Will lithium battery costs ever come down?
Battery-powered cars have a lot to recommend them, but they still have one major flaw - the batteries! Compared to almost any other energy storage solution, even the best of today's electrochemical batteries still have very low energy density and very high cost. Every major car manufacturer is pursuing electrically-driven vehicles with lithium ion batteries as a solution to the problem of CO2 emissions and oil consumption. They all are aware of the fact that virtually all of these cars will be money losers for at least the first few years until production volumes are ramped up. The presumption is that as more batteries are made in larger volumes the price will come down to a point where the cars might become profitable.But is this a realistic assumption? It might not be if extracting lithium from the ground becomes increasingly expensive in the same manner that oil is from older fields and other unconventional sources. With dramatically increasing demand for the material, it becomes a real possibility that the price of batteries may never come down. Recycling lithium from depleted batteries is apparently also far more expensive than virgin material. There is of course the possibility of new material breakthroughs that would eliminate the need for lithium. There are also possibilities like silicon nano-wires or ultra capacitors that could dramatically increase energy storage density and reduce the size and requirement for materials like lithium. The only thing we know for sure right now is that we don't know. All this just goes to show the need for pursuing multiple parallel paths for energy diversity, because there doesn't appear that any one solution will be sufficient.
[Source: Autoblog]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jason Bontrager 5:24PM (8/25/2008)
I'm reminded of the Simon/Ehrlich wager.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager
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axiom 5:36PM (8/25/2008)
Who paid for this write-up? The auto industry? Some company invested in nickel-metal hydride batteries? WHO? Because this article makes no sense. Lithium deposits are plentiful, so plentiful its cheaper to import it than mine it yourself. If every car ran on these batteries today, you could go a few hundred years without worrying about it. Did you guys even bother researching before making this article???
It is estimated that the United States has approximately 760,000 tons of lithium. The resources in the rest of the world are estimated to be 12 million tons. The United States is the world’s leading consumer of lithium and lithium compounds. The leading producers and exporters of lithium ore materials are Chile and Argentina. China and Russia have lithium ore resources, but it is presently cheaper for these countries to import this material from Chile than to mine their own.
http://www.mii.org/Minerals/photolith.html
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Campy 5:38PM (8/25/2008)
I don't think the development of battery-electric vehicles through one of the best means of energy storage is that controversial. Seems like a great concept that we can put on the road now that'll help take us where we're trying to go (forgive the pun.)
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kert 5:44PM (8/25/2008)
Umh, its not lithium what makes conventional LiCO2 rechargeable batteries expensive, its cobalt.
And now that cobalt is being replaced by other materials ( manganese, iron phosphate batteries ) the cost can ONLY come down.
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Serge 6:02PM (8/25/2008)
"There is of course the possibility of new material breakthroughs that would eliminate the need for lithium"
Lithium ion movement between anode to cathode is what makes lithium-ion battery work, so it's impossible to eliminate the need for lithium.
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meme 6:10PM (8/25/2008)
No, there are things like sodium-ion batteries, which are basically lithium-ion but using sodium instead of lithium, in the lab right now.
David 10:25PM (11/30/2009)
Errrr ... the article is talking about replacing Lithium-Ion with a completely different chemistry, so yes, replacing Lithium entirely is possible.
Lithium-Ion chemistry is great in terms of power and energy density but it also has serious hurdles to overcome. Two of the biggest concerns are shelf-life (~3 years) and complex battery management systems required to keep the chemistry safe.
Both of these are quite serious: What are you going to do when after 3 years you need to replace your battery pack in your electric vehicle? Who's going to pay for that expensive new pack? Expensive battery management systems to oversee the battery cells is also driving the cost skyward as compared to NiMH which is a much more stable and abuse tolerant chemistry.
What would be ideal is yet a new chemistry, with NiMH shelf life qualities (~10-15 years) and Li-Ion power capabilities.
meme 6:08PM (8/25/2008)
Lithium carbonate (the common raw material form) costs $22-32/kg when extracted from seawater (i.e., a virtually limitless resource) using a first-generation method. While that's notably more expensive than traditional extraction, which just costs a few dollars per kilogram, it's still dirt cheap. If your batteries were made entirely up of it, going with a typical automotive li-ion energy density of 100Wh/kg, that'd be ~$0.22-$0.32/Wh. However, they're not made entirely of lithium; lithium is actually one of the smaller fractions in li-ion batteries.
Furthermore, there's absolutely no reason why we'd have to go to seawater anytime soon. I did the math once on just a single lithium mine that's being developed in the Kings Valley in Nevada -- one that's generally not considered in world "reserves" calculations, since the lithium cost from there is slightly more expensive than what it currently goes for -- and they expect to produce enough lithium carbonate there to make enough batteries for about 700 million Apteras. That's the thing about reserves: the more you're willing to pay, the more comes online -- and not just a little more, but orders of magnitude more. The best deposits of any resource are far rarer than the next best, and so on down the line. And, at the same time, advancing technology serves to reduce costs. So, in short, prices are constantly a battle between technology and ease of access, with the "game" biased way in favor of technology due to the exponential resource scaling. Which, ultimately, is why Simon won.
As Kert notes, cobalt is actually the expensive element of traditional li-ion -- it makes up about 60% of the total costs -- more than even capital costs. The phosphates and spinels ditch the cobalt. $0.20/Wh in 10 years is a perfectly achievable price point. They may even be able to achieve it in 5.
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NorthernPiker 6:58PM (8/25/2008)
meme,
Thanks for the information on the cost of extracting Li from sea water. It certainly puts an upper limit on the cost of lithium batteries with LiFe PO4 or LiMn2O4 cathode chemistry - the two proposed chemistries for the GM Volt.
The existence of "Peak Lithium" has generally been debunked in EV World articles, e.g., "Peak Lithium or Lithium in Abundance?"
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1457
Furthermore, other less lithium intensive chemistries are being proposed that show promise for use in large format EV batteries. For example, there is sodium/lithium iron phosphate - A2FePO4F (A=Na, Li or any combination), with potentially increased energy storage and life cycle capability compared to LiFePO4.
http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=2673
(google < sodium-ion-batteries > for more info)
vfx 6:26PM (8/25/2008)
This did not say anything. I think someone had a cool picture of a tunnel battery box and Sam wrote an article to post it.
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gorr 6:26PM (8/25/2008)
You are right, this article is strange. I think that the situation begin in 1998 when honda constructed their first hydrogen car but was put on hold by goverments and till that time they were told to wait for a refueling infrastructure in los angeles then after that they were told other lies. The last lies is lithium battery, this is stupid because lithium will never be as broad a change then hydrogen can be. Lithium batteries can just fit small neiborhood car contrary to hydrogen that can be implemented everywhere, car, trucks, trains, airplanes, ships.
All hydrogen cars from major manufacturers are ready but corrupt goverment put a hold on that and they say batteries are better and the stupids manufacturers especially north-american ones are near bankrupcy.
It only take one person somewhere to put a car that accept hydrogen gas as a fuel and this same person can sell a machine that make hydrogen at home or at a grocery store.
Free market is gone and each compagnies that have a certain size is rule by laws . It's not ford or gm or chrysler that suggest what we can drive, it's the speculators on the stock exchange and they are mad at everyones that still have spare change in their pockets, even one dollar can provoke a price hack. If some manufacturers start making a technology change then one millions corrupts shareholder, politicians, madscientists, bankers, tv news broadcasters, manufacturer administrators, distract car consumers can suffer from a discovery of their past sins of having using gasoline from the other side of the planet.
Nobody wants to admit having using regular unleaded gasoline or diesel when they can have using green algae fuel or hydrogen or natural gas instead and that from the beginning of the century. It's just that this sudden realisation is too big to admit, so most every one stop real progress and negate the situation and put the fault on others but the solution is stop these *&%$# subsidies and studies and put a kit to convert my 2005 chrysler neon to natural gas next week and next mounth put butanol from green algae farming near my town, then start selling in 2-3 months hydrogen car that are already conceived, so on.
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Chris M 3:24AM (8/27/2008)
Gorr, the only restriction Governments place on cars is that they meet basic safety and emission standards, and the H2 prototypes on the road do that. The reason you can't buy a H2 fuel cell car is that the cost is truly extravagant at over a half million dollars each, and you don't have nearly enough money. That is also the reason the car companies are only making a few prototypes, subsidized by goverment research grants, and used mainly for promotional purposes.
GW Bush is all enthused about H2, he has promoted hydrogen in several speeches, and has spent billions of government funds promoting H2 fuels and funding hydrogen research, so the bizzare notion that "government put a hold on that" is sheer blithering nonsense. The oil companies are also enthused about H2, as they are the biggest producers and have the cheapest source, and they want to sell that profitable fuel - but they also want the government to pay big subsidies for building all of their H2 stations.
Neighborhood Electric cars use cheap but limited lead acid batteries, not lithium. LiIon is used for high performance electrics like the Tesla Roadster, which has a range of 220 miles, top speed of 120, and 0 to 60 mph acceleration of just 3.9 seconds, and outperforms the average H2 FC car - at a fraction of the cost.
stevefazek 6:35PM (8/25/2008)
Yeah now that colbalt is gone its time for prices to come down. Did anyone watch on the discovery channel how LIPO batteries are made?.
The just take a plate of litium and just roll it until its thinner than foil.
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Andy 7:58PM (8/25/2008)
And for batteries, there's always Hydrogen - there's no shortage of that in the ocean. I say that just to remind the world that Hydrogen serves only as a battery, not as an energy source. It requires energy to create just like charging a battery does. So Hydrogen fuel cells should be discussed in battery threads, not in gasoline threads.
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fnc 8:54PM (8/25/2008)
Sounds like somebody needs to propose a friendly wager with the guy who wrote that article.
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Matt Lenart 9:18PM (8/25/2008)
hydrogen is far less efficient from well-to-wheel.
how about using less expensive, proven NiMH batteries like those that continue to power the RAV4 EV instead of looking for more expensive technologies that don't work.
i'm tired of watching exxon commercials promoting math and science in schools so that children of tomorrow can find solutions to problems that were already solved 10 years ago.
there's a reason chevron bought the patent for large format NiMH battery packs... because they work.... and because they don't want them to. all it takes is 1 car to be made available to the general public, then based on its success other manufacturers will improve on existing technologies and drive prices much lower.
the truth is out there scully!
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ads 9:30PM (8/25/2008)
China and Russia have lithium ore resources, but it is presently cheaper for these countries to import this material from Chile than to mine their own.
http://www.shopping-batteries.co.uk
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why not the LS2LS7? 10:52PM (8/25/2008)
Lithium ion batteries are already in massive production. There are about one billion made each year.
I can't see how the levels of production required for electric cars is going to somehow make the prices drop a lot.
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jake 1:46AM (8/26/2008)
If the previous posts are any indication it is a different case for lithium batteries in general because the ones made in billions per year are lithium cobalt oxide, with the cobalt part costing the most. There are many other different types of lithium batteries being experimented with, Lithium iron phosphate, seems to be the one that is most promising of becoming cheap with commercialization.
killroy 11:38PM (8/26/2008)
The ICE car is horribly complicated with system. The only reason that it is manufacture is the fact that they have been building the same old energy waisting thing for so long.
Electric vehicles are so simple that a lot of cost will be lowered once into real production which will offset expensive batteries.
The operating cost will be much lower because of the increased reliability, life and reduced maintenance of the components.
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