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this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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City Life
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Except for one pesky problem: there is only enough lithium and cobalt to power a fraction of the world's 1.5 billion motor vehicles electrically. And that's just passenger vehicles. Not construction equipment, not agriculture, not the thousand other vehicular and non-vehicular demands for li-ion batteries.
It's mathematically impossible with current battery tech for everyone to be driving EV's. Battery efficiency would need to improve by orders of magnitude for this to work.
We've got about a dozen battery technologies in late stage development right now, that problem is solved, it just needs funding. No point funding it when lithium is still available at reasonable prices.
I'll believe it when I see it. Got any links?
CATL (massive Chinese battery manufacturer) has sodium-ion batteries coming to EVs later this year or next year.
They don't quite match lithium yet, but they're close enough to be commercially viable already.