Automotive Battery Market Frenzy

Are you aware that it takes more energy to create a car that it would ever save in gasoline (energy) as a hybrid or electric vehicle? This fact creates amazement when I look at the market frenzy associated with greening up the automotive industry. Three of the big questions which still need to be answered in order to green up the automobile are associated with the battery storage choice. They are: Volume of Lithium (Supply), Manufacturing Costs/Watt Hour, and Markets per battery Chemistry (Because you must enter markets by different chemistries).

Markets: Markets have been established. The planned number of vehicles created as HEV, EVs, and or PHEVs are estimated to be – Toyota (60%) and GM (20%) by 2016. Loads of cars – loads of batteries. Enough said.

Manufacturing: 97% of all manufacturing for lithium is in China, Korea and Japan. Costs are low in China as many battery plants are not automated. Challenges with IP protection also still exist. If your IP is taken then the cost of manufacturing in China becomes very high. You can get lower costs, but is it worth it? A123 thinks so. Manufacturing costs are proportional to volumes of cell production – Costs go down – volumes go up. Normal. However, the chemistry will actually drive your final cost per watt hour. Hmmmmm . . . . must be a metric for this . . . .

Lithium Volume: Here is the question of the day. How much Lithium supply is there in the world, and as a result of this data, what kinds of volumes can you deliver. And how much supply is available in world markets for the raw material? See the article debating this subject from EV World below. More coming on the metric for this one . . .

Overall, we need to move to electric vehicles. Because the well-to wheel efficiency of oil (13%) is poor in comparison to NG (31%), we have a need to make electric drives the primary mode for transportation. Let’s just hope we can accomplish this during this next decade of work! Everybody push!!

Article: Revisiting Peak Lithium or Lithium in Abundance?

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1480