Electric vehicles web-journal EV World has done the English-speaking world a favor by translating an excellent Peak Lithium story written last week by Le Monde journalist Hervé Kempf . What is Peak Lithium you ask? The notion that a wholesale shift to EVs powered by lithium batteries in response to peaking petroleum production could just as quickly exhaust the global supply of lithium metal. Kempf credits a May 2008 study by consultancy Meridian International Research -- The Trouble with Lithium 2 -- as the source of growing concern over peak lithium; the study concluded that reasonable increases in lithium production over the next decade will generate enough of the light, energetic metal to produce batteries for only 8 million batteries of the sort that GM plans to use in its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid. But he does his own homework, providing an accessible introduction to the geological distribution of lithium and its likely magnitude. I say 'likely' because Kempf shows that industrial secrecy makes it difficult to assess the probability of a peak lithium scenario prematurely squelching the electrification of the automobile. As George Pichon, CEO of French metals trader Marsmétal puts it in Kempf's piece, the world of a lithium metal is "un monde fermé." Alas, its a just little less closed today thanks to Le Monde and EV World. ...
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Electric vehicles web-journal EV World has done the English-speaking world a favor by translating an excellent Peak Lithium story written last week by Le Monde journalist Hervé Kempf . What is Peak Lithium you ask? The notion that a wholesale shift to EVs powered by lithium batteries in response to peaking petroleum production could just as quickly exhaust the global supply of lithium metal. Kempf credits a May 2008 study by consultancy Meridian International Research -- The Trouble with Lithium 2 -- as the source of growing concern over peak lithium; the study concluded that reasonable increases in lithium production over the next decade will generate enough of the light, energetic metal to produce batteries for only 8 million batteries of the sort that GM plans to use in its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid. But he does his own homework, providing an accessible introduction to the geological distribution of lithium and its likely magnitude. I say 'likely' because Kempf shows that industrial secrecy makes it difficult to assess the probability of a peak lithium scenario prematurely squelching the electrification of the automobile. As George Pichon, CEO of French metals trader Marsmétal puts it in Kempf's piece, the world of a lithium metal is "un monde fermé." Alas, its a just little less closed today thanks to Le Monde and EV World. ...