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from the getting-a-charge-out-of-minerals-speculation dept.
Will there be enough to build all the electric vehicles?
Global demand for cobalt and nickel, two of the essential elements in electric car batteries, has never been higher. But where do all those metals come from? And do we even have enough for our electrified future? The answers to those questions are getting increasingly complex.
Reuters and Bloomberg both have stories out today on the metals and, as Reuters reports, while demand for nickel keeps increasing, half the world's nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries.
All of which is going to have seismic effect on the world's suppliers. In short: There will be winners and losers, and the winners will be the ones with the highest-grade stuff—not unlike, I suppose, the illicit drugs market.
Do you feel fearful, uncertain, and doubtful about the future of electric cars?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:02AM (5 children)
Time to dig through the dumps and recycle shit. I say we use white collar criminals to do the digging!
(Score: 5, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:35AM (1 child)
You can get the extreme-right to do it, by promising those materials are clear proof that Hillary is guilty of something.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:38AM
Natsocs wanted Hillary elected to accelerate the collapse of the current U.S. hegemony. Instead we got Trump. People confuse the autist-right with actual "Nazis" because of the general ignorance that the populace has. This stupidity is endemic of democracies; average people should not govern themselves. Not that they really ever have. It's just easier to herd sheep when they think they're going somewhere that they want to go.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:44AM (2 children)
Asteroid mining.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:06AM
Indeed.
And, oh look, one of the electric car makers also has an active space program :D
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:10PM
Yes. Just what I was going to suggest. Asteroid mining.
If we have a huge need for these metals, and they are out there, then we will be motivated to find a way to get there.
Just like we found ways of getting to oil that was formerly 'impossible' to get to.
If we sing a slaying song tonight, what tools will be used for the slaying?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:06AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHTuSRRbX6Y [youtube.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:37AM (1 child)
Hasn't the illicit nature of the drugs market led to impurities?
Anyway, I bet the legal nature of the battery market will lead to a solution; besides hope and glory, there is a lot of money riding on the success of "alternative" energies.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:38AM
Are you saying the lawyers will impose us to use lead batteries?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:01AM (1 child)
The most common stainless steel is 18/8 -- 8% nickel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stainless_steel [wikipedia.org]
So the battery suppliers are going to be facing off against the steel makers...and all the chefs who like their stainless cookware and cutlery. Always wanted that nice set of stainless tableware? Better buy it now, the price is headed up.
Cobalt is used to make superalloys, used (for just one example) in jet engines,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt#Alloys [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:10AM
Because it's as cheap as chips currently, at least compared to boomtime:
http://www.infomine.com/ChartsAndData/GraphEngine.ashx?z=f&gf=110564.USD.lb&dr=10y
(change '10y' to 'max' to get more history)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:01AM (2 children)
Nickel is an element. Do we have a problem with radioactive nickel? I doubt it. Nickel is just nickel, no matter where it comes from.
You can purify it. There are electrochemical methods. You can make nickel carbonyl and then distill it. Heck, go nuts: run nickel carbonyl gas through a gas centrifuge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:53PM
Yeah, but purification takes money and we don't have time for that!
You know, until it makes a lot of sense to do that.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Friday November 03 2017, @08:33PM
Something tells me you aren't terribly well versed in chemistry...
(Score: 5, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:21AM (4 children)
My Generals tell me there are a lot of minerals in Niger. Cobalt, lithium and copper, which are used by our great cell phone and electric car industries. Uranium, very important and we're going to need a lot of that. For our nuclear, our nuclear energy and especially our nuclear arsenal. To upgrade our arsenal. I'll tell you, the minerals there are fabulous. The problem is that there are a lot of radical Islamic terrorists there. We need those minerals. But the mining companies won't go in because it's too dangerous. President Obama sent our military there to protect the French. To build a drone base to protect the French. So ISIS started sending terrorists. Like you wouldn't believe. Folks, I inherited a mess. I need to send a lot more guys. But my hands are tied. In many ways, my hands are tied. Until Congress passes a new AUMF. The one from 2001 has too many restrictions. I need to be able to send my military in whenever & wherever the terrorists are. #MAGA 🇺🇸
(Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:12AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:52AM (1 child)
Not the nickel. A lot of the nickel comes from Russia and Canada. Which are giving us a lot of problems too. Politically, a lot of problems. They sent us the Steele dossier. And they sent us Ted Cruz. To mess with our great elections. They almost made a DISASTER of our elections. 🇺🇸
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:29AM
What a mess! We need that wall YESTERDAY. Like, the 1950s. To keep American minerals and vitamins in. We make beautiful nickels in this country but THEY won't tell you about it.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:43PM
"The minerals there are fabulous"
I lost it. +1 Funny
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:44AM (1 child)
The ocean floor/crust has a fair amount of cobalt and nickel. And seawater actually has a fair amount of lithium.
See also: https://gizmodo.com/the-future-of-technology-is-hiding-on-the-ocean-floor-1764122967 [gizmodo.com]
And some asteroids can be a good source: https://www.wired.com/2016/01/clive-thompson-11/ [wired.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:59PM
The running cost to extract lithium from seawater is roughly double the current sell price. Amortise in enough to cover the cost of the plant, and you have a pretty hard upper limit on the price,
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:00AM
to build 260 cars every 3 months.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 02 2017, @11:06AM (4 children)
There is more Nickel than we could ever use directly below our feet. About 1800 miles below, to be more precise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_core [wikipedia.org]
This explains Elon Musk's sudden interest in tunnelling machines.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:45PM (3 children)
1800 miles may not seem like a lot, until you start thinking about drilling or extracting anything at that depth. It's approximately 1800 miles from San Antonio, Texas to New York City. That would be a feat of engineering to dig a tunnel at a reasonable depth to connect the two. When you talk about drilling "straight down" for that same distance, you also have to deal with crazy amounts of pressure and heat. The deepest hole drilled was only about 7 miles down and 9 inches around. We'd need some super "Unobtainium" kind of material / advancement / Hollywood style leap in drilling "science" to get to those kinds of depths.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)
Perhaps I should have used some irony tags...
(Score: 3, Funny) by deimtee on Friday November 03 2017, @02:09PM
We've got plenty of irony. It's nickely, cobalty and lithiumy we need to find.
200 million years is actually quite a long time.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 02 2017, @08:57PM
Of course you need Unobtainium. Here's how to do it. [imdb.com] ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:27PM
Cars do not, nor will they ever equal watt/kgmile of public transport regardless of whether they are electric. The automotive market is a luxury market. Which is to say that having a car AT ALL, is a luxury.
In consequence as the available watt/person ratio goes down with population growth (all energy being ultimately derived from the sun, with the long term adjusted availability moving towards constant) public transport has to take up the slack.
I am not uncertain I know. Cars are on their way out, PERIOD. The bigger question is HVAC, since it reflects a larger watt/person usage than human transport. Cars are sexy, so everybody talks about them. But the truth is you could probably make a bigger impact on CO2 by simply legislating that all roofs be white.
Hmm.. A bucket of paint, or a billion dollar investment so that rich dicks can drive really fast human sized RC plastic toys?
Right! E-cars it is!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Curious George on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:10PM
I had an environmental chemistry professor bring up this point a year or two ago. Our current methods of producing batteries, solar panels, and windmills can often be just as environmentally devastating as their combustible counterparts. NREL and other national labs have been pushing research into improving batteries and utilizing abundant metals, but I personally don't expect any quantum leap in the technology to solve major problems. It will take a multifaceted approach to achieve a sustainable future, all the push about for an electric fleet is pretty ridiculous when there are still many issues with the technology that have to be solved before implemented in scale. But hey, if it convinces snowflakes to re-elect you, set deadlines that you probably can't make, we're going to save the world right? All we need are 'conflict minerals', it's not like they're as bad as blood diamonds...