>That's nice, but it has already been confirmed that there is likely not enough lithium on earth to get to net zero, let alone replace every ICE currently on the road, especially considering major growing markets like China and India
By whom?
In 2010, Stanford university released a paper that stated that back then there were 9.900.000 tons of known, economically extractable quantity world wide (mostly in Chile and Argentinia). Last year, the world wide extraction was at around 40.000 tons if I am not mistaken, or 0.0002475% the known reserves.
Since then, more reserves were discovered in Sweden, Finland and the US. I would say we are far away from running out of lithium - which can be recycled btw - as well as we're far away from not being able to replace all cars on earth with BEVs, if we wanted to. Whether that is actually a desirable goal is another story.
>Not even close, it may be more than 10% in some markets, even up to 50% in China but on a worldwide basis it is just slightly over 2%
Sure, some countries are lagging behind and in some this is not even a consideration, but then again, there's several poorer countries that are actually looking at other forms of transportation that are not cars. Like electric motorcycles, locally made or electric trikes.
> Only one solution to the mess we're in, and it's hydrogen.
Let's look at hydrogen then.
The electricity to make a H2 car run 100km would power a BEV for 300km. I.e. you pay 3x the price to drive a hydrogen car.
A hydrogen fuel cell uses actual rare earths (platinum) while a battery doesn't. It needs to be replaced every 150.000 to 160.000 kilometers for who knows how much.
Hydrogen is a highly potent greenhouse gas and the British government recently released a study indicating that up to 10% of all won hydrogen is lost in the "pipeline" between well and end-user. We need to decrease emission of GHGs, no increase them.
Hydrogen fuelstations are highly expensive, need to be subsidized and do not scale well (20minutes breaks to repressurize during rush hour. Might as well charge a BEV in those 20 minutes). Unless you buy more pumps and tanks, but that leads back to the first point: They're expensive - and more tanks and pumps need more space.
Hydrogen cars have stalled in the low thousands (2600 Miras sold last year).
Toyota, while still committed to hydrogen on paper, have now also committed to BEVs, after realizing that they won't maintain their marketshare when focusing purely on hydrogen cars.
Chinas manufacturers are currently the only ones besides Japan who have a major stake in Hydrogen cars as their government is funding three different branches of research in the future of transportation.
BMW basically gave up on their renewed Hydrogen plans last year or so.
Mercedes stopped all development in 2019
VW publicly committed to BEVs and does not consider hydrogen anymore.
Stellantis has one hydrogen car in their portfolio that I know of, one of their commercial transporters comes as BEV & hydrogen model.
Renault is planning a hydrogen version of the Scenic. Sometime after 2030.
The large US car makers are way behind on BEV deliveries and production. Hydrogen is not even on their roadmaps.
That leaves 5-10 years for BEVs and the charging infrastructure to gain a market share that will make hydrogen cars unmarketable. And if you think back 10 years ago, there wasn't a charging infrastructure at all.
RnLStefan t1_j8nchui wrote
Reply to comment by snekbat in EU Parliament votes to effectively ban new combustion engine cars by 2035 by saltyswedishmeatball
>That's nice, but it has already been confirmed that there is likely not enough lithium on earth to get to net zero, let alone replace every ICE currently on the road, especially considering major growing markets like China and India
By whom?
In 2010, Stanford university released a paper that stated that back then there were 9.900.000 tons of known, economically extractable quantity world wide (mostly in Chile and Argentinia). Last year, the world wide extraction was at around 40.000 tons if I am not mistaken, or 0.0002475% the known reserves.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason2/
Since then, more reserves were discovered in Sweden, Finland and the US. I would say we are far away from running out of lithium - which can be recycled btw - as well as we're far away from not being able to replace all cars on earth with BEVs, if we wanted to. Whether that is actually a desirable goal is another story.
>Not even close, it may be more than 10% in some markets, even up to 50% in China but on a worldwide basis it is just slightly over 2%
World wide market share in 2022 was 10%, not 2.
https://insideevs.com/news/651947/global-plugin-car-sales-december2022/
Sure, some countries are lagging behind and in some this is not even a consideration, but then again, there's several poorer countries that are actually looking at other forms of transportation that are not cars. Like electric motorcycles, locally made or electric trikes.
> Only one solution to the mess we're in, and it's hydrogen.
Let's look at hydrogen then.
That leaves 5-10 years for BEVs and the charging infrastructure to gain a market share that will make hydrogen cars unmarketable. And if you think back 10 years ago, there wasn't a charging infrastructure at all.