Before, Lithium was important, but not nearly in the quantities needed for EV's. Now that EV's have picked up, more people will be looking for Lithium, and that will make all the difference.
We just weren't looking very hard to find lithium compared to lead till very recently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
It's very hard to find anything volatile in nature, pretty much by definition. Exceptions are things that are continually generated, eg you can find reactive oxygen in nature because plants keep making more. That or things that are only volatile once you purify or transform them in some way.
If all of world's bauxite reserves ran dry, we would move to the next best sources, and this would impact aluminum prices less than typical yearly variations in electricity costs near smelters.
Nearly all aluminum minerals are potential ores for aluminum, the only question is how much other, undesirable material (mostly silica) you need to remove. Bauxite is nice because nature did a lot of the early separation process steps (slightly acidic rains washed away silica over millennia).
There are plenty of known deposits of unknown size and quality. They are just by definition not included in the reserve. As demand grows those will be explored and included in the total count.
That was certainly true of oil. As reserves got depleted, progressively more advanced techniques allowed people to extract from more difficult locations.
Maybe you meant that, but it’s worth stating outright, as no amount of money can fix that.
Let's not be fooled again!
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/global...
> LONDON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Global sales of battery electric vehicles (BEV) and plug-in hybrids (PHEV) rose 20% versus a year ago as strong growth in North America and China offset lower sales in Europe, according to market research firm Rho Motion.
However what's actually happening is that demand is going up, but at a rate slower than before. Imagine that in 2022 demand increased by 60% YoY but in 2023 demand only increased by 40% YoY (these are approximate figures). You are measuring the second derivative which is decreasing from a big positive value to a smaller positive value, which is not usually described by the word "slow". Intuitively "slow" means the second derivative has become negative.
Increasing position less fast is the definition of slowing down, as I said. Increasing speed less fast is, of course, not the definition of slowing down, it's decelerating; we agree on this.
But you are equating demand to "speed" (rate-of-change of position), and I am equating demand to "position" (not a rate-of-change). If demand is analogous to speed, then what is is measuring the rate-of-change of?
Acceleration decreased such that it is negative. Negative acceleration is "slowing down."
Ok, let’s substitute that into the original comment, instead of:
> demand has slowed down recently
we get:
> speed has slowed down recently
Nothing to do with the rate of change of speed, just speed itself. In other words:
In terms of _speed_, this would indicate that _speed_ was once higher and is now lower.
Let’s translate that same sentence back substituting speed with demand:
In terms of _demand_, this would indicate that _demand_ was once higher and is now lower.
That statement cannot be true as 2023 demand was the highest ever.
Where it could be different is in places like power generation. You might talk about peak demand in Watts, and daily demand in watt-hours.