Bolloré courts Evo Morales and Bolivia's lithium
French industry giant Group Bolloré, which we're familar with for their involvement with Pininfarina in a handful of interesting electric car projects, announced it has contacted Bolivian President Evo Morales to secure a supply of lithium in order to produce advanced batteries. Negotiations have been in the works for more than a year to guarantee access to what is estimated to be half of the total lithium resources in the world, located in Salar de Uyuni. Bolloré is competing against Japan's Mitsubishi. One of the questions that arose during these negotiations was Morales's demand that a complete EV industry be established in Bolivia, instead of just simple mining facilities. Morales is currently visiting France on an official visit.[Source: La Voz de Galicia via Econoticias]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ziv 8:38AM (2/19/2009)
This article is so out of date it is difficult to believe that it is not intentionally stirring the pot. Lithium is cheap and relatively plentiful. In fact it has been so cheap that many mines have shut down due to price drops. The US has two of the largest mines in the world, at Kings Mountain in NC and Kings Valley in NV, the latter of which has approximately 25,000,000,000 pounds of lithium. That would be sufficient for about 800,000,000 Volt battery packs. The Kings Mountain mine in NC has enough lithium for several billion Apteras, so as long as we recycle the lithium at the end of battery life, we are looking at a material that is scarce at the old price of 50 cents a pound, but quite readily available at $5 a pound, which is what it trades at now. And at 3 pounds of lithium per kWh for the battery requirements, it isn't very expensive in the total price of the pack, 48 pounds of lithium is a mere $240.
And that is just Lithium in the US, as the price of Lithium has risen, there have been multiple instances of mines opening up in China, Canada, Russia, Zaire, etc...
Part of the problem has been that the most widely read article was written by a nutter by the name of Tahil. He worst cased every supply and ignored many others. You get a feel for the quality of his writing when you read his second work,
Ground Zero:
The Nuclear Demolition of
The World Trade Centre
Incontrovertible Proof that the World Trade Centre was destroyed by
Underground Nuclear Explosions
Incontrovertible proof, indeed, but not of Tahil's crazy assertion. He is such a nutter that Meridian Int. Research took his name off of their second work on lithium scarcity, even though Tahil is their senior researcher.
http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for-electric-cars/
http://www.geology.enr.state.nc.us/Mineral%20resources/mineralresources.html
http://www.worldlithium.com/An_Abundance_of_Lithium_1.html
Reply
c2100 9:34AM (2/19/2009)
Smart man, Bolivia is going to reap the benefits of their resources.
Reply
sp 10:06AM (2/19/2009)
Ziv as you point out Lithium is rather cheap. Cheap enough that it is not profitable to recycle so it is trashed. Unfortunately this is how it works now.
Reply
ziv 10:29AM (2/19/2009)
SP, you are right that up til now, the small batteries that wore out, got tossed out. But if you have a larger battery, hopefully, it will be worth it to recycle. It is one thing to throw out a dimes worth of recycleable lithium, maybe if it is worth $10 or more, the mechanics that strip out an old battery from your car will have a place to sell it and have it recycled. I hope.
I think Evo is going to shoot himself in the foot, he is demanding the development of an entire EV industry, which will increase the cost of production. If he truly had half of the worlds lithium, he might have been able to pull it off. But it sounds like Bolivia has 15% or less of the worlds lithium, so he is not in nearly as strong a position.
jharlan 12:35PM (2/19/2009)
Wow, does that mean we can't believe everything we read? Duh!
Reply
TRU 1:57PM (4/21/2009)
The Salar Uyuni salt lake in Bolivia has been described at the “world’s largest lithium resource†for over forty years and early in 2009 the world press has continued to describe it as such. However, the potential for Uyuni has been greatly overstated given the state of knowledge we have of the resource. Lithium mining is difficult and the processing in the case of Uyuni will be tricky. Further deep drilling exploration is required before we actually can determine its true potential to produce lithium carbonate for batteries. At this time TRU’s estimate of the Uyuni lithium resource has a very wide range – true it could be large (it even may be the world’s largest resource) but it also could turn out to be only a minor source of lithium!
By the way, the need for Uyuni to be developed at all is also exaggerated. It would be comforting to have (good for the Bolivian economy) but it is not required nor is it urgent!
TRU Group Inc - Lithium Consultants.
April 20, 2009
Reply