Fun little thing from Wildcat Resources:
Previous exploration focussed on tantalum mineralisation and the majority of samples were not assayed for lithium
This is a potential mine just over the hill from Greenbushes, one of the world’s largest hard rock lithium mines. It’s got the same mineralisation (the tantalum is a big clue). But no one has ever bothered to even check for the lithium content.
This would not be part of lithium reserves yet, not even lithium resources. This – assuming it’s there but the asnwer is that yes, it is – it’s not recorded in any database at all. There’s a lorra, lorra, minerals out there.
Since I consider the electric vehicle craze as crazy, I don’t really think there’ll ever be a lithium shortage, even if what we’ve found is all we’ve got.
But as you point out Tim, there’s lots more where that came from. So, no reason at all to worry.
EVs: they cost a lot and, in practice, don’t have a useful range for any sort of long return trip unless it has guaranteed access to a charger at the far end. For a two car family with its own drive they might be attractive for local scooting about: the school, the supermarket, the station, the hospital, or whatnot.
So why not sell a much lighter, cheaper EV by designing it to have a range of 50 to 100 miles? Road tax could reflect its light weight and consequent kindness to road surfaces. OK you might call it a glorified milk float but what’s wrong with that? Put otherwise, isn’t a main fault with EVs that the manufacturers want to sell them as replacements for ICE cars when they are not, in general, suited to that?
Not for us mind: we are a one car family. But wouldn’t it find a market among the virtue-signallers?
“So why not sell a much lighter, cheaper EV by designing it to have a range of 50 to 100 miles?”
Given the expansion of e-bikes, e-scooters – alongside a lot of small ICE used for short trips – this seems so obvious, if there was any real desire to swap out mass ICE use with E. Supermarket plug-in whilst shopping might be an obvious charging solution?
E-trikes already exist, as do small covered 4 wheel versions (though horribly expensive) – the bike producers appear to be ahead of the car manufacturers on this.
(ignoring all the rest, lack of grid capacity, etc)
An electric assist for my bicycle priced at around the £50 mark would be an instant buy for me. To get anywhere out of town is uphill, once up on the moors everything is nearly flat.
I too have had the ‘100 mile range EV’ thought.
I think the main issue is that that range clearly highlights the overall low total mileage the vehicle will travel in its lifetime – that kills both the supposed carbon savings and financial savings.
I recall VW engineers released a womb-to-tomb carbon analysis of an e-Golf versus a diesel Golf, and the e-Golf would have had to be driven (I think) 140,000 kilometers before it broke-even with the diesel Golf (in terms of carbon).
I recall evaluating a Prius myself a decade ago, and there was simply no scenario where it made financial sense.
@dearieme
Chinese have been producing small electric vehicles for a time. Think the problem with the UK would be getting them on the road. Type approval & regulations.
It’s like the sans permis’. The small, low powered cars you can buy in France & here & drive without a car license. Some have been imported to the UK*, but there’s not much point. The license requirement’s the same as a proper car & so’s most other things
*I did start up a business, re-exporting them. Since they fetch good money, S/H, in France. Most of them were picked up on a trailer, non-running, from people’s driveways. Eventually, the supply died up. So maybe we bought them all.
dearime,
You don’t even need a 100 range for what you described. A souped up golf buggie would be enough for most short range trips most urban and suburban dwellers take.
The only lithium shortage is among the chattering classes.
So why not sell a much lighter, cheaper EV by designing it to have a range of 50 to 100 miles?
The early models of small EVs, e.g. Leaf or Zoe, fit this description. You don’t have to buy the top-end models with 100kWh of battery and a (claimed) 300mi/500km range.
A neighbour works at Stockley Park, near Heathrow, which is a 25-mile each way drive, so a low-end Leaf is a good fit for his driving patterns. Whether there are enough such purchasers to make it a commercial success, is a different question.
‘The Villages’ in Florida, a kind of old folks community, has a lot of people who get around by golf buggy locally (they have Rams and F-150s when they want to go somewhere). There are buggy dealers and god’elp us buggy customizers all over the place. And when you are driving a real car there they are jamming up the streets and stopping to chat in the middle of the road. Place is like bloody Stepford without the MILFs.