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Comment by unicornporn | Hacker News Reader

> Lithium's only disadvantage is its (relative) rareness, and the fact that it is only found in a few specific locations (Columbia, Chile, China, etc.).

So no revolutionary performance advancements (except for no. of recharges), but mostly a way to address rare earths scarcity.

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Indeed. The scarcity issue is hardly intractable though. Currently Lithium is extracted by evaporation of high concentration brine and salts. There are efforts to extract it directly from seawater[1] though. There's plenty of Lithium in seawater, it's just a matter of extracting it efficiently as we do with magnesium.

[1] http://www.technologyreview.com/news/538036/quest-to-mine-se...

Just to note that Lithium is not a rare earth metal. It is a metal that is rare on earth. Hope that clarifies everything.

Rare earths are the much heavier lanthanides, as well as scandium and yttrium.

Also, doesn't it feel a little discordant for a French web site to be using the left-pondian spelling of centimetre?

The French default to "left-pondian" when speaking English, much to my Australian-living-in-Paris chagrin. Most aren't even aware that there is a difference between English English and American English. One step up from that are those that aware that there is a difference, to the point that they actually think that the two are very nearly distinct languages, and that people from England may have trouble understanding Americans. After that you have the people that actually understand the true difference between the two versions of the language, but even they rarely understand that the US is actually the exception, and that pretty much all other English-speaking countries use English spelling (well, there is Canada, which decided to sit on the fence between the two, I suppose).

Well, the US is the "exception" if you count solely the number of countries. It actually has a slightly larger English-speaking population than all other majority-native-English-speaking countries combined, so it makes sense that the US's interpretation of the language would be rather weighty internationally. :)

Sort of like how Brazil is the "exception" in South America because most countries on the continent speak Spanish... but when you look at the population numbers, there are actually more Portuguese than Spanish speakers in South America!

0.06% of the Earth's crust is hardly rare. What is rare is deposits having a significantly higher local concentration.

Dilbert: Rocket boosters will move an asteroid into the moon's orbit so we can mine its precious metals.

Dilbert's Boss: Why don't we mine for precious metals in Afghanistan? They have lots of them.

Dilbert: That only happens in science fiction.

[1] Edited to add:

http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-06-20

The sodium battery also seems to have a longer lifecycle (more recharge cycle/less capacity loss per cycle). On the other hand, way lower specific energy (energy/mass) and no mention of energy density (energy/volume).

Much better suited than li-ion for load management, not so much for mobile applications.

This is revolutionary enough for me. Make an electric car for everyone on Earth and you've used up all available lithium; what are you going to do then?

> what are you going to do then?

Make them autonomous and share them between more people.

No need for everyone on Earth to own an electric car

2000 recharge cycle vs 1000 recharge cycle is significant.

Sodium is 4 times heavier than lithium which is even more significant.

Having a car battery which weights 4 times more isn't viable.

Also you can recycle the lithium from batteries quite easily.

Weight is irrelevant when looking at on-site storage. Cost per KW storage and battery fade performance are more important factors. This is why they are saying this could be a game-changer for renewables. Being able to store energy cheaply is key. Something Lithium has been unable to deliver.

Having a battery that is cheaper and lasts twice as long before needing replacing is significant.

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