Don't believe a word about the coming lithium shortage - Jul. 12, 2010 "That was one of the biggest myths perpetuated by the oil guys," says Agassi, the founder and CEO of a company called Better Place, which is positioning itself as the architect of the network needed to support swappable battery cars and all the attendant infrastructure. " Interesting article, apparently we have all the lithium capacity that we need to build and power fleets of electric vehicles.
Of course we do, and lithium can be extracted from old packs and recycled, (into newer, more powerful packs, which require less lithium. maybe one old pack = two new packs...) unlike oil, which once set fire to, is gone.
Here's the USGS position on the relative abundance of elements in the upper crust - i.e. reasonably mineable: (Image from Wikipedia, copied originally from a 2002 Fact Sheet about Rare Earths.) Note how lithium is actually more abundant than copper, nickel and lead, among many others. It's obviously not a chart of free elements, but we shouldn't expect it to be stupidly hard to get hold of. My understanding is that it's the surface of the electrode which is important, not the body of it, as the electrolyte obviously only contacts the surface. We can probably expect more sophisticated ways of increasing the surface area relative to the volume, making higher capacity for the same amount of electrode material, or less electrode material for the same capacity.
