Electric Vehicles and Plug-In Hybrids: A Future Hinged on Lithium

April 27, 2007 – Vol.12 No.5

ELECTRIC VEHICLES AND PLUG-IN HYBRIDS:
A FUTURE HINGED ON LITHIUM.

For now, the future of battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars and light trucks hinges on the availability of nature’s lightest solid element: Lithium. For light vehicles battery packs need to be as light as they can be. Light vehicles can’t carry around heavy batteries. No other solid element on the planet can do the job. Lithium is it. Lithium based batteries are the battery du jour.

(Heavy electric, hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles can get by with more weighty battery chemistries, even lead acid, if necessary. The weight of the batteries can more easily be compensated for with a lightening of vehicle body and chassis components.)

As of the end of 2006 the US Geological Survey (USGS) estimated that the world has lithium reserves of more than 13 million tons. This really doesn’t sound like much given the tens if not hundreds of millions of vehicles world wide that could make good use of lithium batteries to energize electric and hybrid drive systems for much improved fuel efficiency.

That said, news this week of a new mineral discovery in Serbia brings some cautious hope that global lithium reserves could be larger than thought.

First dubbed Kryptonite by a researcher at London’s Natural History Museum (because it has the same chemical formula as the fictional Superman-disabling mineral described in the film Superman Returns) the mineral now to be known as Jadarite has significant amounts of lithium in its chemical make-up.

Rio Tinto, the mining group that discovered Jadarite (and named it after Jadar, the location of the mine), will determine if quantities are large enough to have commercial value. Keep your fingers crossed.

For the record, lithium production in 2006 was about 21,000 tons. Chile was the largest producer with more than 8300 tons mined. Argentina, China, Russia and the United States are also major producers. Lithium is found in small amounts in most hard rocks, but most lithium is extracted from subsurface brines - water saturated with salts. Lithium is of course recyclable. And, according to the USGS, recycled lithium, from the recycling of lithium batteries, is just beginning to show up on the radar screen.

For electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to succeed, lithium-based batteries must get much cheaper. In part, for that to happen, lithium itself must also get much cheaper, which means it must be extracted in very large quantities. Improved manufacturing processes as well as improved chemistries will contribute, too, to the reduction in the cost of lithium batteries.

There are vehicles waiting in the wings ready to incorporate lithium battery packs: Toyota’s next generation Prius; Saturn’s plug-in Vue Green Line; Chevrolet’s promised Volt. Small companies, too, are in need of less expensive lithium batteries: Tesla Motors for its all electric roadster and upcoming sedan; Phoenix Motorcars for its all electric Sport Utility Truck and a plug-in hybrid version of the same to be developed with UQM Technologies.

Further, more than just greatly increased energy economy, electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids could store then put to work off-peak power from baseload power plants that is now generated but not sold. Putting that now-wasted energy to work would displace other energy sources - such as gasoline - and eliminate their related emissions.

Increasingly there’s a heavy burden weighing on nature’s lightest solid element. Visit Rio Tinto at http://www.riotinto.com/