Lithium has played an important role in the green transition and remains a crucial resource for the future of electricity; however, it’s not going to be all sunshine and rainbows for lithium…
While lithium is the primary option for electric vehicle batteries, its low energy density and safety concerns leave much to be desired. Unfortunately for us, lithium is pretty much the only option at this point. There remain some much-needed breakthroughs in the battery chemistry space, but even if those happened tomorrow – reaching mass production would take at least a decade.
The lithium supply chain is no clean sheet either. Chile and Australia are the top producers, but between nationalization efforts in Chile and a slower extraction method used in Australia – disruptions are pretty standard. The bottlenecks don’t end there. Processing capacity is concentrated in China, and with collapse right around the corner, get ready for a whole new slew of problems.
Short range sodium ion ev`s are going on sale in China, the energy density of sodium batteries is less than lithium but this is predicted to improve in the future, I also heard in a podcast and read the battery firms are developing hybrid sodium/lithium batteries with cost and range between 100% sodium and 100% lithium batteries. In the neurological blog on the skeptics guide to the universe podcast page Dr Steve Novella has recently written of a breakthrough with flow batteries containing nanofluids with energy density high enough for ev`s from the firm Influit.