1) Yeah, it is. Like $80/kWh and if properly managed can last over 10,000 cycles, potentially giving a cost per kWh cycle of as low as 1¢. 2) Not true. Supply increases in response to demand.
3) Not that much. 4) Yes, they have, but this is a temporary result due to supply constraints and a huge demand increase outstripping the forecasted demand. This is like saying the world is forever running out of toilet paper in 2020. In the medium term (ie the context of increasing number of EVs by an order of magnitude), this is solved by just increasing lithium production. I think people do not realize just how plentiful of an element lithium is. It’s everywhere and at current prices you could probably profitably extract it from seawater, even though there are so many better sources of it (geothermal brine, even old sources like hard rock), which will soon come online bringing the price down before your seawater extraction could turn a profit.
On a system level its far more then that. And again, its a question of how profitable that is compared to putting them in cars.
> 2) Not true. Supply increases in response to demand.
While this is nice in theory, in practice with an industry as small and specialized as lithium. Scaling is actually a huge problem. Until just 1-2 years ago the industry was massively under-invested and opening new mines takes a huge amount of time.
Every industry forecast predicts massive shortfalls and likely prices not going down. Compare the amount of planned battery factory to the amount of planned capacity added by the lithium companies.
> 3) Not that much
LFP prices are now no longer much cheaper then low-nickel NCMs. Look at VW an Tesla presentation for example, both are investing in high Manganese cells as well.
> I think people do not realize just how plentiful of an element lithium is.
I know exactly how plentiful it is. What you don't seem to know is how complex open up new mining is.
This is not the copper industry with gigantic mining companies with massive pipelines and so on. And lithium has a very complex chemical process to be battery grade. Looking at the history of lithium startup shows that almost all of them so far have failed to actual make a viable certified product.
I'm not saying this will be the case forever but for this decade it will be an issue and many of the car companies will likely miss their targets because of this.
The guy who makes the podcast has been in the industry for 30 years and has interviews with the CEO of pretty much every lithium startup and established company.
