China won’t be pleased about that. They were predicted to control a third of the world’s lithium within the next few years.
They won’t be able to actually start mining for 3-4 years, so they probably still will for a short period.
Wdym? the company who owns the mine is owned by a chinese company lol. Thacker Pass Lithium Mine - Wikipedia Lithium Nevada, LLC - a wholly owned subsidiary of Lithium Americas Corp, whose largest shareholder is the world’s largest lithium mining company, Chinese Ganfeng Lithium.
Who owns a company doesn’t matter as much as where the resource is. Foreigners can’t cut you off from your own country, and they can’t sell anything without following national laws.
Chinese Ganfeng holds less than 10% of it and it looks like every other big shareholder is North American or European
I was just doing my Dr Evil thing thinking about how mad China is going to be about this.
Something else we won’t benefit from. Nice. Uh. Go us.
Just imagine the shareholder value.
It could lead to more affordable Li-ion batteries.
So this means prices will go down, right? Right?
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Only if demand levels off. Demand will not level off
It means we don’t have to go to the Congo or through Russia, China, or others anymore. Which is a pretty big political relief because it means that we have a little bit more resource independence.
Maybe even a way we could compete on the global market if we play our cards right.
If they’re smart, they’ll use it to beef up our power grid for the global warming shock.
Unfortunately, I imagine @poopa_mo is right, and this is just going to beef up someone’s bank account. Or rot in a warehouse.
Most Lithium comes from South America and Australia and has for some time. I do not believe that Lithium has ever had the geopolitical issues that other rare earth metals such as cobalt have had.
Yeah, the difference between lithium and oil is that oil is a consumable. If the price of oil goes up, that has an instant effect on energy/transportation costs. If the price of lithium goes up, it’ll only affect the price of new batteries, and anything that’s already in use is unaffected. It’ll slow down investments in new projects, people might delay the purchase of a new car, etc, but it’s a way smaller economic impact.
The best way for it to beef up someone’s bank account is for us to play our cards right and use it to compete on the global market.
There’s no good reason to use lithium for utility-scale power storage. We need it for transportation because it has the best power compared to its weight. Utility storage doesn’t care as much about weight, and there are plenty of better options.
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They have to pay higher rent, energy prices etc when everybody else raises their prices…
Yea a-a-a yea
I’m so happy…
‘cause today I found my friends…
The volcanic crater is found along the Nevada-Oregon border.
The Lithium Americas Corporation “expects to begin mining in 2026. It will remove clay with water and then separate out the small lithium-bearing grains from larger minerals by centrifuging. The clay will then be leached in vats of sulfuric acid to extract lithium.”
All subsequent waste products will then be released into local waterways via “unfortunate accident” on a regular schedule, to maximize shareholder profits.
Awesome. Now leave it there and don’t let anyone touch it 😁
Now all they need is some poor immigrants to work on extracting it and they can make fat stacks
Something tells me there will be a new prison complex built in the area in the next few years
Better than exploiting other countries, I suppose. But I think Lithium is a transitional battery source, and that we will move to much more efficient designs within a decade.
There are a few promising leads in sodium, graphene, and liquid hydrogen batteries. And yeah that includes salt batteries as well
Not a chance.
Right now we’re using lithium-ion. In maybe a decade we’ll move to lithium-sulphide, and in perhaps 25 years we might see lithium-oxygen.
Either way, lithium is all you’ll see in commercially viable batteries for the next 50 years because lithium as an anode is as good as it gets on the Table of Elements.
Yes, you’ll see 100 reports per year about new battery tech but none of them will ever be scalable, safe enough, or cheap enough.
I mean, this kinda only applies to devices that need the highest energy density.
For situations where space isn’t much of an issue, it can make for sense to use other forms of batteries that are cheaper per MWh. I agree Li-ion won’t be replaced in phones etc. but for some applications that are stationary, it can make commercial sense to use something else.
Lithium is the most energy dense so most suitable for private transport but I think industrial and domestic storage won’t be dominated by lithium in a decade or 2
You mean I won’t be running my car off bacteria?!
CATL is beginning mass production of sodium-ion batteries this year.
Were still going to need lithium batteries for longer ranges for quite awhile.
Sodium Ion/LFP can get up to 160wh/kg right now, which is fine for things like the standard range cars or commuter cars, but when you want the longer range vehicles they’re to big/heavy compared to the 250-300wh/kg of the lithium ion batteries using nickle.
I’m sure they’ll keep improving them, but so will the lithium ion ones. Maybe LFP/Sodium make it to 250, but nickle make it to 400-450.
Then you gotta consider weight differences and what not and the impact on efficiency so it’s not neccesarily end game if they reach the mid 200’s.
I’m super excited to see the continued improvements in these lower power density batteries though. They’re going to make the transition a lot easier as not everyone will want a longer range vehicle, and they’re more sustainable.
And of course, for storage where density doesn’t matter, they’re amazing.
Edit: Oh and once we get into the cost effective 400-450+ range, we can start transitioning flight as well, so we’ll still need it then as well.
We’ll be moving bulk storage to molten sodium over the next 3 decades, lithium will be for high density applications, but they’re working on sodium-air designs because the density is even higher than lion.
