
We May Not Have Enough Minerals to Even Meet Electric Car Demand - phr4ts
https://jalopnik.com/we-may-not-have-enough-minerals-to-even-meet-electric-c-1820008337
======
wallace_f
Every article I see on modern transport problems reminds me that I can't
understand why we don't have more public infrastructure invested for cyclists?

It really seems like the lowest hanging fruit, but there is not enough profit-
motive or politcal incentive to really push it forward?

I would love to bike to work and take a shower on arrival--daily exercise that
I need anyways, avoids stress & danger of driving, feels great to do. It's
also a lot better for the environment than electric cars, and saves me a lot
of time.

It could help with congestion, pollution, obesity, healthcare costs, and
possibly improve social morale.

I really think it is an issue where no business or politician has enough
incentive/ability to capture profit, so it doesn't ever get much traction, but
the public benefit is quite large.

From what I understand Holland's bike infrastructure is seen as a gold-
standard among transportation economists on how to reduce congestion and
pollution--no?

~~~
beebmam
For many Americans, myself included, cycling is only something we can do every
so often.

I lived without a car for years, and I cycled 15 miles a day for
commuting/chores. I developed pretty painful patellar tendonitis, and I went
to physical therapy, which helped significantly (but didn't cure the issue).

I'm lucky if I can commute 3 days a week on my bike. I love it so much, I even
do it when I'm in pain. But it's not possible to do it every day for me,
without serious pain.

However, I'm currently converting my bike into an e-bike :) That will make it
significantly easier on my poor old man joints.

~~~
wallace_f
I think you are right, and I'm sorry you encountered this injury, but I would
hate to see this thinking become an impediment to progress for cyclists. 15
miles at 10mph is just 1.5 hours of pretty leisurely exercise. 20mph is
reasonable for a fit rider on a dedicated path with just an inexpensive steel-
frame road bike.

About your pattellar tendonitis: I developed that when I was trying for an
ambitious marathon goal. It took 1.5 years to go away -- in my experience
nothing helped except the time. You might want to try getting off the bike for
several months and picking up something else, like swimming.

------
Dylan16807
> while demand for nickel keeps increasing, half the world’s nickel supply is
> too low in quality to use for car batteries.

Well that article sure disproved its own thesis quickly. If we can't even be
bothered to purify cheap nickel, then we are _definitely_ not facing a
shortage.

~~~
Kadin
Yeah I didn't really get it. It sounds like there's a lot of nickel, just not
... as much cheap nickel as we'd like? Or maybe as much as some people who own
certain nickel mines would like? I'm not sure.

It's like any other nonrenewable resource; there's going to be an extraction
cost that increases over time as the easily recovered deposits are used up.

But unlike oil, which can only be used once and is then gone forever, nickel
and other metals get brought out of the earth and into circulation, and can
then be used over and over. So the price of both recycled and virgin nickel
will increase until demand is met.

I'm curious when it starts to become advantageous to mine old landfills for
all the stuff we used to throw away and not recycle...

~~~
giomasce
I am curious of that too; however, given that it does not happen yet (or, at
least, so I think), I am brought to believe that it is not that easy, or at
least not easier than mining ores (which still requires some degree of
purification). That probably also applies to using the cheap nickel mentioned
by the grandfather comment: it is not necessarily easy to purify it.

~~~
Dylan16807
It might cost mere pennies, but mining happens to be cheaper. It's hard to
imagine it being prohibitively costly.

------
Animats
Cobalt is probably not a problem. See the annual USGS report for cobalt.[1]
The main problem with cobalt mining is that it's usually obtained as a by-
product of nickel. So nickel demand drives cobalt supply. Direct mining for
cobalt is possible but not done much yet. Right now, there's a mild cobalt
oversupply, because nickel refining produces more cobalt than is really
needed. This is expected to change soon.

Potential supplies in the US, Canada, and Australia are substantial. Not a
fundamental problem for the next century. Also, much cobalt is already
recycled.

[1]
[https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/cobalt/mcs...](https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/cobalt/mcs-2017-cobal.pdf)

------
madza
The current demand for high quality nickel used in batteries is very small in
comparison to overall world nickel production. This will continue for the
foreseeable future.

Nickel is trading at very low prices historically and most producers are
losing money at current prices.

This would imply that the current supply of nickel is more than sufficient for
the worlds needs and that some producers need to shut down. (Why they don’t is
fascinating on its own)

Most of the worlds nickel production is low quality ferro nickel used in the
production of stainless steel.

Despite this we are not seeing larger premiums for high quality nickel
products which would indicate that there is more demand for high quality
nickel.

High quality/ high cost nickel producers know that their only chance to
survive the over supply of cheap nickel in the world is if we see the same
over exuberance as which we have seen with cobalt trading in recent months.

The only problem is that nickel is a much larger market than cobalt and as
such is not as susceptible to small market changes, and as the article points
out nickel does not face the same geopolitical supply risk as cobalt does in
the Congo.

We are unlikely to see a shortage of Nickel.

------
pmoriarty
This reminds me of the helium shortage and the long-predicted oil crisis.

~~~
tristanj
The oil crisis was real though. If it wasn't for the growth in supply from
unconventional oil in the past 10 years, today's oil price would be over
$150/barrel.

~~~
WaxProlix
Don't bother, these are the same people who see (or don't see) herculean feats
made to thwart things like Y2K, oil shortages, or the forestalling of climate
change and say to themselves, "Aha, I was right - there was no catastrophe at
all. Those fools, scurrying around spending tons of effort and money!"

~~~
smnrchrds
Also acid rains and air pollution in general.

------
arvind3199
Why isn't a electric road or a overhead third rail a viable alternative to
batteries? Batteries - become depleted, are expensive, heavy. With a grid -
unlimited range, that can be supplemented by smaller batteries. Are there
technical limitations more than cost.

~~~
lcr
There is no technical reason why it can't be done[1], it isn't without its
challenges though; How would you deal with the fact that roads are used by
vehicles with wildly different heights? What about underpasses, is there
enough space to fit the overhead wires? You would also need to make sure that
vehicles in one place can connect to the grid on other places. It seems like
overhead wires will probably be the best solution, but will only be
implemented on highways for use on freight vehicles, not on cities or for
personal vehicles.

Ground level power supply systems also exist[2], but would require you to tear
up the entire road network in order to implement them, are expensive, and
apparently prone to water clogging (which could perhaps be mitigated) without
mentioning the fact that they would probably require either an autonomous or
guided vehicle in order to reliably maintain contact with the rail.

So, not really, the limitations are mostly about cost and political capital.

[1][https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/products/mobility/roa...](https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/products/mobility/road-
solutions/electromobility/ehighway.html)

[2][http://www.alstom.com/products-services/product-
catalogue/ra...](http://www.alstom.com/products-services/product-
catalogue/rail-systems/Infrastructures/products/aps-ground-level-power-
supply/)

~~~
Johnny555
Your first point is already dealt with by electric railroads that run
different height trains -- the wires are set at a level that the tallest train
can fit under, and shorter trains have a higher pantograph to reach the wires.
And since the pantograph is flexible, it can deal with varying wire heights.

Gaps in the wire for intersections and underpasses could be handled by having
small battery packs in the cars. This also helps with the last-mile -- only
large arterial roads need to be electrified and cars could drive the short
distance on city streets on battery power.

One solution for in-road charging would be wireless inductive chargers like:

[https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/qualcomms-inductive-
charg...](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/qualcomms-inductive-charging-
road-could-change-the-way-we-build-evs/)

Though as you say, the real problems are price and politics. In the SF Bay
Area, Caltrain has taken decades to get funding for electrification and has
faced a lot of resistance from some communities for the construction and
visual blight of overhead electrification. And that's just for one set of
tracks, electrifying all of the freeways would be much worse.

~~~
lcr
Well, that was not really my point about height, I was just drawing attention
at how ridiculous it would be to see, for example, a sedan (about 1.4 meters
tall) connected to an overhead wire that is any where from 2.5 to 3 meters
(about the height you would need to be able to pass a swap body) in the air.

Like I said, it is technologically possible, but for most intents and purposes
seems like a wonky solution, at least for personal vehicles, mass
transportation and freight are completely different scenarios.

As for the other points, you are right, there are fairly straight forward
solutions.

Inductive charging is definitely a good option, which has already been
explored by transport companies[1]. It again seems to be that politics and
money are the main barrier for implementation.

[1][http://primove.bombardier.com/products/charging.html](http://primove.bombardier.com/products/charging.html)

------
epx
Difficult to believe. Cars are being churned day and night for decades, all of
them use a lot of minerals. At least (in my understanding) the rare minerals
that go into electric cars and their batteries are recyclable. Once the fleet
is built, just recycle.

Of course, I'd prefer a future with electric trams in every street and fewer
cars, all electric, all small and light to save in materials and energy.

~~~
vvanders
In addition the "rare" materials are low in usage compared to carbon and other
components for batteries. If I were to guess copper is probably of the largest
concern.

------
ZenoArrow
Cobalt and nickel are not the only materials that can fulfill the functions
they cover. There are a couple of things worth noting here:

1\. "Lithium Ion" describes a family of batteries, with varying chemical
compositions. As an example, the battery in the Nissan Leaf uses no cobalt in
its cathode:

[https://qnovo.com/inside-the-battery-of-a-nissan-
leaf/](https://qnovo.com/inside-the-battery-of-a-nissan-leaf/)

"It uses a different material for the cathode called lithium-manganese-oxide
with nickel oxide (LiMn2O4 with LiNiO2) that is inherently safer than the
lithium-cobalt-oxide cathode material"

2\. There are other battery chemistries outside of the Lithium Ion family, in
varying states of maturity, that could (in time) become competitive with
Lithium Ion in the electric car market. To give one example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery)

------
Johnny555
Sounds kind of like how we're running out of oil -- we're definitely using up
the easy to find deposits, but as oil prices rise, the less easily available
oil becomes marketable, so the oil keeps coming.

Eventually we'll run out, but making it harder to find just makes it more
expensive. (well, that and the political problems caused by wealthy middle
eastern nations running out of their liquid gold)

------
randyrand
I dont understand this phrase. It's completely incorrect usage. If demand
can't be met, then the price will raise naturally until demand _is_ met. I can
guarentee that for a raw material, this is bound to happen.

I suppose they could fix it just by saying "at the current price" at the end.

~~~
rvense
Err, I imagine what they mean is "to replace the conventional cars that people
rely on".

------
peterwwillis
This brings to mind two horrifying futures, thankfully neither of which will
ever happen:

1) we use those big lines full of electricity hanging adjacent to the road to
power vehicles,

2) we stop using cars

------
shmerl
What about asteroid / other planets mining?

~~~
mbid
What about the philosopher's stone? Surely with enough research in alchemy and
Elon Musk's support, we could tweak it so that we can conjure all metals from
thin air.

Dude.

~~~
shmerl
I guess some don't mind imagining such thing:
[http://deepspaceindustries.com](http://deepspaceindustries.com)

~~~
crush-n-spread
It's too expensive to mine minerals and send them back to Earth. Until we are
launching hundreds of rockets a day, we can forget about this.

------
polskibus
Finally, a reason to go into space!

------
teilo
Time to invest in Nickel ETFs.

------
bmcusick
Remember Peak Oil? Good times.

