Limited supply of automotive-grade lithium

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Petter

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The question seems to be how much of it that has the necessary quality for automotive use.
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Sweetwater

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The question seems to be how much of it that has the necessary quality for automotive use.
A lot does !! ☺ And what they don't use can be put in
tubes to grease our cars !!;)
 

BadaBing

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Like Ford, Lucid Air is also using LG Chem as their battery supplier and it sounds like by using cylindrical battery cells instead of pouch-style cells, they're avoiding the battery constraint that's causing Audi to pause production of the E-Tron.

Do we know if the Mach-E uses cylindrical or pouch-style battery cells from LG Chem?
 

TheSteelRider

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Joe Scott is not an EV expert by any stretch of the imagination, although I think he and Ben Sullins from Teslanomics do a "ludicrous future" podcast touching on EVs a lot. At any rate, I like his videos because he seems to do a good amount of research on the topics. His latest on is not about Lithium, but is about Cobalt (another material used in LiON batteries). In it he does also sort-of laugh at the folk who say we are "going to run out of lithium" as well. Worth a watch ...

 

Whatstreet

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Lithium is not rare. It isn't the cause of limited battery availability.

Manufacturing capacity is the cause of limited battery availability.

Lithium is an element and quality comes down to refining or processing. Cobalt is used in battery anodes and is much more rare than Lithium, but will be replaced by other elements. Lithium has been stock piled in preparation for all of this. There is a huge amount of salt that is ready for processing.

Battery manufacturing capacity is the limitation. Not the availability of materials.
 


hybrid2bev

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I'm thinking by Ford separately sourcing the Chinese market batteries this should allow the LG Chem plant in Poland (Mach-E battery source) to focus on producing EV batteries for other markets.

Buffett-backed BYD to supply EV batteries to Ford

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD Co Ltd will supply EV batteries to U.S. automaker Ford Motor Co, a document on the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed on Monday.

Ford’s China venture with Changan Automobile is seeking government approval to build a plug-in hybrid model equipped with BYD’s batteries, according to the document.

This marks BYD’s first-known battery supply deal with a major global automaker.

Shenzhen-based BYD, which is backed by U.S. investor Warren Buffett, said it would supply EV components including batteries and power management devices.

The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker said last year it planned to launch more than 30 new or significantly redesigned models in China by the end of 2021, of which over a third will be electric vehicles.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-to-supply-ev-batteries-to-ford-idUSKBN2381VJ
 

dbsb3233

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Can't say I'm thrilled with the idea of seeing new agreements by US manufacturers (or for that matter any western country) to buy from China going forward. Kinda like to see China dependency reduced, not increased.

But I'm not so naive to think it's not going to happen anyway. ?
 

ClaudeMach-E

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If automotive grade lithium is so in demand and rare these days how come a mining company, Nemaska Lithium, here in Quebec who has develop a process to convert the raw material in high quality automotive grade lithium, is actually struggling to find investors for is project, that makes no sense to me. Ford, GM or LG Chem can make plants to build batteries but these needs Lithium supply to start with.
 

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ChasingCoral

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I'm thinking by Ford separately sourcing the Chinese market batteries this should allow the LG Chem plant in Poland (Mach-E battery source) to focus on producing EV batteries for other markets.

The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker said last year it planned to launch more than 30 new or significantly redesigned models in China by the end of 2021, of which over a third will be electric vehicles.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-to-supply-ev-batteries-to-ford-idUSKBN2381VJ
Reading between the lines, it sound like BYD will be suppling Ford with batteries for the Fords to be built in China and sold in China, and perhaps elsewhere in Asia.
 

eager2own

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Reading between the lines, it sound like BYD will be suppling Ford with batteries for the Fords to be built in China and sold in China, and perhaps elsewhere in Asia.
Yes, given that the Changan Ford joint venture is solely for the manufacture of Ford branded products for the Chinese market, this article merely indicates that they are looking to build a hybrid for the Chinese market that uses the BYD batteries.
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