prices quadrupled
from 22$ to 81$ recently, doesn't it mean that cobalt was highly undervalued
before and is now correctly priced?

[1] [https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine-
assets/d41586-018-057...](https://media.nature.com/w800/magazine-
assets/d41586-018-05752-3/d41586-018-05752-3_15963452.png)

~~~
syncsynchalt
I believe the graph was to support their argument that it's better to [fund
their research in electrodes that] use Cu and Fe rather than Ni and Co, since
their abundance will always make those materials cheaper.

------
acd
To lessen global co2 emissions we should think about which wehicles gets
batteries first. Is it a car commuting for example an hour a day or commercial
wehicles which are out in the road constantly?

Think of 100kw if battery power in a personal Wehicle versus commercial
delivery trucks.

Secondly you do not need to pack 100kw of batteries in a car who rarely
commutes long distance. If the batteries are shared between cars then you swap
in a 100kw pack for the long term commute but have a 10kw pack for every day
use. That way batteries will last a lot longer.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
We should invest in space mining as well, there's no practical limit to the
natural resources of the solar system at humanity's current scale.

~~~
Retric
There is over a cubic km of earths crust that can be mined _per person_ on the
planet using current technology. There is zero need for space mining as
actually rare materials we care about like Oil don't exist in space.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
The problem with the Earth's crust is all the stuff on top of it. We can't
extract 100% of the earth's crust's value, or anywhere near it, without
disrupting huge swaths of wild and human habitats. We're already causing a
mass extinction at our current rate of consumption, do you really want to
increase that?

We need to move away from oil so that we don't kill ourselves with climate
change regardless.

~~~
Retric
That's just cost / benefit.

We can keep the top ~5 meters of earth and extract what's beneath it without
disrupting ecosystems. However, the current approach of massive mines is
cheaper and frankly we have such a vast abundance of resources that's working
fine it's not like every person on the planet has any need for 20+ lb of gold.
Further, we can always just mine old garbage dumps as elements are not
destroyed just shifting chemical bonds.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
But this very article is talking about the possibility of running out. Do you
disagree with the premise of the article? Nature is a respected publication,
if you think they're wrong you should work on a properly sourced and peer
reviewed rebuttal.

~~~
Retric
If you read the article they are not saying that's how much of this element is
in the crust. They are making an economic argument which is a secondary issue.
Note: People are not making economic arguments in support of space mining just
an abundance argument.

In terms of abundance:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust)

Deepest mines [https://www.mining-technology.com/features/feature-top-
ten-d...](https://www.mining-technology.com/features/feature-top-ten-deepest-
mines-world-south-africa/) Though we have boor holes down to 12,262 meters
which means we can extract material to that depth.

Feel free to consider multiplication as original research.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
An economic argument for space works too. The profits of space mining outweigh
the costs by several orders of magnitude and the abundance of resources far
outstrips what's economically accessible on Earth, and as a bonus doesn't ruin
the only place in the universe we know can support life.

Also, having a bore hole at a certain depth doesn't mean we can extract
material from that depth in useful quantities.

~~~
Retric
I think your vastly overestimating the costs of mining stuff on earth and
underestimating the costs of mining stuff in space.

On top of that if you bring back say a cubic mile of gold then gold is not
going to be worth nearly as much. Which prevents scaling up space mining as we
simply don't need that many raw materials to pay for multi trillion dollar
space mining enterprises to bring costs down.

------
gt565k
The solution is investment in public transportation and a reduction in
consumption.

There's absolutely no reason for most people in industrialized countries to
own a car, other than the fact that the public transportation infrastructure
sucks. With the shift of gas to electrically powered vehicles, there's even
less of a reason for people to own an electric vehicle with a massive battery.
We need higher density public transportation. Where the kwh of transporting a
person goes down on average, thus reducing the need for more batteries.

As residential density increases, and road infrastructure can't keep up, we'll
see a lot more bike paths, light and heavy rail, close proximity grocery
stores, etc...

Look at Atlanta right now. Traffic is a clusterfuck, suburbs are also
expanding, prompting more people to own a vehicle so they can get to downtown
where the jobs are. You sit on the highway, and every single person is in a 5
person vehicle, only for 1 seat to be occupied. What a colossal waste from a
utilization perspective.

Atlanta has decided to repurpose an old rail loop around the city and make a
paved path around the entire city, which connects to other public
infrastructure via auxiliary paths and existing trails. It is called The
Beltline. It will take maybe another 10 years to complete the entire loop, but
the city will be ready to handle the problems that will ensue decades from
now.

~~~
andygreenwell
And then you have the mayors of North Fulton (for example Mayor Mike Bodker of
Johns Creek) that are fundamentally opposed to expanding various forms of
rapid transit into their supposedly low density housing suburban communities:

[https://www.johnscreekga.gov/NewsAndEvents/News-
Archive/2018...](https://www.johnscreekga.gov/NewsAndEvents/News-
Archive/2018-News/View-the-Mayor-s-statement-on-proposed-MARTA-tax-i)

Having moved to Johns Creek from Boston last year, I think the Red Line should
go all the way up 400 to Cumming and they should add more express lanes along
400.

But there are two messages I hear consistently around town when I ask various
people about this issue:

1\. People like their low density housing, and you are never going to be able
to put in enough rail access (like Boston's T or NYC's Subway) close enough to
where people live or where they need to be on the other end to eliminate cars
off the road through most of the area.

2\. They don't want particular groups from other parts of Atlanta having easy
access to where they live...essentially to keep possible criminal elements
away.

Point 1 is a legitimate concern, but commuter rail systems do exist in other
areas of the country, and parking garages can be placed next to rail stations.
Would definitely ease the nightmare that is rush hour on 400.

Point 2 is just a terrible legacy of racism that still exists in the South
(and I'm a Southern boy born and raised until living in Boston for 10 years).
There is a terrible acronym for MARTA that I have heard multiple times since
moving here that just needs to disappear.

------
mchannon
In ten years, I predict we'll have started transitioning to aluminum-ion
batteries.

Lithium has one valence electron. Aluminum has three.

Aluminum-ion cells are not new, and they do have issues, but the same can be
said of Lithium-ion 20 years ago.

Energy densities are remarkably different, with aluminum the clear winner.

Ironically, nickel and probably cobalt will be needed for mass-produced
aluminum-ion batteries too.

~~~
aphextron
Al-ion may be superior in energy density, but I doubt we'll be seeing it in
EVs any time soon. The recharging issues may be able to be solved, but the
vast majority of all funding for R&D and production is being focused on
lithium right now. Lithium is "good enough" to hit the $100/kWh target which
will make EVs affordable to the mass market.

------
nanis
Required reading for all you neo-Malthusian types:

[https://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Jevons/jvnCQ.html](https://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Jevons/jvnCQ.html)

------
AtlasBarfed
Asteroid mining is just a space program away, and might be strategically
valuable to the west if China does try to corner the supply market as it
historically does.

------
douglaswlance
When things get more scarce, they become more valuable.

When things get more valuable, they become more expensive.

When things get more expensive, people find new ways to sell them.

FUD over supply and demand is so boring!

------
squozzer
I would argue for a more holistic approach.

Sure, optimize current resource consumption and even bring technically
inferior but more practical batteries to market, but also do not assume the
electric vehicle end-state = swap electric for internal combustion.

For instance, would we have a possible resource crunch if US car ownership
went from >1 car / person to 0.1 car / person or lower? That _could_ happen in
a few years now, with Uber / Lyft running on fossil fuels.

What if self-driving, electric vehicles come to market not as personal
transport, but instead as transportation-as-a-service?

------
advertising
Despite the sentiment to this article here, has anyone invested in
cobalt/copper/nickel futures or mining companies?

------
ed_balls
When I was in school - 15 years ago - I remember reading that we will run of
oil in 2030. Seems like a similar wrong estimate.

~~~
Jweb_Guru
The fact that we haven't run out of oil yet doesn't really change anything
about the fact that oil-based industry is not sustainable. I don't see why
this isn't a similar situation.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Is anything truly sustainable when we live on a planet of finite resources?

~~~
francisofascii
The sun is our best bet. We will have it for another 5 billion years give or
take.

~~~
basicplus2
Yeh so not sustainable.. it will run out..

and...

it will run out even if we don't use it!

------
dang
Ok you guys, we've put a question mark above as a nod to the skepticism in
this thread.

------
abakker
The thing that I always thing about is that there are other uses for rare-
earths. Vanadium, for example is used in structural steel as a alloying
element that make steel MUCH stronger. Neodymium is used in magnets and
lasers. Thorium is used in TIG welding.

We can't just siphon off all the Rare Earths for batteries without impacting
other industries.

~~~
hwillis
Good news! None of those are used in batteries. In fact, there are no rare
earth elements in batteries. Also, the article does not mention rare earths a
single time.

Even better: neodymium is unlike the other rare earths in that it is commonly
found on its own. All the other rare earths almost always only occur together.
Neodymium is quite easy to find an extract, and has always been of
least/little concern.

Back when fears about rare earth shortages were a thing, the element of
concern was tellurium, as it was assumed that thin film cadmium-telluride
solar panels were the next big thing. They are now virtually obsolete.

------
mtgx
Good thing in 10 years solid state batteries should just about enter the
mainstream.

------
ngrilly
What about graphene-based batteries?

~~~
Lilienfeld
Exactly, in ten years graphene batteries wil have obliterated current
technologies.

------
jdlyga
Let's just use D batteries. Good enough for a flashlight, good enough for a
Macbook.

~~~
gok
I know you're joking, but many D batteries (and effectively all the
rechargeable ones) also contain nickel.

------
exabrial
I don't think batteries are a long term solution without a materials science
breakthrough. The charging rate and the charge density needs to be increased
exponentially.

I think we have a much better shot with hydrogen fuel cells, or other phase
change system that can be refueled rapidly.

------
vinceguidry
One of the more interesting aspects of modern global warfare is the fact that,
should the world decide to stage another world war, pretty much everyone is
going to run out of a lot of these strategic resources within a few months to
years. This, plus the fact that nuclear warfare is going to be extremely
limited due to lack of available weapons, and the virtual impossibility of
invading a country you don't share a land border with, puts a very hard limit
on the amount of aggression any one nation can muster up. Even the mighty US
military is a paper tiger after a few steady months of all-out combat.

~~~
mattmanser
Why is it impossible to invade a country without a land bridge when the US
have regularly done it in the last few decades? Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq.

I bet China could, quite easily, invade Japan, The Phillipines or Taiwan if it
wanted to. I bet Australia probably could too.

Here's Australia practising amphibious assaults:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AEd5BmQgU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3AEd5BmQgU)

~~~
jcranmer
> Why is it impossible to invade a country without a land bridge when the US
> have regularly done it in the last few decades? Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq.

The United States invaded Iraq from Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan from
Pakistan, Afghanistan (note that Afghanistan was more or less in a frozen
civil war), and Uzbekistan.

Amphibious assaults are the most complex and riskiest kinds of military
attack. It requires expert command of logistics to keep the landing ships
providing supplies and men to the beach, even when the environment may be
working against you (such as the tide), and where there is far too much to be
crammed into too little space. It requires control of the sea and the skies,
because you have masses of ships with masses of people just waiting to be
bombed out of existence. Even if you do make it to land, you now have to
supply your entire front-lines. If you don't capture a port, or if the port
you captured was sabotaged by the defending army, you have to supply your
entire assault from a beach that's not really capable of providing the
deepwater capabilities to handle cargo ships of serious capacity.

In the event of a war, the South Chinese Sea would likely be a contested zone,
where neither China nor the US has sufficient control of the area to effect an
amphibious assault. It is far from "quite easily."

------
nickik
The problem with Rare Earth is that the West collectively acts like 3 year old
who are to dumb to solve incredibly simple problems.

Rare earth contained lots of Thorium and that has to be handled as nuclear
waste and that means you have 1000s of tons of nuclear waste on your hands.
This is of course completely idiotic because Thorium not really a big problem
as it is not radioactive.

The few Rare Earth mines that do exist only extract the lower group so you can
avoid the Thorium.

Because the US drives policy for the whole West, there is basically no Rare
Earth mining in the West.

China on the other hand understands that the more expensive rare earths are
outside of China the more likely people will manufacture in China.

There was quite a bit of effort to change this and it got traction in congress
because many people are really concerned that all US military equipment
depends on rare earths from China.

See:

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7QNZ56j-HM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7QNZ56j-HM)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwF93wnRQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwF93wnRQo)

~~~
gok
REs are an interesting situation but not what's being talked about in this
article. China has no production of cobalt and a tiny fraction of nickel.

