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Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

If everybody switches to electric do we have enough raw materials for batteries like lithium to supply the whole world?

>If everybody switches to electric do we have enough raw materials for batteries like lithium to supply the whole world?

This is a common misconception about batteries. Lithium makes up about 2% of the mass of a Li-Ion battery, and it is more abundant in the Earth's crust than lead or tin.

And unlike oil, Lithium can be recycled indefinitely

"As of 2017, the recycling of Li-Ion batteries generally does not extract lithium since the many different types of Li-Ion batteries require a different extraction process."

Source: "Battery Recycling > Lithium ion batteries" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_recycling

This would change if there was a shortage. Nobody recycles it now because it's cheaper to mine more.

Material recycling has not to date been particularly effectively developed. The most-recycled metal in the United States is lead, and only about 40% of it is recovered. That means that the useful amount in use decreases by over half with each use generation.

Even with high recovery rates, per-generation losses mean that new mining or other recovery is constantly required. And the amounts of lithium required for widespread energy storage are truely vast.

There's enough lithium. With present battery chemistries, the most bottlenecked material for lithium ion batteries is actually cobalt. There are cobalt-free chemistries, but the trade-off is lower energy density.

Another thing to add is the use of cobalt in alnico magnets that cheaper EV motors use

Do AC induction motors (like Tesla's) use magnets?

They don't. As I know, only Chinese EV makers use BLDC motos with permanent magnets.

Cobalt seems to be the biggest constraint in supply. I read somewhere we have enough lithium for a hundred years including increases in battery consumption.

Related, has anyone done napkin math on aluminum air batteries, assuming excess electricity from wind and PV?

Aluminum air batteries are not really rechargeable (you have to reduce the oxygen out), but at some point I think they may make some sense.

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