The Coming Lithium Shortage
The gist of the paper is that there is not enough lithium carbonate and lithium chloride -- the two key salts used to formulate lithium metal for advanced batteries -- in the world to produce the necessary batteries to convert the world's gasoline and diesel fleet to HEV0 (conventional hybrids), PHEVs and battery electric vehicles or BEVs. And even if there were sufficient deposits, most of which are located above 3000 meters in the Bolivian, Chilean and Argentine Andes in ancient dry lake beds, at current rates of worldwide production it would take 75 years to build one billion 5kWh battery packs.
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