The electric car boom risks being stalled by a severe shortage of a crucial ingredient used in batteries within the next decade, analysts have warned.
Car makers will face production delays on millions of electric vehicles as mining for lithium fails to keep pace with soaring demand, according to Rystad Energy.
Mining capacity can cope with current demand in electric vehicles, but car makers will face “a serious lithium supply deficit” from 2027, the energy research firm predicted.
Everyone and their mother is trying to extract lithium currently. Lithium mines are actually going bust so many are trying to open.
Seriously, the prospect of high profits is quite enough to get people digging holes in the ground. Which is why I could list 20 such projects in embryo at least 10 of which will themselves go bust as extra supply far outstrips future demand.
I’m so happy
Electric car boom? I still don’t see many of them around and that is with the government stumping up half the cost and no road fuel duty on recharging them. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the people who bought one go back to an ICE car when they realise what an inconvenient piece of cack it is. Depreciation must be pretty horrendous, who would buy a second hand one with no way of telling how long the battery is going to last?
‘The electric car boom risks being stalled by a severe shortage of a crucial ingredient used in batteries‘…’
That would be electricity.
Also stalled by a shortage of sunlight at night, which is when everyone wants to charge them. As for wind power, why not put sails on cars, cutting out the middle man.
Tim, I recently read of an ‘impending disaster’ caused by the difficulty of recycling the batteries. Is that real or an exaggeration caused by economic reasons such as whether there is any money to be made?
@Stonyground
Electric car boom? I still don’t see many of them around and that is with the government stumping up half the cost and no road fuel duty on recharging them. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the people who bought one go back to an ICE car when they realise what an inconvenient piece of cack it is. Depreciation must be pretty horrendous, who would buy a second hand one with no way of telling how long the battery is going to last?
ICE cars are to be banned from sale in the UK from 2030. It’s going to be tough to go back to them once all the filling stations, parts suppliers and mechanics have gone, which won’t be long afterward if these cunts carry through with their threats, sorry plans.
There’s no impending disaster, no. There’s some muttering among the circular economy folks that of course they should all be recycled and it’s a disaster if they’re not.
The truth being that if lithium rises in price so much that reycling is the better option than mining then recycling will happen. This is one area where price really work very well.
If lithium’s $8 a kg – which it is now – and a battery contains 10 kg – about right – then that’s $80 of value to be scavenged. If the price of scavenging is $90 then we’re made better off by having a pile of them unscavenged. If $10 – more likely – then they’ll be recycled. What’s the problem?
Thanks, Tim, that’s kind of as I thought.
As they plan to ban ICE sales pretty soon and currently EVs are only selling to virtue-signallers with limited requirements and business users who get immense tax incentives it’s hard to see how this will resolve itself. I understand hybrids may still be sold after 2030 but that gives the govt no way to phase out petrol. They can’t ban diesel until there are electric trucks and that is not imminent.
It can’t be done, or at last it can’t even deliver one component of cheap, fast and good never mind all three.
My current intention is to buy the nearest equivalent of a diesel Defender in 2029 that will still run on chip fat.
The cunts in government won’t be able to ban deep fat frying unless they really want to help the jocks declare independence.
I have a feeling that an excellent business to be in will be 3 d printing of car parts for ICEs…….we might be surprised how many decades it’ll be possible to keep old stuff running.
“ICE cars are to be banned from sale in the UK from 2030. It’s going to be tough to go back to them once all the filling stations, parts suppliers and mechanics have gone, which won’t be long afterward if these cunts carry through with their threats, sorry plans.”
They aren’t really being banned from 2030, because plug-in hybrids will still be legal, and that’s where car makers are going anyway. So, drive around on petrol all day, if you like. The ban on ICE is 2035, and maybe we’ll get the tech by then, but the politicians also know that’ll be someone else’s embarrassing climbdown if it doesn’t happen.
(my sources suggest that li-ion is pretty much mature tech, and we aren’t going to squeeze a lot more range out of it).
To politicians banning petrol engines is a win-win, because it means that the plebs will not be able to afford cars and will be forced onto public transport (waiting for their hydrogen powered bus which has just exploded ). The population at large then have no autonomy of movement and will be forced to live in the rapidly depopulating cities vacated by the well-off middle classes who a) work from home b) can afford the electric cars to drive to Waitrose.
They’re not banning sales of ICE cars from 2030. They’re banning sales of new ICE cars from 2030. I’ll still be able to continue my practice of buying 20-year-old cars for 400 quid until almost 2050, by which time I’ll have the pick of the 20-year-old leccy cars that have proved themselves by still being around.
The effective range of a 20-year-old electric vehicle is best measured in m, rather than km.
Those 20-year-old cars might cost a bit more once nobody’s making them anymore
JGH is right. The infrastructure supporting ICE cars,ie. petrol stations, garages, repair shops etc will still have to support all those vehicles on the road. Cars sold in 2029 will be around until when? 2050?
There are 32,973,206 ICE cars registered on UK roads at the moment.The net numbers appear to be increasing, so if one adds the number sold between now and 2030, there’ll be even more.
Currently, (ha!) there are around 150,00 pure EVs UK registered and about 185,000 hybrids.
So, only 32,640,000 odd ICE cars to be replaced before we’re all driving Ever-Ready Mk 3s then.
You can’t help feeling sorry for the manufacturers. Do you, as some have done, commit to an all-electric programme and hope things turn out alright after 2030, or do you hang back, continue to invest in ICE and hope things turn out alright after 2030? I just cannot see how in the name of Lucifer you’re ever going to get anywhere near the numbers. Let alone the infrastructure to support the damn things.
These politicians are genuinely insane.
@jgh
They’re not banning sales of ICE cars from 2030. They’re banning sales of new ICE cars from 2030. I’ll still be able to continue my practice of buying 20-year-old cars for 400 quid until almost 2050, by which time I’ll have the pick of the 20-year-old leccy cars that have proved themselves by still being around.
The average age of a car on the roads of the UK is currently nearly 9 years and we’re not getting richer so I expect that age to be older still by 2030. Additionally, you will then be competing with everyone else who can’t afford an electric car for those nails. I don’t think they’ll still be £400 a pop, nor that you’ll be driving them till they’re 30 years old.
Plus they will phase out fossil fuel stations – that’s the direction of travel.
Plus they will increase the tax on fueld and vehicles and other inconveniences vastly.
Plus they will probably make it illegal to sell used ones, too.
Or maybe I’m wrong and we don’t live in a dystopian nightmare dreamed up by cunts.
@ John Wilkinson
JGH is right. The infrastructure supporting ICE cars,ie. petrol stations, garages, repair shops etc will still have to support all those vehicles on the road.
Will they? Says who?
Cars sold in 2029 will be around until when? 2050?
There are 32,973,206 ICE cars registered on UK roads at the moment.The net numbers appear to be increasing, so if one adds the number sold between now and 2030, there’ll be even more.
Currently, (ha!) there are around 150,00 pure EVs UK registered and about 185,000 hybrids.
So, only 32,640,000 odd ICE cars to be replaced before we’re all driving Ever-Ready Mk 3s then.
You seem to be labouring uncder the impression that they want us driving electric cars. They don’t want us driving any cars. This is just their way of achieving that.
That’s why you…
…just cannot see how in the name of Lucifer you’re ever going to get anywhere near the numbers. Let alone the infrastructure to support the damn things.
Because we’re not.
These politicians are genuinely insane.
No, they’re not. They’d be insane if they genuinely wanted to achieve what they say they want to achieve by this policy, because it’s clearly impossible. They’re evil liars.
The point with government is that they’re not incompetent at all, once you realise what it is they’re trying to do. Yes, they can’t fix the potholes or secure the borders – but they don’t really want to, because if they did they would. What they want to do is enrich themselves and their mates – that’s something they’re very good at indeed.
“They don’t want us driving any cars. This is just their way of achieving that.”
This.
Interested is correct. Leccy cars at 60-90 thou =no-cars-for=plebs. Oh the Theo’s might be able to afford them for a while under the delusion that he is part of the globo elite. A delusion that will be dispelled once the middle+ classes get their ride down the shitter also. The globos don’t share power –but it suits them to have middle class Marxist mugs( and even a few non-Marxist mugs like Theo ) imagine their lifestyle will endure from everlasting to everlasting.
All of which explains Bogus Johnson’s fatuous bus freakout photoshoot of a few weeks ago. Any mug who thinks he or she will meet Bogus a or any of his crew on a fucking bus wins a free social credit smartphone. Cos you will need one to even get on the bus.
At least that solves how you take your weekly shop for a family of six home on the bus. You don’t: you carry in on your back or your wife’s head African style. Altho you wont get a wife with the kind of credit scores most readers of this blog will have.
A truly evil system that reflects the way nasty human snobbery already works.
It must be stopped at all costs.
Interested is right.
Ecks is right too.
Note that there is NO PLAN to provide electric generating capacity for those EVs nor for the new houses with electric heating via air source heat pumps which get less efficient when needed most, nor the fuel for the hydrogen which some propose as a solution.
AND, there is really no problem to solve. If there was it could be solved by more prosperity, which the enemy thinks is a problem too.
The 2030 date will only work if no party breaks ranks.
The prospect of political annihilation to an upstart right wing party on this issue and related ones will pull the “Conservatives” round.
We’ve seen it before. Ontario and Germany have backed down.on electricity production. It’s just that the media keep very quiet about it, not that the reversals aren’t happening.
Once Johnson is gone, the next leader won’t feel the slightest obligation to follow his plans. The Tories have pivoted on “green” before.
Chester Draws
April 19, 2021 at 7:55 pm
Yes. Have noticed the Labor party here are at least saying they’re not against coal. Since they lost the ‘unlosable election’ by pandering to the posh instead of the workers who’re supposed to vote for them.
Even ScoMo is backing away a bit from booting our soldiers in the balls when it’s become plain that this really pisses off rusted on Liberal voters like me.
So I agree. It’s all about power. If enough of the pollies might lose their seats, they’ll scrap the nonsense that threatens them.
Meanwhile, in the posh Cotswolds village in which I am lucky enough to live, where houses can easily cost a million quid, the only local election signs up are for the Greens.
Interested:
“You seem to be labouring uncder the impression that they want us driving electric cars. They don’t want us driving any cars. This is just their way of achieving that.”
Really? So government, whichever one that might be at the time, will be happy to do away with the whole car industry and attendant jobs, will they? I am under no such “impression” that these fools want us “driving electric cars” but, they ARE doing exactly what politicians have done since time immemorial and that is to cover their own arses and act purely out of political expediency. They know full well that this EV bollocks will never happen by 2030, but need to “talk green” for exactly the same reasons they made out that Covid was The Black Death Mk2. Because they were shit scared of the voters not liking them any more.* That is why they are insane-they exist in a bubble that allows them to think this way.The “real world” just doesn’t exist for them.
33+ million ICE cars are going to just be done away with, along with all the back-up?
That’ll go down very well with the voters. The oil companies. The motoring magazines.And all the rest of the surrounding money.
*As all cowardly bastard governments did, with one or two noble exceptions, throughout the world.
18 months ago I might have agreed with you John Wilkinson.
But after the last 18 and Bogus Blojob Johnson’s determination to go after social credit tyranny–which will enable him to do as he likes if he can get it ( snake Gove is over in Israel looking over their green card shite as we write)-I am no longer so sure.
We cant afford to be complacent about anything anymore. BiS still insists this is all down to Johnson’s bungling. But it is following the steps to a worldwide CCP-style social credit tyranny fairly exactly. In the UK vax pass merges with Public Digital Identity Wallet–next up–and there is step one.
@ John Wilkinson
Really? So government, whichever one that might be at the time, will be happy to do away with the whole car industry and attendant jobs, will they?
Well, yes of course they fucking will.
They know full well that this EV bollocks will never happen by 2030, but need to “talk green” for exactly the same reasons they made out that Covid was The Black Death Mk2. Because they were shit scared of the voters not liking them any more.
So you’re saying voters won’t ‘like them’ if they don’t do this shit? OK, park that for a moment.
BBC News today: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56807520
Radical new climate change commitments will set the UK on course to cut carbon emissions by 78% by 2035, Boris Johnson will announce this week.
Hitting the targets would require more electric cars, low-carbon heating, renewable electricity and, for many, cutting down on meat and dairy.
For the first time, climate law will be extended to cover international aviation and shipping.
But Labour said the government had to match “rhetoric with reality”.
It urged Mr Johnson to treat “the climate emergency as the emergency it is” and show “greater ambition”.
The prime minister’s commitments, which will become law, bring forward the current target for reducing carbon emissions by 15 years. This would be a world-leading position.
Your position seems to be that they don’t mean it, Labour don’t mean it when they say it needs to be done harder and quicker, the Lib Dems don’t mean it, the Greens don’t mean it, the students don’t mean it, the BBC doesn’t mean it, and the voters don’t want it (despite the fact that you say the government is only doing it because the voters do want it).
I had a depressing conv. with my neighbour yesterday who told me that he and his family were tying to reduce their carbon footprint. We had a brief chat about it and I bit my tongue – he’s a nice chap (middle-class civil servant type ) and I didn’t want to go all WUWT on him, but I left shaking my head thinking “fucking fool”.
There are members of the general public, Interested, who believe this drivel. Of course they have just swallowed the non-stop propaganda from your above mentioned list of villains. People don’t realise what it will really mean, most of the potential results have been highlighted in this thread, but as with this “pandemic” they cannot see that being virtuous makes the prisoners.
@Ottokring
There are members of the general public, Interested, who believe this drivel.
Tell me about it! As above my village is full of the dickheads. They just haven’t yet worked out that it really does mean no skiing holidays, no gap yahs for the kids, no sporty little Morgans or Astons, no filet mignon, and eventually no central heating. Most of the daft cunts are on oil boilers like us. It would be funny if it didn’t render one borderline homicidal.