Simple question: What is the expected impact in electricity Demand when EV deployment exceeds 10%

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

2 minutes ago, -trance said:

Not really. 

Precision is how tightly the data is clustered, accuracy is how close the data is to the true value.

Hitting 3 double 20's in darts is awesome precision, but terrible accuracy if you were actually aiming for the bullseye.

You are correct and I was sloppy. I meant precision is 10% and I'm fairly sure that plus-or-minus 10% range includes the "correct" number.

[turbguy + 1,543]

6 hours ago, ronwagn said:

There is also the fact that it takes new technologies a long time to get to market.

"Chrysler invents it.

Ford brings it to market.

GM makes it actually work".

[Bob D + 562]

14 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

😀  "totally made up" means I surfed around at reputable web sites (EIA, ca.gov) and then didn't bother to provide the URLs of my sources. "One digit of precision" is another way to say "probably accurate to 10%".

I get it Dan.  Your statement made me laugh.  That's all.

[Ecocharger + 1,470]

On 4/9/2021 at 5:34 PM, Jay McKinsey said:

So what year do you predict EV sales will begin to decline and what will be their peak new vehicle market share?

 

Peak share below 10%.

The whole green dream is a dream....the carbon footprints are going to grow no matter what kind of vehicle is predominant.

To go green, we need to DE-GROW, DE-POPULATE, stop making STEEL, stop making CEMENT, stop PAVING HIGHWAYS, stop driving on CARBONIZED TIRES, stop using ELECTRICITY....in other words, GET POOR, and the poor will get much poorer very fast.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Difficult-Truth-About-Decarbonization.html

Here we go, the new frontier, de-growth,

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23460978?seq=1

Edited April 16, 2021 by Ecocharger

[ronwagn + 6,290]

On 3/17/2021 at 12:42 PM, Ward Smith said:

Especially when the production of that electricity is assumed to be "renewables". Will those chargers help or hinder the grid? 

HINDER!

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

On 4/12/2021 at 6:20 PM, ronwagn said:

There is also the fact that it takes new technologies a long time to get to market.  I think it was Edison and Henry Ford that sold the first electric cars. GM gave up on them decades ago. 

Here we go again. China can now make a useful small four seater EV for under $10,000. Will Americans ever have an option for such an EV price? Not likely. Asians that can't afford  better ones will. 

That's a good point, but even that's speeding up.

In the past, technology slowly trickled out of labs into industry, where engineers had to learn the new tech before incorporating it into designs. Just making the engineers aware took time.

Today, researchers are the engineers implementing the technology. I.e. they must possess both skill sets. Google was one of the first to implement this. They started requiring their researchers to implement ideas in real products. Those who couldn't master both research and implementation were probably shown the door. Those who could master both skill sets were able to bring ideas to market in months instead of years.

Tesla is also doing this. We often don't discover a Tesla innovation until we tear apart a production vehicle. Tesla also has an astounding rate of improvement and is vertically integrated; they're not bound by the usual cascade of technology from academia to suppliers to OEMs. Basically, we have no idea what Tesla has coming down the pipe, and it's coming at us far faster than we're accustomed to. Automotive is going to have a wild decade.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

On 4/12/2021 at 4:20 PM, ronwagn said:

There is also the fact that it takes new technologies a long time to get to market.  I think it was Edison and Henry Ford that sold the first electric cars. GM gave up on them decades ago. 

Here we go again. China can now make a useful small four seater EV for under $10,000. Will Americans ever have an option for such an EV price? Not likely. Asians that can't afford  better ones will. 

The US makes useful small 4 seater EV's for under $10k. They're called golf carts. Thanks to Ralph Nader there's no way to put a reliable cheap car on the roads in America. By the time you have the safety gear installed, you've spent over $10k and don't have an engine or transmission yet (or tires, windshields, seats you get the point).

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,554]

On 4/12/2021 at 10:38 PM, turbguy said:

"Chrysler invents it.

Ford brings it to market.

GM makes it actually work".

Speaking to current events i might suggest making a update transition to todays state of the industry...perhaps leaving behind the 80's and at least stepping into the time frame of say...2004 to current events?

[surrept33 + 609]

2 hours ago, Eyes Wide Open said:

Speaking to current events i might suggest making a update transition to todays state of the industry...perhaps leaving behind the 80's and at least stepping into the time frame of say...2004 to current events?

Maybe....

Tesla invents it.

Argo AI (aka Ford) brings it to market.

Cruise Automation (aka GM) makes it actually work.

[Ecocharger + 1,470]

19 hours ago, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

That's a good point, but even that's speeding up.

In the past, technology slowly trickled out of labs into industry, where engineers had to learn the new tech before incorporating it into designs. Just making the engineers aware took time.

Today, researchers are the engineers implementing the technology. I.e. they must possess both skill sets. Google was one of the first to implement this. They started requiring their researchers to implement ideas in real products. Those who couldn't master both research and implementation were probably shown the door. Those who could master both skill sets were able to bring ideas to market in months instead of years.

Tesla is also doing this. We often don't discover a Tesla innovation until we tear apart a production vehicle. Tesla also has an astounding rate of improvement and is vertically integrated; they're not bound by the usual cascade of technology from academia to suppliers to OEMs. Basically, we have no idea what Tesla has coming down the pipe, and it's coming at us far faster than we're accustomed to. Automotive is going to have a wild decade.

There are some bottlenecks in the EV story which will probably limit the market penetration to about 10% or less. 

Lithium bottlenecks present an insuperable problem to EV adoption. Not to mention that lithium mining is CO2-intensive, a backward direction for the climate folks. Now, that is okay if you don't mind seeing poor people lose their private auto capacity.

Think green, think natural, think poor.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Lithium-Prices-Could-Triple-As-EV-Production-Soars.html

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

7 hours ago, Ecocharger said:

There are some bottlenecks in the EV story which will probably limit the market penetration to about 10% or less. 

Lithium bottlenecks present an insuperable problem to EV adoption. Not to mention that lithium mining is CO2-intensive, a backward direction for the climate folks. Now, that is okay if you don't mind seeing poor people lose their private auto capacity.

Think green, think natural, think poor.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Lithium-Prices-Could-Triple-As-EV-Production-Soars.html

Lithium-ion batteries are now being recycled on an industrial scale. The recovery rates for cobalt and nickel are about 98%. The recovery rate for lithium is about 80%. If the price of lithium goes up much, the extra effort to recover most of the remaining lithium will become cost-effective. This means that once we have mined enough lithium to replace all the ICE cars, we won't need much of an ongoing supply.

There are basically three types of lithium "mining": hard-rock mining, recovery from salt flats, and recovery from brine. Recovery from brine is broadly similar to drilling for oil.

The two huge uses of lithium batteries are currently EVs and utility-scale fixed batteries. (On a unit basis, there are more batteries in  cell phones and other consumer electronics, but they are tiny.) The big stationary batteries use Lithium cells because they are currently readily available in massive quantities from the same factories that provide EV batteries, but the economics for stationary batteries is driven by $/kwh, while the economics for EVs is driven by energy density (both mass and volume), with $/Kg coming in third. What this means it that when lithium gets too expensive, the stationary batteries will shift to a cheaper alternative chemistry (sodium-ion or vanadium flow) or utilities will shift to other types of energy storage. When that happens, all of the lithium in all those existing stationary batteries will get recycled to make EV batteries.

The net effect: battery recycling will place a cap on the price of mined lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

[Ecocharger + 1,470]

3 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

Lithium-ion batteries are now being recycled on an industrial scale. The recovery rates for cobalt and nickel are about 98%. The recovery rate for lithium is about 80%. If the price of lithium goes up much, the extra effort to recover most of the remaining lithium will become cost-effective. This means that once we have mined enough lithium to replace all the ICE cars, we won't need much of an ongoing supply.

There are basically three types of lithium "mining": hard-rock mining, recovery from salt flats, and recovery from brine. Recovery from brine is broadly similar to drilling for oil.

The two huge uses of lithium batteries are currently EVs and utility-scale fixed batteries. (On a unit basis, there are more batteries in  cell phones and other consumer electronics, but they are tiny.) The big stationary batteries use Lithium cells because they are currently readily available in massive quantities from the same factories that provide EV batteries, but the economics for stationary batteries is driven by $/kwh, while the economics for EVs is driven by energy density (both mass and volume), with $/Kg coming in third. What this means it that when lithium gets too expensive, the stationary batteries will shift to a cheaper alternative chemistry (sodium-ion or vanadium flow) or utilities will shift to other types of energy storage. When that happens, all of the lithium in all those existing stationary batteries will get recycled to make EV batteries.

The net effect: battery recycling will place a cap on the price of mined lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

Check the link I gave above, it looks like recycling is not the answer. Mining, both for practical and environmental reasons, cannot cover the gap either. Enormous amounts of CO2 are released. The recycling requires extraction and smelting processes which are energy-intensive and environmentally disastrous. Would you want to live next door to a battery-recycling lithium smelting plant? Neither would I.

Edited April 15, 2021 by Ecocharger

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

6 hours ago, Ecocharger said:

Check the link I gave above, it looks like recycling is not the answer. Mining, both for practical and environmental reasons, cannot cover the gap either. Enormous amounts of CO2 are released. The recycling requires extraction and smelting processes which are energy-intensive and environmentally disastrous. Would you want to live next door to a battery-recycling lithium smelting plant? Neither would I.

I did read the article. it states that Lithium mining provided 300,000 tonnes of Lithium in 2020 at up to 5 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of lithium produced, a total of 1.5 M tonnes. That's for all batteries, not just EV batteries.. For comparison, each tonnes of crude produced created 3 tonnes of CO2 minimum.  A barrel of crude is 0.135 tonne, so each barrel creates 0.4 tonnes of CO2. 100 million barrels per day of crude produces 40 M tonnes of CO2.   Conclusion: Lithium mining produces as much CO2 in a year as crude production produces in nine hours. Note that the CO2/Lithium ratio  (5) is for hard-rock mining using diesel-fueled mining equipment. The article states that the ratio for brine extraction is a lot lower, so that 9 hours is an upper bound.

The report states that lithium demand in 2030 will reach 2.8 M tonne. That's almost ten times the 2020 number, so CO2 emission would be the equivalent of 4 days of crude oil production if all the lithium were from hard-rock mining using diesel mining equipment.  Note that the report is based on manufacturing 20 million high-mileage EVs (75 kWh batteries) in 2030. That would be 22% of the new-vehicle market.

The report mentions "smelting" as part of battery recycling, but new in-production systems use much less energy-intensive techniques that are also much cleaner. I would much rather live next to one of these than an abandoned oil well.

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

@Dan Clemmensen and @Ecocharger,

If I understand the discussion thus far, we've made the following broad points. Correct me if I've misunderstood or omitted something:

1) There are three ways to extract lithium from the environment, and we expect these to deliver some tonnage at some price.
2) Recycling will be a major factor in *long term* lithium prices.

I'd add additional broad points to this:

1) There might be other ways to extract lithium. During the recent battery day, Tesla claimed a way to extract lithium from Nevada sand (which they're conveniently close to) that would add vast quantities of lithium to our reserves. There may be other technologies coming down the pipe as well.

2) Reserves are based on *what is economical at current prices* from *what has already been explored*. Those two assumptions are important. If the price of lithium increases, there will be both more exploration and more extraction - not to mention R&D into new extraction processes. How confident are we in the limits we've placed on lithium production?

3) The world has been building lithium batteries for decades; how much recyclable lithium do we have sitting around in old devices?

4) The quantity of lithium in sea water is effectively unlimited. Thus, the upper limit on lithium prices at any production volume is set by the cost of profitably extracting lithium from sea water. Do we know this cost?

5) Lithium is a minor component of lithium batteries, so batteries can be profitably produced at relatively high lithium prices. If this price is higher than the cost of sea water extraction, then lithium supplies do not limit battery production and, therefore, do not limit EV production.

 

Overall, I'd say claims about limited lithium production are questionable. Free markets tend not to conform to simple economic models.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

3 hours ago, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

@Dan Clemmensen and @Ecocharger,

If I understand the discussion thus far, we've made the following broad points. Correct me if I've misunderstood or omitted something:

1) There are three ways to extract lithium from the environment, and we expect these to deliver some tonnage at some price.
2) Recycling will be a major factor in *long term* lithium prices.

I'd add additional broad points to this:

1) There might be other ways to extract lithium. During the recent battery day, Tesla claimed a way to extract lithium from Nevada sand (which they're conveniently close to) that would add vast quantities of lithium to our reserves. There may be other technologies coming down the pipe as well.

2) Reserves are based on *what is economical at current prices* from *what has already been explored*. Those two assumptions are important. If the price of lithium increases, there will be both more exploration and more extraction - not to mention R&D into new extraction processes. How confident are we in the limits we've placed on lithium production?

3) The world has been building lithium batteries for decades; how much recyclable lithium do we have sitting around in old devices?

4) The quantity of lithium in sea water is effectively unlimited. Thus, the upper limit on lithium prices at any production volume is set by the cost of profitably extracting lithium from sea water. Do we know this cost?

5) Lithium is a minor component of lithium batteries, so batteries can be profitably produced at relatively high lithium prices. If this price is higher than the cost of sea water extraction, then lithium supplies do not limit battery production and, therefore, do not limit EV production.

 

Overall, I'd say claims about limited lithium production are questionable. Free markets tend not to conform to simple economic models.

The Rystad report is primarily about a short-term lithium problem, reaching a peak shortage (and a peak price) in 2030, and I have no reason to believe they are wrong, given their assumptions. They do not disagree that new production will occur as the price rises, just as you imply. They simply say that it will take time, and the lithium miners will not aggressively open new mines quickly enough because they got burned when they tried that four years ago. However, the report, or at least Oilprice's article about the report, did not mention three points: 1) 20 million long-range EVs in 2030 is extremely aggressive; 2) Lithium from brine is probably quicker to develop than a hard-rock mine; and 3) the big stationary batteries will move away from lithium as the price increases.

My main objections to the report and to @Ecocharger were that they use qualitative scare terms ("huge CO2", "smelter", "extensive" pollution) instead of quantifying them and comparing them to crude oil. The report is also unclear on its actual assumptions on the number and type of EVs: they actually say there will be a "shortfall" of 20 million EVs with 75 kWh batteries, which implies that their 2.8 million tonnes of lithium is intended to cover some larger number of vehicles in 2030.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

Here is a different report on battery materials and cost projections. I found it easier to understand. It makes similar points but with more focus. Its primary conclusion: If EV manufacturers want lithium (and other metals) in 2030, they will need to invest in mining now, because they are the only stakeholders that have the capital to do so. That is, this report identifies the same problem, but it proposes a solution.

https://www.benchmarkminerals.com/membership/lithium-ion-battery-cell-prices-fall-to-110-kwh-but-raw-material-risk-looms-large-2/

These appear to be mining industry analysts, not the Rystad oil/energy industry analysts.  This report mostly lumps lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper at the summary level, and they use the NCM battery as the exemplar, which ignores the fact that the mass EV market will shift to LFP and thereby not need cobalt and nickel in the batteries. The report estimates the current cost of cells in an NCM pack as $110/kWh, and estimates that the EV industry is naively projecting the 2030 cost to be $87/kWh. They think the "likely" 2030 cost at as high as $119/kWh, which would add about $2500 dollars to the projected cost of a mass-market EV.

To bring this all back to the topic of this thread: Ward wants to know what will happen to the grid with 10% EVs on the road. The answer depends critically on how long it takes to build and sell all those EVs. If EV production is constrained by lithium we have a lower bound on this date.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Dan Clemmensen
typo: 2020=>2030

[Ecocharger + 1,470]

10 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

I did read the article. it states that Lithium mining provided 300,000 tonnes of Lithium in 2020 at up to 5 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of lithium produced, a total of 1.5 M tonnes. That's for all batteries, not just EV batteries.. For comparison, each tonnes of crude produced created 3 tonnes of CO2 minimum.  A barrel of crude is 0.135 tonne, so each barrel creates 0.4 tonnes of CO2. 100 million barrels per day of crude produces 40 M tonnes of CO2.   Conclusion: Lithium mining produces as much CO2 in a year as crude production produces in nine hours. Note that the CO2/Lithium ratio  (5) is for hard-rock mining using diesel-fueled mining equipment. The article states that the ratio for brine extraction is a lot lower, so that 9 hours is an upper bound.

The report states that lithium demand in 2030 will reach 2.8 M tonne. That's almost ten times the 2020 number, so CO2 emission would be the equivalent of 4 days of crude oil production if all the lithium were from hard-rock mining using diesel mining equipment.  Note that the report is based on manufacturing 20 million high-mileage EVs (75 kWh batteries) in 2030. That would be 22% of the new-vehicle market.

The report mentions "smelting" as part of battery recycling, but new in-production systems use much less energy-intensive techniques that are also much cleaner. I would much rather live next to one of these than an abandoned oil well.

Of course it is meaningless to compare TOTAL industry production for oil vs. lithium, the point is that lithium if ramped up to huge levels carries with it vast CO2 bi-production. EV's still a tiny percentage of the stock of autos. Brine is not a practical method on a large scale, as indicated in the article.

[Ecocharger + 1,470]

6 hours ago, BenFranklin'sSpectacles said:

@Dan Clemmensen and @Ecocharger,

If I understand the discussion thus far, we've made the following broad points. Correct me if I've misunderstood or omitted something:

1) There are three ways to extract lithium from the environment, and we expect these to deliver some tonnage at some price.
2) Recycling will be a major factor in *long term* lithium prices.

I'd add additional broad points to this:

1) There might be other ways to extract lithium. During the recent battery day, Tesla claimed a way to extract lithium from Nevada sand (which they're conveniently close to) that would add vast quantities of lithium to our reserves. There may be other technologies coming down the pipe as well.

2) Reserves are based on *what is economical at current prices* from *what has already been explored*. Those two assumptions are important. If the price of lithium increases, there will be both more exploration and more extraction - not to mention R&D into new extraction processes. How confident are we in the limits we've placed on lithium production?

3) The world has been building lithium batteries for decades; how much recyclable lithium do we have sitting around in old devices?

4) The quantity of lithium in sea water is effectively unlimited. Thus, the upper limit on lithium prices at any production volume is set by the cost of profitably extracting lithium from sea water. Do we know this cost?

5) Lithium is a minor component of lithium batteries, so batteries can be profitably produced at relatively high lithium prices. If this price is higher than the cost of sea water extraction, then lithium supplies do not limit battery production and, therefore, do not limit EV production.

 

Overall, I'd say claims about limited lithium production are questionable. Free markets tend not to conform to simple economic models.

High lithium prices as the industry for EV supposedly ramps up...throws out the relative price projections.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

1 hour ago, Ecocharger said:

Of course it is meaningless to compare TOTAL industry production for oil vs. lithium, the point is that lithium if ramped up to huge levels carries with it vast CO2 bi-production.

OK, I checked and found that an EV battery uses 0.9 kg LCE/kWh, so Rystad's nominal 75 kWh battery needs 67.5 kg (.0675 tonne) of LCE. If we divide that into their 2.8 M tonne in 2030, we get 41.4 million long-range EVs, or about 45% of the vehicles manufactured. So Rystad is even more radical than Elon Musk.

Now let's compare to oil. If you care about CO2 at all then then this is not meaningless. If you don't care about CO2, then why did you comment on the "vast" quantities at all?  The comparison is valid because the EVs replace ICEs, and those ICEs account for a large percentage of the TOTAL oil consumption. About 72% of all crude oil is used to make gasoline and diesel fuel.

We have 1.4 billion vehicles on the road, currently almost all using petroleum and consuming about (72% of) 100 million bbl of oil per day. In real life, transition to EVs will be gradual, but the cumulative CO2 produced by lithium production will be mathematically equivalent to an instantaneous switchover. Magically convert all of them to EVs, magically using 1.4 B*0.067 tonne of LCE=945 M tonne of LCE, which generates 4725 M tonnes of CO2 at a ratio of 5.  Crude oil production emits at least 40.5 M tonne CO2 per day, so production of the LCE for the entire global fleet will  emit the same amount of CO2 as 117 days of oil production. Now replace the EVs at 92 million/yr, Using 80% recycled lithium: we need less than 1.4 M tonne of new LCE plus 5.6 M tonne recycled. Assume the new LCE/CO2 ratio is 3 and the recycled ratio is 1. (These are conservatively high.) This is 9.8 M tonne of CO2 per year on an ongoing basis which is less than that produced by six hours of crude production today.

[Ecocharger + 1,470]

3 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

OK, I checked and found that an EV battery uses 0.9 kg LCE/kWh, so Rystad's nominal 75 kWh battery needs 67.5 kg (.0675 tonne) of LCE. If we divide that into their 2.8 M tonne in 2030, we get 41.4 million long-range EVs, or about 45% of the vehicles manufactured. So Rystad is even more radical than Elon Musk.

Now let's compare to oil. If you care about CO2 at all then then this is not meaningless. If you don't care about CO2, then why did you comment on the "vast" quantities at all?  The comparison is valid because the EVs replace ICEs, and those ICEs account for a large percentage of the TOTAL oil consumption. About 72% of all crude oil is used to make gasoline and diesel fuel.

We have 1.4 billion vehicles on the road, currently almost all using petroleum and consuming about (72% of) 100 million bbl of oil per day. In real life, transition to EVs will be gradual, but the cumulative CO2 produced by lithium production will be mathematically equivalent to an instantaneous switchover. Magically convert all of them to EVs, magically using 1.4 B*0.067 tonne of LCE=945 M tonne of LCE, which generates 4725 M tonnes of CO2 at a ratio of 5.  Crude oil production emits at least 40.5 M tonne CO2 per day, so production of the LCE for the entire global fleet will  emit the same amount of CO2 as 117 days of oil production. Now replace the EVs at 92 million/yr, Using 80% recycled lithium: we need less than 1.4 M tonne of new LCE plus 5.6 M tonne recycled. Assume the new LCE/CO2 ratio is 3 and the recycled ratio is 1. (These are conservatively high.) This is 9.8 M tonne of CO2 per year on an ongoing basis which is less than that produced by six hours of crude production today.

Right, I do not see that CO2 is relevant as as far as climate problems are concerned, so you are right this is not where the action is for climate change, that honor belongs to solar variables, as per the recent studies from U of California and other scientists. 

I am just saying, for those who believe that CO2 is a major determinant of climate change, the CO2 issue is not simple here, and the expected rapid rise in lithium prices would make the EV unaffordable to most people and thereby reduce the carbon footprint considerably. But that comes at a huge cost, the reduced standard of living of the poor. Remember the poor, those folks who supposedly elected Biden to the top job?  They are the ones who will pay if the green dream is implemented.

Your recycling assumptions are not tenable, as the article I cited pointed out, given the lifecycle expectations for EV batteries.  The smelting operations are dirty and use materials requiring oil. As do the steels, concrete, asphalt and other basic materials essential to EV roadways. With largely empty highways, we would  still need these construction demands for oil to provide the rich folks with pathways on which to roll their EV luxuries on carbonized tires. The poor have to put on their masks and share transportation space in electrified buses. And coal-derived electric power will continue in Asia at an advanced rate. Of course, air travel would remain dependent on oil based fuels, and diesel power for trains would continue. Shipping powered by oil. There is no practical horizon for the oil sunset. The only option for oil retirement is de-growth and poverty.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Ecocharger

[BenFranklin'sSpectacles + 762]

19 hours ago, Dan Clemmensen said:

Here is a different report on battery materials and cost projections. I found it easier to understand. It makes similar points but with more focus. Its primary conclusion: If EV manufacturers want lithium (and other metals) in 2030, they will need to invest in mining now, because they are the only stakeholders that have the capital to do so. That is, this report identifies the same problem, but it proposes a solution.

https://www.benchmarkminerals.com/membership/lithium-ion-battery-cell-prices-fall-to-110-kwh-but-raw-material-risk-looms-large-2/

These appear to be mining industry analysts, not the Rystad oil/energy industry analysts.  This report mostly lumps lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper at the summary level, and they use the NCM battery as the exemplar, which ignores the fact that the mass EV market will shift to LFP and thereby not need cobalt and nickel in the batteries. The report estimates the current cost of cells in an NCM pack as $110/kWh, and estimates that the EV industry is naively projecting the 2030 cost to be $87/kWh. They think the "likely" 2030 cost at as high as $119/kWh, which would add about $2500 dollars to the projected cost of a mass-market EV.

To bring this all back to the topic of this thread: Ward wants to know what will happen to the grid with 10% EVs on the road. The answer depends critically on how long it takes to build and sell all those EVs. If EV production is constrained by lithium we have a lower bound on this date.

Good article; thanks.

Having read the article, my initial reaction is bafflement - not because they reached that conclusion, but because they felt compelled to dedicate an entire report to saying, "The answer for OEMs is more active management of supply chains."

First, was this not obvious? If the market isn't providing, one has two options: create an incentive (E.g. long term contracts) or DIY. I learned that in an undergraduate business strategy course; surely every MBA and principal engineer is also aware of it.

Second, their report seems to imply that this isn't already happening. I wouldn't be surprised to learn the Big 3 ignored this, but I don't expect them to be around in 2030, so that point is moot. By contrast, I would be quite surprised to learn that an Asian or European automaker isn't on top of this. One could argue that there's no public evidence of such activity, but that's not how business works. Businesses generally avoid broadcasting their next moves.

Third, red tape tends to disappear when it pleases the ruling class. E.g. the War on Terror, the financial crisis of 2008, and Covid have all enabled governments to do the previously unthinkable, questionably legal, and ludicrously expensive. The US alone is already $5 Trillion in the hole over Covid alone. If the developed world decides oil imports must be ended, I don't think some exploration, mining permits, or capital investment are going to stop them.

That brings me to an important question: how fast could all of this happen if the relevant players really wanted it to happen? World War II is the benchmark for economic transformation. While sending a significant fraction of its existing workforce off to war, the US doubled it's entire economy every year for four years. Not just one raw material. Not just one industry. The entire economy. Because they actually wanted it.

I use World War II as an example because I see analysts consistently making bad, implicit assumptions. They assume things will play out the way things played out most recently under "normal" conditions in the industry they happen to know. If they bothered to dig deeper into history, reach broader into other industries, and ask their questions more carefully, they would see the world differently.

Lithium supply is going to be a challenge, but "challenging" does not mean "impossible". I suspect we'll all be surprised by how effectively industry solves this problem.

Edited April 16, 2021 by BenFranklin'sSpectacles
Corrected a typo.

[Boat + 1,323]

On 4/14/2021 at 11:47 AM, Ward Smith said:

The US makes useful small 4 seater EV's for under $10k. They're called golf carts. Thanks to Ralph Nader there's no way to put a reliable cheap car on the roads in America. By the time you have the safety gear installed, you've spent over $10k and don't have an engine or transmission yet (or tires, windshields, seats you get the point).

I have this theory. I know you’ll love it. These early adoption EV’s have expensive lousy batteries only the rich can afford. But 10 years from now 70% cheaper million mile batteries can replace those batteries in dent and scratch vehicles. Since EV’s have low maintenance costs and car owners like old bombs/value it should work.  
Getting to scale for electric will happen, it will just take a couple of decades.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Boat

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

7 hours ago, Ecocharger said:

I am just saying, for those who believe that CO2 is a major determinant of climate change, the CO2 issue is not simple here, and the expected rapid rise in lithium prices would make the EV unaffordable to most people and thereby reduce the carbon footprint considerably. But that comes at a huge cost, the reduced standard of living of the poor. Remember the poor, those folks who supposedly elected Biden to the top job?  They are the ones who will pay if the green dream is implemented.

A long-range EV has a 75 kWh battery, which contains 67.5 Kg LCE. The current price of LCE (delivered) is about $10/kg, for a total LCE cost of about $675. If that price spikes to $30/kg in 2030, it adds $1350 to the cost of each car. Nobody except Rystad thinkg the price will triple, and even Rystad does not think the price would stay that high. they see 2030 as a spike that will come back down when supply increases. They do not appear to be predicting a "rapid" rise, but a more gradual rise over a decade. This is not the crude oil market, where prices can double in a year.  Furthermore, the auto manufacturers have six years before demand reaches the current LCE supply capacity, and ten years befor Rystad's putative spike.

The average car is driven more than 13,000 mi/yr. At an average of 30 mi/gal, this is 433 gals of gasoline per year. At $280/gal, this is $1200. if the price spikes to $3.80/gal, it increases the cost of gasoline each year by $433. Somehow, we manage to keep driving when the price varies.

The total cost of ownership for an EV is already lower than for an ICE because of fuel costs. I don't think the EV will be unaffordable by  the poor. A poor person will not buy an expensive EV. A poor person does not currently buy an expensive ICE. The average cost of a new car in the US in January 2021 was about $40,000.

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

12 minutes ago, Boat said:

I have this theory. I know you’ll love it. These early adoption EV’s have expensive lousy batteries only the rich can afford. But 10 years from now 70% cheaper million mile batteries can replace those batteries in dent and scratch vehicles. Since EV’s have low maintenance costs and car owners like old bombs/value it should work.  
Getting to scale for electric will happen, it will just take a couple of decades.

Unfortunately, it's very hard to replace the battery in today's EVs. To make this work, the EV will need to be redesigned. But there will be no incentive to do so, because by the time these redesigned vehicles are being sold, they will have million-mile batteries.

 

[Dan Clemmensen + 1,011]

7 hours ago, Ecocharger said:

Your recycling assumptions are not tenable, as the article I cited pointed out, given the lifecycle expectations for EV batteries.  The smelting operations are dirty and use materials requiring oil. As do the steels, concrete, asphalt and other basic materials essential to EV roadways. With largely empty highways, we would  still need these construction demands for oil to provide the rich folks with pathways on which to roll their EV luxuries on carbonized tires. The poor have to put on their masks and share transportation space in electrified buses. And coal-derived electric power will continue in Asia at an advanced rate. Of course, air travel would remain dependent on oil based fuels, and diesel power for trains would continue. Shipping powered by oil. There is no practical horizon for the oil sunset. The only option for oil retirement is de-growth and poverty.

 

The Rystad article ignores newer battery recycling methods that are already in production. See:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/10/tesla-jb-straubel-redwood-materials-battery-recycling.html

This thread is supposed to be about the effect of EVs on the electrical grid. All those other uses of petroleum are a (mostly) unchanged by the replacement of ICE with EV. If we want to discuss them, we can go to a different thread. There are alternatives to fossil petroleum for each of them, and almost all of them make economic sense.

Even if EVs replace only gasoline and diesel for land transportation, that's still a 74% reduction in crude oil, with no need for de-growth and poverty, because EVs are less expensive than ICE.