Unknown: The sheer
magnitude of the waste and scrap problem and the
magnitude of batteries that need to get recycled
is think shocking to most people with these cobalt free
batteries, they operate at higher voltage, and
it's one reason why they are more susceptible to
battery fires. Lithium actually is not a
major component of the cost of batteries, but
it's like the blood in your body, the chemistry
behind how lithium ion batteries work, it
remains the common denominator in all the
battery technologies even that we're looking at
now. Jeniece Pettitt: You are
looking at bags and bags of depleted lithium ion
batteries, batteries from electric cars, phone
scooters, laptops, tablets, cameras, you
name it. They are flammable and toxic, so
they can end up in landfills. And believe it
or not, these old batteries are still
filled with materials that are as good as new Unknown: batteries are
amazing that way because the the metals and the
critical materials inside of them are very highly
recyclable. We recover 95 98% of many of those
critical materials like nickel and cobalt and
copper, essentially, all of those metals are able
to go back straight into reuse again and again. Jeniece Pettitt: This is
JB Straubel. He is a co founder and longtime
Chief Technology Officer of Tesla. He was the
mastermind behind many of Tesla's core
technologies, particularly around the
battery tech. He left Tesla in 2019. So he
could focus on recycling all of these batteries.
He gave CNBC, an inside look at his startup
Redwood materials, where he's already recycling
tons of batteries and sending some of the
recovered materials to Panasonic so the battery
maker can put them right back into Tesla's cars. Unknown: We can't just
take all these really great minerals, and just
dump them. That would be criminal. I mean, we have
to reuse them Jeniece Pettitt: struggle
started thinking about this massive and growing
problem long before he left Tesla. Unknown: We started this,
you know, because I saw this this looming problem
from the end of life vehicles that we were
creating, and starting to have a deeper
appreciation, you know, back then for the scale
of what was coming than the fact that, you know,
I didn't see anyone else getting ready for the
scale of that problem. The sheer magnitude of
the waste and scrap problem and the magnitude
of batteries that that need to get recycled is,
I think, shocking to most people, there's, I think
a really exciting opportunity to link the
recycling and solving the end of life problem with
the supply chain solution, bringing more
materials back into the feedstock, so it doesn't
bottleneck battery production. Jeniece Pettitt: Batteries
are indeed everywhere these days, and the
demand for lithium ion batteries has risen
sharply in the past five years and is expected to
grow from $44.2 billion in 2020 To 94 point 4
billion by 2025, mostly due to electric cars. EVs
are expected to hit 10% of global passenger
vehicle sales by 2025, rising to 58% of sales by
2040. Unknown: Do we have
enough materials to build all the Evie batteries
that are going to be required? Frankly, No, not right.
The second we don't have enough materials in the
supply chain to build everything today. So
growth has to happen in the supply chain for all
these vehicles. A lot more of that investment
has to find its way to the top of the food chain
to figure out you know where these materials
will come from investing in new mines refining and
recycling. We look at the materials
that are in cells. These are metals that are very
durable. And we took a lot of effort to get them
out of the ground. It's not like we have excess
supply lying around that we can just pull to make
cells from our excess supply is in the cells
that are basically come to end of life and are
ready for recycling. So we would be really
foolish if we didn't take advantage of the capacity
of older cells to create the next generation. Jeniece Pettitt: Panasonic
says it produces 2 billion battery cells a
year out of Tesla's giga factory in Nevada, Unknown: and specifically
model three model Y for the Tesla team. So it's
only those two models in America that we support
in this factory, then we need somewhere between 20
to 25 of these all over the world but
particularly here in the United States, we
certainly need at least four or five six of these
factories to support the wider automotive
industry. Jeniece Pettitt: Batteries
are made up of a mix of metals and minerals
including nickel, cobalt, lithium, graphite, and
copper that come from all over the world. battery
cells mined from raw materials often traveled
more than 20,000 nautical miles from mine to
automaker a supply chain that is far from
sustainable. Unknown: Recycling has a
very big role to play in the system. inability of
electric vehicles themselves. One of the
biggest sources of co2 from an electric vehicle
is from the mining and manufacturing side of
battery packs. Mining for lithium is not a very co2
friendly activity. So there will be a time
where recycling of batteries for the metals
that it needs is going to be a strong factor in
helping EVs achieve carbon neutrality. Jeniece Pettitt: The
materials and Evie battery cells, for
example, could have been mined in South America,
Africa, Indonesia and Australia. Then they are
often sent to China for refining and then in
Tesla's case sent to the US for cell production at
Panasonic in Nevada at the Gigafactory. And a
significant shortage of battery materials is
looming in the near term for materials like
lithium, nickel, cobalt and copper. Unknown: Right now demand
is outstripping supply. Five years down the road,
correct? That's correct. How worried are you about
it? I am pretty worried that
this could become a bottleneck to
electrifying everything that people are hoping to
do. You know, I think it's going to be a bit
painful when when all of these factories try and
ramp at the same time and recycling and being able
to efficiently reuse those materials can
relieve some of the burden on the need for
new mines are finding new resources. Jeniece Pettitt: The
clunky supply chain also adds cost to the
batteries, which are the most expensive part of an
electric car, Unknown: the cost of the
electric vehicle is dropping, but it's still
dominated by the cost of the battery. And within
the battery. The biggest cost are the materials,
it's a fairly direct link to say that the way to
reduce further the cost of EVs so that more and
more people can afford them is to figure out how
we attack that material cost inside the lithium
ion battery. And as the demand for electric cars
continues to grow, it's going to put more stress
on those commodity markets, you know, but
our goal is to find a way to decouple that and
provide those materials for reuse at a lower
cost. Jeniece Pettitt: Redwood
materials is in the process of expanding and
building new machinery to ramp capacity. Kevin
Kasetsart, another former Tesla employee is helping
oversee that effort. The first challenge that
company faces is gathering all of the
batteries. Unknown: I like to think
of the company in kind of three major groups. One
is really collecting and receiving right, which is
what you see here. And there's very safe ways
that we do that. The other is more refining.
So breaking the material down taking it from its
product that you see into its base metals, right,
which are fully recoverable, and then
building those back into battery grade products
that we can sell back into the industry. But we
currently receive about 60 tonnes a day. So it's
about three semi trucks a day. And that's
continuing to increase as we as we grow the
business will go through this within a couple of
months. Jeniece Pettitt: Redwood
recycles a wide range of lithium ion batteries,
not just those that go into EVs, it gathers the
materials through a series of partnerships
with companies like Panasonic, e waste
recycling giant E, Ri, and envision ASC, which
manufactures batteries for the Nissan Leaf. It
also teamed up with Amazon, Unknown: Amazon is an
interesting partner because they have
batteries in so many different areas of their
business, you know, all the way from data centers
with AWS to the consumer products with things like
Kindle, we're discussing with them a number of
different projects, but the reach and access into
the consumer world could offer some really
interesting opportunities. It's been
interesting how some of our partners you know,
get get quickly kind of overwhelmed by the
problem that these old products can create. When
these things pile up, they get to be really
difficult to deal with. You can't just throw them
in the landfill, you can't just shred them,
it'll catch fire. Some partners have reached out
to us in a little bit of you know, panic saying,
geez, you know, we need to solve this problem,
you know, can you help, Jeniece Pettitt: but
beyond its partners struggle, so the largest
lithium mine could be in the junk drawers of
America, Unknown: there's only you
know, so many geologic sources of a lot of these
key materials. And, you know, for decades, we've
been, you know, digging it up and putting it in
products and using it. And so many of these
consumer products, they're just getting
locked away, you know, stored in people's
drawers literally at home or in their garage or in
a shoe box. And over time, you know, that
collection of old consumer products stored
up in people's proverbial drawer at home, you know,
has become, I think the world's largest, you
know, resource of these materials. What do you think most
people think? Do they think I don't want to
throw it in a landfill but I don't know what to
do with it. I do think there's a lot
of confusion. You're just concerned about data.
There's concern about just throwing it in the
garbage but there's a lot of barriers to
productively recycling it. And the hurdle is so
high right now that it encourages people to just
do nothing to hang on to it, but it is wasting an
incredibly valuable opportunity and a
resource that we can tap into. Jeniece Pettitt: Consumers
can help by dropping off their old electronics at
places like Best Buy staples, Salvation Army
or at their local Solid Waste Authority.
recyclers will pick them up and destroy the data
before refurbishing them or extracting materials.
Once Redwood receives the batteries, they are
broken down and processed in massive machines. This
is one of the Unknown: machines that we
use to separating the different metals away
from the batteries lets us very efficiently
separate nickel and cobalt away from things
like liquid. Jeniece Pettitt: The
final product goes into these bins of raw
materials which will ship to manufacturers,
redwoods techniques recover more than 95% of
a batteries nickel, cobalt, aluminum,
graphite, and more than 80% of a batteries
lithium, Unknown: this is one of
our finished nickel products. So this is a
mixed nickel sulfate product. And you can see,
packaged and ready to go basically back into a
battery cathode manufacturer, this would be the type of
product that you would ship back to Panasonic,
or to some other battery manufacturer, they can
now use this exactly Jeniece Pettitt: the
lithium ion battery recycling market is
projected to grow to $18.1 billion in 2030, up
from 1.5 billion in 2019. Recycling batteries isn't
just good for the planet, it's also surprisingly
good business, Unknown: we make margin
in in a few different places there. And it's
really by you know, solving the transport and
disposal problems with the batteries initially.
And then we also take in a lot of consumer
batteries, you know, things that used to be,
you know, in an individual's, you know,
care whether it was a scooter, or a bicycle or
a phone, these things are a bit difficult to
handle, and they do have chemical risks and fire
risks. So we solve that problem and you charge
customers solve that problem. Well, or, or we
are able to basically do that at a low, you know,
low return fee. So you know, in some cases,
we're actually paying customers back for the
batteries, depending on how much material we're
able to recover and resell from it. And that's my other
question. Are you making money reselling materials
yet? Or is it still in the startup phase where
you're not turning a profit? Well, we're still we're
still growing very quickly. So we're
consuming capital as we build the operation and
the equipment. The most important thing, though,
is that the unit operations are
profitable. So we're able to, you know, take these
input materials, refine them, purify them, and
sell them at a profitable unit margin. And you
know, that that's the fundamentally key thing
is it's getting better quite quickly as we
improve the technology and scale that gives me
the encouragement that this you know, is
economic today relative to mining, even at this
early stage. There's been just an
amazing blossoming of recycling companies
globally, China leads here again, US is
catching up as as Europe but recycling is a very
sort of unsexy industry that could be very
profitable in the future, because of course, we
need to take those batteries, recharged, and
recondition them and use them again. And that's
the good news. And there are many companies at
work right now to fill that demand. Jeniece Pettitt: Another
big player in North America is lifecycle
which has battery recycling plants
operating in Ontario, Canada, and Rochester,
New York, and has plans for rapid expansion. Unknown: So this is our
facility in Rochester, New York. It's part of
the Kodak Eastman business park. So one of
the things we like to say about this facility is
not only do we recycle batteries, but we also
recycle the building Jeniece Pettitt: lifecycle
says that recycling is more efficient than
mining, Unknown: long term
recycling is more efficient, that uses less
energy, it uses less water and uses less
reagents than traditional mining processes. So our
cost base will always be lower. Benefit for last
cycle is that we don't set the price, the mining
industry sets the price. In fact, it's the
marginal operator in that industry, which sets the
price. And what we do is we benefit from those
higher prices. Now long term, we can see a
potential where recycling starts to impact and
bring down the cost of these materials. But at
the moment, we're a relatively small part of
the overall ecosystem, we're really unlocking
the value in the batteries, and we're
selling those materials at market dictated
prices, which is dictated by mining and refining
today, primarily, we're not relying on getting
paid by anybody for a weights fee. And frankly,
customers don't like that. They want to know
that we're going to be unlocking the value of a mining company of
equivalent motion to produce similar
materials, they would struggle to produce the
same levels of margin that we can deliver as a
recycling company. So not only is there a good ESG
sentiment and story behind what lifecycles
doing, but from a business perspective,
it's highly profitable. This absolutely couldn't
be more profitable than mining, you know, mining
has the fluctuation and total dependency on the
raw material cost, which makes it really different
kind of industry. You know, we're more focused
on the manufacturing and the conversion cost but
you know, our business moves up and down with
the commodity price or is in mind This totally
linked to that a recycling of batteries will be a
absolutely crucial component to this whole
21st century supply chain, you've got a
couple of problems and challenges to attack
here. One is to get rid of the volume of end of
life batteries that are going to be coming from
EVs. And that's really going to take off 2025
onwards. The second thing is, what metals can you
get out of those batteries? And what can
you turn them into and what industries can use
them and again, and that's a secondary
problem. And so you've got a lot of pioneers
right now, looking at recycling, it's going to
be a big industry. Jeniece Pettitt: Stroble
says the plan is to continue to improve
recycling technology and to create an entirely
closed loop system. So recycling can actually
surpass geological mining, Unknown: we are, you
know, actively, you know, setting up facilities and
looking for locations in Europe, you know, perhaps
Norway, perhaps Germany, and also some smaller
facilities, you know, on the other, you know,
corners of the US, perhaps Texas, perhaps
somewhere in the Midwest in five to seven years
from now, we need to be able to break down
materials in the Evie space at the pace that
they're being manufactured today. So if
there's, you know, let's just say for rough math,
there's 1000 cars a day being produced. And
there's more than that, we need to be able to
recover and recycle at that same rate when those
products hit their end of life. And that's just in
the Eevee space, almost everything has a battery
in it nowadays. And so a lot of that technology is
lithium ion cells, and it all has value that needs
to be recovered and sent back into the supply
chain. Jeniece Pettitt: And good
recycling actually replaced mining one day, Unknown: with recycling
of batteries, you'll never get enough lithium
out of those batteries, and in the right quality
to use back in batteries. That's like a fundamental
issue for the industry that will be changing,
especially with the demand profiling ever
increasing as well. But the fact of the
matter is, at today's date, it is cheaper to
mined for lithium rather than recycle it from
existing battery packs. So that is projected to
go on for the next at least 10 years or so. Jeniece Pettitt: But
still, it will be a very important part of making
Evie and battery production, more
environmentally friendly. Unknown: Batteries from
EVs will not go in landfills. There are
technologies available like ours, like life
cycles that are efficient, profitable,
don't need subsidies, and can do this as a
sustainable growing, failing business. Well, I think you know,
about the, you know, maybe distant future,
when we're operating as a really sustainable
society and economy. You know, we need to be
productively UNbuilding you know, everything that
we've built, you know, this is kind of the tip
of the proverbial iceberg. We're currently
recycling, you know, several gigawatt hours of
energy storage per year. That seems like a big
amount, but it's only maybe one or 2% of what's
actually being built today. So, if you look
ahead, you know, we need to be operating at 100
times the scale we are now in just a few short
years, you know, this has to get solved, there
really is no alternative. You know, we can't just
sort of dump these batteries into the ocean
or into a landfill, you know, it just it just
doesn't work. So, you know, I really enjoy
working on slightly underdog problems that
are not getting enough attention where, you
know, with a small team, you know, we can affect a
big industry in the future and we can invent
some things that are going to have a dramatic
impact on a huge portion of the industry. The US government has a
lithium supply problem, just about every major
automaker has announced a transition to electric
vehicles. Tesla delivered nearly 1 million cars in
2021, and a handful of new Evie companies are
finally rolling new models off the line. In
order to power all of these EVs we will need
lithium ion batteries, lots of them. Electric
Vehicle growth will be responsible for more than
90% of demand for lithium by 2030. But lithium is
also in our phones, computers, ceramics,
lubricants, pharmaceuticals, and are
essential for solar and wind energy storage. Lithium actually is not a
major component of the cost of batteries, but
it's like the blood in your body. It's the
chemistry behind how lithium ion batteries
work. It remains the common denominator in all
the battery technologies even that we're looking
at now for next generation batteries. The price of lithium is
soaring, and establishing domestic supply of
lithium has become the modern day version of oil
security. But today, the United States is far
behind with only 1% of global lithium being
mined and processed in the US. We do have a lot and the
challenge is can we produce what we need at
at an economical and competitive price. That's
going to be hard. I think from that standpoint. We
are going to be a net importer of lithium for
our needs. This vital mineral in
rechargeable batteries has earned the name white
gold and the rushes on. Several domestic lithium
projects are in the works. We have what some have
described as the Saudi Arabia of lithium here.
In the state of California, but they often face steep
startup costs and opposition from
environmentalists and locals. This is supposedly the
largest lithium mine in the world. And we have to
do this right. Getting to the the battery and
electric cars does not seem to be green to me
when you're destroying a beautiful mountain. This
mine wants to run for 40 years and destroy this
area. CNBC explores how the US
fell behind in lithium production, and if it
will ever be able to catch up. More than 80% of the
world's raw lithium is mined in Australia, Chile
and China. China controls more than half of the
world's lithium processing and refining
and has three fourths of the lithium ion battery
mega factories in the world. But until the 90s,
the US was the leader in lithium production, the lithium industry
started in the US and and and had a had a good run
for 50 years. So what happened, lithium
is not a scarce element, the United States holds
almost 8 million metric tons of lithium, ranking
it among the top five countries in the world. Bessemer City, North
Carolina that was the original production
location in the US, you had some of the early
companies which were foot mineral company and
lithium Corporation of America. And those those
two companies had had built their business on
producing lithium from spodumene. spodumene is a hard
mineral that contains lithium. But mining
spodumene is not always the most cost effective
way to extract lithium. The challenge that we
have in the US is that we don't have the high high
quality lithium resource. And so the concentration
of lithium is going to be lower than than the
traditional sources. And then it's more than
likely you're going to have more contaminants.
So those contaminants have to be be removed.
The other main way of extracting
lithium uses a salty brine that is pumped out
of the ground. Compared to rock extraction,
evaporation brine extraction is fairly
cheap. Since a lot of the work of separating out
the lithium is done by mother nature. The
challenge that the US production
had was that production costs from the brine
resource in Chile, it was just much lower than the
cost of producing it from spodumene. In the US, lithium ion batteries,
they were invented here. A lot of the technology
that is being applied is licensed to companies
overseas because the infrastructure here we
don't have anymore we lost. Around the same time a
massive lithium refining industry was growing in
China, China was really the
first place where the where the Evie revolution
started taking off in a way that it hasn't in the
US. But it is now happening in Europe. So
the fact that a lot of lithium conversion
capacity is in China is just an artifact of the
fact that they had to start making batteries
five to 10 years sooner than the rest of us did. On a per capita basis. I
suspect we're going to be one of the biggest users
of lithium in the world and frankly, sending
lithium to lithium carbonate we make in the
US and sending it to China for further
processing makes absolutely no sense. We
need to have that independent production.
China's able to do things in a very impressive
manner, but they aren't always our friends. And
if we were selling were cut off from lithium
batteries that would change our ability to
respond to climate change in a substantial way. The Biden administration
agrees and believes securing domestic sources
of lithium is vital to national security. Last
June, the Administration released a blueprint for
jumpstarting domestic lithium production and
refining as well as battery manufacturing and
set a national Evie sales goal of 50% by 2030. But
there is only one operating lithium mined
in the US at the moment in silver peak Nevada 85% of 2030s lithium
industry doesn't exist yet. So the next decade
is going to see tremendous growth in the
lithium industry and battery materials supply
chains in general. US lithium exploration
efforts are underway in Nevada, North Carolina,
California and Arkansas to name a few. Piedmont
lithium is working on reopening an old hardrock
lithium mine in the US about 25 miles from
Charlotte, North Carolina Piedmont signed a deal in
September 2020. To supply Tesla with lithium salts
from its deposits. They're sending Piedmont
stock soaring at the time. The initial
agreement says that Piedmont will supply
about a third of its planned 160,000 metric
tons per year. spodumene Concentrate from its
deposits in North Carolina, but the plan
continues to get delayed due to permitting and
concerns from its neighbors in its heyday
from 1955 through the 1980s. That mind supplied
most of the lithium in the US before overseas
supplies became cheaper operation show down in
the 1990s two companies in Arkansas galvanic
energy and standard lithium are working on
extracting lithium from underground brine
reservoirs. A similar Brian project is underway
in California, Salton Sea. Lithium in California is
in an unusual form. It's in this superheated
geothermal brine, which is below the surface of
the Salton Sea. And today, there's about a
dozen geothermal power plants that generate
electricity by cycling that superheated brine
bringing it up to the surface and generating
steam to create electricity and then
pumping it down back in the ground. And so this
process basically takes the lithium out of that
brine covers it, and then the brine is pumped back
in the ground that's different than how
lithium is produced. Elsewhere in the world.
Today, you have places like Chile and Argentina,
where they have massive evaporation ponds, which
have a pretty big footprint. So this is
really the greenest way to produce lithium that
exists. The Salton Sea was once a
hot tourist destination, but experts say it has
become the worst environmental and public
health crisis in modern history. The lake has
been fouled by toxic runoff from area farms
for decades, and it is rapidly shrinking. It's
receding shoreline is exposing nearby
communities to toxic fumes and killing
wildlife. The state of California is trying to
transform the area, calling it lithium
Valley, and it hopes to generate the revenue
needed to restore the lake. The Salton Sea resource
for lithium is really radically different than
the other formations that you've been reading about
in places like Nevada or Australia. This is not
mining. This is lithium that exists in a fluid in
the superheated, very mineral rich brine, which
today is being cycled through these geothermal
power plants. So it's a closed loop process, and
very, very low impact. Imperial Valley,
California and Brisbane. Australia based
controlled thermal resources is one of the
companies getting close to being able to produce
lithium in the area. First stage, a 50
megawatt power plant will be online in 2023,
following with a 20,000 ton per year lithium
hydroxide facility to be delivered shortly
thereafter. Last summer, GM announced
a multi million dollar investment in controlled
thermal Resources Development at the Salton
Sea and has secured first rights to purchase the
domestically produced lithium for TVs.
Controlled thermal resources expects
delivery of lithium from the site in 2024. This product can be used
here in real time as lithium hydroxide or
battery grade product, it doesn't need to go
offshore, we don't have to put it on a train and
put it on a ship, send it over send it back. So I
think General Motors are a testament of you know,
their experience in the supply chain kings have
been doing it forever. This products produced by
100% green energy. It's interesting, great long
term relationship. About 700 miles north of the Salton
Sea project, a massive open pit lithium Mine is
in the works. The Thakker pass lithium deposit is
located within an extinct supervolcano, and is one
of the largest lithium reserves in the US.
Canada based lithium Americas is behind the
project and its stock is up 740%. Since the
beginning of 2020, it's a different kind of
lithium resource Mother Nature deposited this
very thick layer of sediment at the bottom of
this ancient lake, which was once there and
drained, we can reverse Mother Nature by putting
that water back into a slurry, it naturally
disassociates under very low energy. And we can
separate the lithium out by particle size. That
project is in the final
permitting phase, it will produce on the
order of 60,000 tons of lithium carbonate
equivalent per year compared to what
Australia produces, which is about somewhere over
400,000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent. So
it's you know, 10 15% as much as the entire
country of Australia proves so it's a big
deal. The site will handle both
the mining and the refinement of the
lithium, removing the need for a complex supply
chain. You take what happens in
Australia and China put our all on one site is
exactly what we're aiming and what the plan is
actually designed to do so and what we'll have at
the end of the day is high quality lithium
chemicals that can go directly on to either a
battery or a cathode manufacturer that can be
put right into the supply chain. Our goal is to get
into production sometime in 2024. CNBC got an inside look
at lithium America's r&d lab in Reno Nevada backpass project in
particular, while it's a large asset today based
on us looking into man, it would be by 2025. We
could do a little bit more than half of the US
is need just for batteries. But no one wants a mine
in their backyard. And like other proposed mines
in the US. The project has been plagued with
lawsuits and opposition from some local Native
American tribes and environmentalists. The
initial lawsuits have been dismissed but some
are not giving up and even camped out on the
property in protest. I found out that the
Bureau of Land Management wanted to destroy a
beautiful mountain pass stacker pass for the
world's largest open pit lithium mine. And along
with my best friend Max Wilbert, I set up camp in
the exact location of where the open pit mine
would be. My original goal was to raise
awareness about how these lithium mines would be
destroying some of the last beautiful places
left in the United States, we're hoping that they
understand that this backer pass in many areas
is like a cemetery to us. We didn't have cemeteries
back in the day, but where our people are
resting in their eternal life should just not be
disturbed. Think about if somebody went and
excavated your ancestors and decided to move them
and we buried them someplace else. That was our main reason
for involved in the in the litigation was the
lack of consultation. As you know, there were 27
tribes in the state of Nevada. And there's,
there were only three tribes, I believe that
were really had consultation, if you want
to call it that by receiving letters, I
guess from the BLM on this project. And so we
just found it was inadequate. Lithium America said it
has been working with the local tribes to
participate in the cultural assessment of
the land, and that there has been overwhelming
support from the locals. We've got members of the
lithium, Americas looking at about a team out in
the communities, explaining what all this
means. So people really understand that we've
been we're trying to be as respectful and careful
as possible. But also, as I said before, wanting to
learn what they're interested in what things
are needed for the community, so we can be
good neighbors, the initial life of the mine
is more than 40 years in the processing plants. So
these can be multi generational jobs, and an
area that doesn't have these opportunities today
and really never has. So it takes a multi pronged
effort to try to address any of questions from all
sides, every resource development project will
face resistance from the people who live near it.
The land footprint impacts of an extraction
project are always disproportionately
inflicted on local people. And that is how
it always has been for 1000s of years. And
that's how it always will be. Well, that's the same
kind of thing is is the old not in my backyard
issue. And there are times when that's
entirely appropriate. And times when it's you know,
the greater good I think has to be assessed. And I
think the greater good effect or pass is
producing lithium, this is a big mine don't make
any mistake about it, there is land disturbance
going to be in this mine. All aspects of it I've
seen compared to a goldmine of the same
size, this impact is going to be much lower. Like fossil fuels mining
for lithium is an extractive industry that
inevitably has impacts on the environment, from
carbon emissions to local wildlife populations. If there's a threat to a
species, because of a lithium mine, it will
pale in comparison to what kind of species
extinction we're going to see, in the years ahead.
If we don't control climate change, it's possible for the co2
emissions of lithium chemical manufacturing to
kind of get away from us in a number of different
respects if we don't pay close attention to how we
build these new mines because we are going to
have to build a lot of new mines to satisfy
demand for lithium chemicals from the
battery industry. One Oakland California
based startup lilac solutions aims to make
the extraction of lithium less water intensive and
more sustainable. Then there are companies like
red wood materials and lifecycle that are
recycling depleted batteries and recovering
lithium and other metals for reuse. It is possible to
decarbonize power that runs an electric vehicle,
it is even possible to decarbonize the
extraction and processing of battery materials,
which are used to make the batteries and still
store that energy in the electric vehicle battery.
It is never possible to decarbonize the fossil
fuels that are used to run internal combustion
engines. It's important as we grow
this industry to be in the US or be in the
countries that are had share similar values
because the danger with rapid growth like this is
that things are done improperly, whether it's
environmental standards, labor standards, respect
for local communities, we have laws and processes
here in the US and in like minded countries to
avoid things like that from happening. I think
that's going to be an important aspect as this
industry grows. Magdalena Petrova: If
you've been following the electric vehicle market,
you've probably heard a lot about cobalt, cobalt,
cobalt, cobalt cobalt, the recent Cobots been
getting so much attention is because it's one of
the metals used to make lithium ion batteries
which power everything from laptops and cell
phones to electric vehicles. The amount of
different metals found in Evie battery can vary
depending on the battery type. In car model, but a
typical lithium ion battery pack may contain
around 14 kilograms of cobalt. Cobalt has been a
popular choice for batteries because the
metal increases battery life and energy density,
which in the case of EVs means range by keeping
the battery structure stable as the battery is
continuously charged and discharged. But cobalt
which is usually extracted as a byproduct
of nickel and copper mining is one of the most
expensive materials in a battery. While battery
prices have fallen at 9%, between 2010 and 2020,
they still make up about 30% of the total cost of
an electric vehicle. For a Unknown: typical vehicle
with a 780 kilowatt hour battery today, we
estimate the cobalt content alone costs
around $800 in that battery, so that's not an
insignificant for mass electrification
to happen. There are lots of sentiments cobalt
needs to be eliminated or reduced to the bare
minimum. Magdalena Petrova: Cobalt
extraction is also linked to human rights abuses
and child labor. These are some of the reasons
why battery manufacturers like Samsung and
Panasonic, and car makers like Tesla and VW, along
with a number of startups are working to eliminate
cobalt completely. Elon Musk has been talking
about removing cobalt from Tesla's batteries
since 2018. And some of the companies China made
vehicles are already using cobalt free
technology. But although there are a number of
different cobalt free technologies being
tested, each has presented its own
challenges. Unknown: Cobalt helps to
prevent battery fires. So if you eliminate it, you
have to replace it with something else that
maintains safety and longevity. Magdalena Petrova: Evie
sales worldwide are expected to skyrocket
from 3 million in 2020 to 66 million in 2040. And
with increased demand for EVs demand for raw
battery materials like Cobalt is expected to
outstrip supply. Unknown: Comparing demand
and supply for cobalt there is geologically
speaking enough raw material in their Earth's
crust. Same with lithium, same old nickel thing
where manganese is just for the production and
the processing of that material, just like all
the other materials is nowhere near the level of
that needs to be to sustain the level of
demand. Magdalena Petrova: One
way to ease demand for new cobalt mining is by
recycling the cobalt found in old batteries.
Companies like Redwood materials in Nevada and
Canada base lifecycle have emerged to do this,
but some types of recycling have downfalls Unknown: currently Cobalt
is recycled, but the process in which it is
recycled is very environmentally
unfriendly. It take all the old batteries and you
smelt them at temperatures higher than
1000 C, and you can extract the cobalt back
out of it. The reason that that is done is
because of how expensive Cobalt is. Magdalena Petrova: For
the past four years, the average cost of cobalt
was more than the cost of all the other battery
metals put together. The price of cobalt has also
historically been very volatile. Part of this
volatility may be due to the fact that Cobalt is
usually produced as a byproduct of nickel and
copper mining, and therefore tied to the
demand and price fluctuations of those
metals. The mining and refining of cobalt is
also geographically limited. Unknown: The majority of
the world's battery grade cobalt reserves are
located in the Democratic Republic of Congo with
the mining of cobalt is associated with human
rights abuses and child labor and so Magdalena Petrova: on.
Chinese investors control about 70% of Congos
mining sector. China also has over 80% control of
the cobalt refining industry, where the raw
material is turned into commercial grade cobalt
metals suitable for use in EVs. In light of the
US China trade war, cobalt supply is in a
precarious position for US manufacturers, Unknown: Louisa China has
really dominated is fully quite embraced the
lithium ion battery revolution. Magdalena Petrova: To
understand the importance of cobalt and batteries,
we have to talk about battery chemistry. A
typical lithium ion battery has three main
components. The negative end is known as the anode
and the positive end the cathode. The two
electrodes are separated by the electrolyte a
substance that conducts an electric current. The
movement of positively charged lithium ions from
the anode, through the electrolyte and to the
cathode creates free electrons, which travel
through an external circuit and carry the
electric current use the power device. When a
battery is charged, this chemical reaction is
reversed. Different types of lithium ion batteries
are distinguished by the metals that make up the
cathode. This is where Cobalt is found. Today
the market is dominated by NMC batteries whose
cathodes contain nickel, manganese and cobalt.
Depending on the proportions of each metal
in the cathode, which are represented by the
numbers following the cathode names, you will
get different properties in the battery. For
instance, increasing the nickel in the cathode
boosts energy density and therefore rage, but also
makes batteries more unstable. That's because
adding more nickel usually means decreasing
the amount of cobalt, which prevents cathode
corrosion that can lead to battery fires, battery
and car manufacturers trying To optimize
battery chemistry on the parameters of cost,
lifecycle safety and range, some cobalt free
batteries do already exist. But there are
trade offs Unknown: there is already
a viable cobalt free battery, and that is
Lithium Iron Phosphate or LFP. But the main
downside of LFP is low energy density. And
therefore driving range can see lithium ion
phosphate right now in buses, so things that
don't need to go that far, and they have a
regular routine. Well As consumers, we want cars
that can compete on a one to one footing with
internal combustion engine. And those cutters
that don't contain cobalt right now are not able to
deliver that. Magdalena Petrova: The
production of lithium iron phosphate or LFP
batteries is dominated by Chinese companies like
BYD, and contemporary amperex technology
limited or CTL. One reason is an old
licensing agreement that allowed Chinese
manufacturers to make LFP batteries without having
to pay an expensive fee to the patent owners as
long as they sold the batteries within China.
The last of these patents which are owned by a
Swiss based consortium, expired in September of
2021 in Europe and are set to expire in 2022. In
the US, this has opened the floodgates for major
Western automakers to use iron based battery
chemistries. Unknown: American and
European OEMs are adopting LFP in parallel
to their high nickel batteries because it has
great advantages over a pine nickel and cobalt
based batteries. Notably, it's a lot cheaper, the
component materials are a lot more readily
available and abundant then nickel and cobalt
has a longer longevity. Lithium Magdalena Petrova: iron
phosphate batteries are also generally considered
very safe since iron is a very stable element. Ford
and Volkswagen have both said that they would
offer vehicles with LFP batteries. Tesla already
uses LFP batteries in the model three in model Y
vehicles and manufacturers in China
and the company says it will now expand use of
LFP batteries to all of its entry level model
three and model Y vehicles. Previously
these cars use nickel cobalt aluminum oxide or
NCA batteries, which Tesla will continue to
use in its long range versions. Unknown: A long range
vehicles use a nickel based cathode and we use
nickel because Nicholas higher energy density for
our long range vehicles, but for our standard
range vehicles, and for stationary storage, I
think all of that will move to iron cathodes,
we're moving to an iron based chemistry which is
sort of finally at the point where it's
competitive on range when combined with an
efficient powertrain. I think that will be the
vast majority of batteries in the future
will be iron based. Magdalena Petrova: Even
Apple was reportedly in talks with Chinese LFP
manufacturers to make batteries for its planned
Ed car project, though those talks seem to have
been put on hold. In an effort to reduce us
dependence on foreign countries. The US
Department of Energy released a national
blueprint in June to help guide investment to
develop domestic lithium battery manufacturing and
support further r&d. Among its goals. The
Blueprint calls for eliminating cobalt from
lithium batteries by 2032 US based startups, sparks
and tech power say that they can help though the
companies have yet to prove out their
technologies in electric vehicles. Sparks was
founded in 2019 by Sanjeev Malhotra, a
former executive at the US Department of Energy.
The Tennessee based company has 15 employees
and was born out of a partnership with the
Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National
Laboratory. Spark says it's raised over $10
million in grants from the DOD, the California
Energy Commission and several early customers
to bring its cobalt free lithium ion battery to
the market. Unknown: That was one of
the key motivation factors for starting
sparks was to address the supply chain issues for
lithium ion batteries, predominantly for cobalt,
and make us independent of any supply chain that
is dependent on China. Magdalena Petrova: Sparks
is still in its testing phase. The company says
it's initially focusing on supplying batteries
for large transportation vehicles like buses and
trucks, off road vehicles like farming and factory
equipment and energy storage solutions. Spark
says it's also in talks with two auto
manufacturers and will begin testing its
batteries in their vehicles next year.
Sparks this technology focuses on replacing the
cobalt and its cathode which also contains
nickel and aluminum with iron. The company says
it's considered other metals but chose iron
because it's cheap, widely available in the
US and chemically stable making it safe to use
Mahapatra says sparks his battery cathode material
which the company calls NFA. For nickel iron,
aluminium improves upon iron based cathode
chemistries and those containing cobalt, Unknown: the energy
density of the cell using our cobalt free cathode
is twice that of the LFP. And in terms of the cost,
we're almost about 30% lower than that of LFP.
Yet at the same time, this cobalt free cathode
meets and exceeds the performance that you
would see from a traditional cobalt
carrying cathode in terms of energy density, which
is the energy that If you can pack in a certain
weight or a certain volume, it meets the life
expectancy of traditional lithium ion battery. And
in terms of cost, it's almost about 35 to 40%
lower than the cost of your typical lithium ion
battery. Magdalena Petrova: To
create this NFA cathode material sparks has
licensed six patents from Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, Unknown: the primary
focus of these six patents is a on the
design of the material that's used while
eliminating cobalt and replacing it with Arren.
Secondly, the process to make cobalt free cathode
a lot more stable. And the third is the
manufacturing process. So there is one patented
that essentially reduces the time to manufacture
because the time to manufacture translates
into cost. Magdalena Petrova: Spark
says it's cobalt free batteries can be produced
using the same equipment used to make conventional
cobalt containing batteries. Unknown: We are currently
looking for about close to 2 million square foot
where we will be setting up the manufacturing for
these three parts of the value chain the cathode
material, the electrode and the cells. And
essentially, we have identified a couple of
scalar partners and through some strategic
partnership we are looking to have
manufacturing for these three components starting
next year. Magdalena Petrova: Like
sparks, Houston based Tech's power was founded
in 2019. The startup was spun out of research
headed up by yarmulke mun theorem at the University
of Texas at Austin. In 2020, the research team
published a paper in which they tested a
cathode made of manganese aluminum and 89% nickel
and found that their cobalt free material
performed very well when compared to cobalt
containing cathodes, Unknown: you do not see
any downside with the performance of our
material without any cobalt compared to the
performance of the material containing
cobalt, the cycle life as well as the how fast you
can charge and discharge and safety. Magdalena Petrova: This
cathode composition was the jump off point for
the material that Tex power is trying to
commercialize Unknown: or
commercializing our nickel manganese aluminum
based chemistry that's cobalt free higher energy
density than current lithium ion battery
cathodes, and operate stably and safely. Magdalena Petrova: globally.
The most widely used cathode material today is
NMC. six to two this cathode is composed of
60% nickel and 20%. Each of manganese and cobalt
tech power says it's able to increase the energy
density of its cathode material by replacing
cobalt with larger quantities of nickel. But
increasing nickel in the cathode has traditionally
come with its own challenges, Unknown: the nickel is
highly reactive with the electrolyte. So, Cobalt
is typically added to minimize the degradation
of the cathode structure and then other elements
like manganese are added also to improve the
thermal stability. So all these other are LMS that
are that are typically added to make up for the
deficiencies of nickel. Magdalena Petrova: Texas
power says that it's navigating this
instability problem by adding aluminum and
manganese as well as a number of proprietary
substances known as dopa. It's the result the
company says is a cathode material that is 20%
cheaper than the conventional NMC six to
two cathodes. But producing this material
is tricky, Unknown: decreasing the
cobalt in the material makes the production
harder, it will also be difficult to get
consistent properties from batch to batch. So
the process Tech's power is developing is to
minimize that kind of concern, so that when you
produce tons and tons of material, you'll
consistent properties from one class to another
batch. Magdalena Petrova: Whereas
Cobalt is generally easy to synthesize into a
cathode material. Getting the right reaction using
nickel requires close monitoring and control
over factors like temperature and oxygen
flow and pressure. It took years for the team
at UT Austin to fine tune the production process of
their nickel manganese aluminum cathode
material, Tex power will use the same process to
produce its cathode material at scale. Unknown: Our production
technique is immediately scalable. It's the same
production technique that they use industrially.
And so next year we're building a production
line for hundreds of kilos of material per
year. Magdalena Petrova: Taxpayer
makes just the cathode material and plans to
partner with other companies to produce
battery cells. Unknown: We have a
contract with the Department of Defense in
conjunction with 24 of them where they're
producing a high energy cell with lithium metal
anode and our highest energy cathode material.
And we're reaching energy densities in excess of
500 Watt hours per kilogram that's around
double current commercial lithium ion batteries. Magdalena Petrova: Still,
Erickson says that it may be a while before Tex
powers cathode materials are used in EVs, although
it is in talks with a number of automakers. Unknown: The automakers
have, you know, a year or several years of safety
testing and things like that, that they'll go
through before they'll put it into a commercial
The vehicle, but you know as early as the end of
2023, we could have some prototypes and electric
vehicles. Magdalena Petrova: Although
cobalt free battery performance continues to
improve experts believe that the future Evie
battery market will consist of a number of
different battery chemistries for different
applications Unknown: that we
calculate around 20% of the global battery
electric vehicle market by 2030. Being taken up
by these new cobalt free chemistries, we expect
that the sort of entry level low cost vehicles,
for example, the standard range model Tesla Model
three will be LFP or lithium iron phosphate
and then followed by these cobalt free
materials which will account for most of the
mainstream volume vehicles. And then at the
top end of the range will be high nickel batteries,
which will account for high performance high
range vehicles. Magdalena Petrova: Other
battery breakthroughs could help enhance cobalt
free chemistries, car companies, Hyundai and
Kia announced they're working with us based
vectorial energy to replace liquid
electrolyte batteries with solid state
electrolyte batteries. This would give batteries
and even longer range and added safety benefits. Unknown: With these
cobalt free batteries. They operate at higher
voltage and that is one reason why they are more
susceptible to battery fires. With solid state
batteries. It's just like your solid state hard
drives. It's a solid electrolyte, it's able to
withstand higher voltages, it can
potentially deliver higher driving range,
which is what's the most important thing for a
consumer, but also higher safety, faster charging
times. We just have received
another grant from the California Energy
Commission for next generation batteries
which is basically solid state batteries using our
cobalt free cathode, which has the potential
of doubling the energy density that we have
today. So basically making it almost four
times that of LFP. Magdalena Petrova: Meanwhile,
others are focused on improving the batteries
form Unknown: certain
companies like for example, BYD, or
something the offset the range of advantages of
LFP with certain things like what we call cell to
pack technology, where we do away with splitting
the battery pack into modules, we just have the
entire battery pack is a number of cells together
and that gives you a better range advantage. Magdalena Petrova: But
whatever advancements we make experts stress the
technology needs to be widely accessible. Unknown: When you think
of cobalt free cathode chemistries. What you're
what we are hoping to have is batteries that
are more accessible to all that makes it easier
for developing countries to adopt a lot of the
technologies that we are trying to develop without
fear for costs without fear for performance. The
Industrial Revolution left many people behind,
for we cannot afford for this renewable energy
revolution to leave anyone behind.
Batteries
Chevy and GMC rolling out all these electric vehicles in their commercials…with a target delivery date of 15-18 months.
There is not just the trend for EVs, but also to make them driving smartphones, which drives the demand for scarce parts even higher.
We won't manage a mobility shift by building 2 ton SUVs that can drive 400km on current batteries and that are also basically driving smartphones.
Damn I have to admit I have a car like that myself and especially from the "infotainment" side, 90% of functions are just useless or plain worse than what cars had 10 years ago.
How about making a affordable light weight EV with 200km range (so maybe 25 kwh batteries), that uses the drivers smartphone for whatever "infotainment" that is needed and other things go back to more basic designs.
So the big question to me, is this a result of "Just in time" supply chains, or inability to meet demand on a base level?
As Just in Time caused a ton of supply problems with the pandemic, as it was a house of cards. We might still be falling into that problem where nobody wants to produce more than demand.
Long read but I think I have some valid points:
I do not know how we can expect billions of EV cars -- that is to replace all cars(?) when the Lithium and Cobalt we dig out of the ground cannot meet demand like at all. For example, the whole world produces 82,000 tonnes (2020 figure from wikipedia) of Lithium per year. Not to mention that most of these companies buy a lot of materials from "antisan mines" = Human exploitation, including children. So there is the moral/ethical element, there. Don't believe me? Look it up, there are some documentaries on the subject on YT.
I did the math, there is 25lbs of lithium per car, so if we used all the lithium we get out the ground, every ounce --so nothing else, no phone batteries or any other batteries of any sort for any other industry-- only to make car batteries, we would make 7.5 million cars per year, so basically as fast as we can dig it out of the ground.
There are currently about 1.446 billion cars on the road today. Assuming that number never went any higher although we expect at least 2 billion people in the next couple of decades by the time all countries are on board. Let's assume that there are 15 million EV cars on the road today. There were 10.20 million in 2020, most of them in China. Assuming that was our limit, 7.5 Mil Per year... it would take us 192.8 years to replace them all if we use the metric of speed of sourcing the lithium out of the ground. That is not even mentioning the other materials.
That is astronomically silly. Anyone take the time to think this one out before, in detail?
And for those wondering, the USGS estimates that the entire world reserves of Lithium are about 86,000,000 tonnes. Even if you use every.single.scrap of it, you are looking at 7 581 760 000 cars. Sounds good, eh? If just plain unrealistic on all fronts.
Okay, how long would it takes to build 1.4 billion cars? World production of cars is 80 million per year. So, even if all car companies in the world made EV cars, which is not going to happen in decades due to sheer logistics and infrastructure, as factories and the supporting logistics would have to be built or modified, it would take 17.5 years, if all we did was build EV cars. But that is imposible since that would meant that we would have to extract all of the lithium from the planet all at once, or at leatlst 1/3 of it. Which, uh, is just ludicrous.
Ironically, car batteries have a warranty of 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, and under absolute best, optimal conditions an electric car battery could maybe last 17 years, buylt by then the cycle would repeat anew, assuming all batteries lasted 17 years and would need to start getting replaced. Which they would not. If we include car accidents and or just malfunctioning units.l and real world wear and tear.
It really does not strike as a very good long term solution. Once you look past the hype, ads, actually look at the bigger picture and look at real world numbers. Again, had anyone taken the time to look past the hype? And that is just for lithium. There are also nickel and cobalt in batteries which have their own logistical issues.
Also, noticed that Tesla electric trucks will have a range of 500 miles under optimal conditions. https://www.teslatrucks.com/tesla-semi
However, on average, after an 11 hour shift, truckers drive around 605-650 miles per day. They are not doing that if they need to charge their truck which would have its own issues down on our supply chain plus added costs. Truckers get paid by the mile, so this will cut into their bottom line and as far as I know there is no infrastructure for them. Or at least not in the near future. What is the plan on this?
I am not against EV technology at all but it seems a lot of the actual logistics are still up in the air and some are simply not doable, like at all. But we are are all being asked yo buy into the hype.
Source: I do research and took an hour to actually look at some data/numbers. You are free to do the same. As anyone can do that, if you wish. I just did it for myself and decided to share.
I haven't watched the documentary but could it be that using 5000 disposable 18650 cells to transport 1 fat american around is unsustainable? What a surprise.
Pretty easy to understand, because ten years ago almost everyone except tesla was saying EVs could never work, so their was basically no investment in battery supply chain
If they can recycle 95% of the materials in batteries and consumer electronics, why are we only limited to 6 years or 100k miles warranty on the battery? Why do we have pay approximately as much as a brand new car to replace the battery if 95% of the material is recyclable and reusable?
Sounds like consumers are being ripped off here. The battery of a brand new Tesla that I purchase could very well be made entirely from recycled material.
I feel like if we supply and build a bunch of charging stations we don't really have to rely on such giant batteries that can go 200+ miles, I personally just would like a small Fiat or Yaris like EV to go to and from work. I really don't think most people are trying to travel across the Country all the time