HHO production and electric cars in trouble?

[rgathright]

Due to a decreasing world supply of lithium, HHO producers and electric cars may have trouble buying batteries!

World Lithium Supplies May Hamper Growth - PCAuthority

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

Might just give those nano coating guys a leg up, the ones that say they can get 4x more out of a NiMh cell with large area nano-coated plates.

[JanGeo]

Looks like the foam lead carbon fiber composite batteries are making a comeback too. Now it is lighter and more powerful with several times the deep cycle life at a fraction of the cost of NiMh. The thing about Lithium is that people are always talking about the weight of it when they say it has limited supply but they forget how light the metal is and how few pounds it takes to make a car size battery.

[rgathright]

I agree with you on the weight issue as well. I am worried this media buzz was generated as an attempt to justify a higher profit margin for the Volt's Lithium batteries.

"It costs a lot of money to buy the Li metal. We have no choice but to charge $60,000 for the car."

Remember, HHO con artists are not the only crooks out there in the automotive world.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

Something I caught the other day, seems GM are planning to lease the batteries, not sell them, so since they'll get all their metal back again, I can't really see the benefit of talking up the price.

[Chibougamou]

There is an interesting analysis going around that suggests up to 80% of the world's reserves of Lithium are found in South America (Bolivia and Chile), and that the governments are not keen on being strip-mined of the resource (in other words, they want to process the lithium, not just sell it as a raw commodity which gets exported).

Further, the peak-production point for Lithium looks no more promissing than for gasolene (we may be at or near the peak production for Lithium), suggesting that there isn't enough Lithium to meet projected demand for hybrid cars.

See: http://tyler.blogware.com/lithium_shortage.pdf for a typical presentation.

So there is still room for a better battery design, if only to combat the uncertainty over Lithium.

[theholycow]

Welcome to the forum, Chibougamou. What kind of car do you drive?