Electric Cars and Lithium Ion Batteries: Trading One Problem for Others

Like many other Americans, I hope my next car is electric or electric-assisted. Summer 2008 gas prices gave us all a taste of where we are going with our gas addiction. Our dependency on a lot of countries that don't like us very much has turned the collective American eye to cars that use less gas or no gasoline at all. There's more talk of electric cars or more efficient hybrid cars as well higher-mileage gasoline vehicles.

Many automakers are ramping up to produce hybrid cars and all electric cars. The Chinese are producing the F3DM by BYD which is a gasoline/electric hybrid and may be available in the US by 2010. The Chevy Volt will probably be the first American electric car. Others on the horizon include the Tesla Roadster, and the hybrid Jeep Renegade.

Every one of these new cars relies on the lithium ion battery. These batteries store about four times as much energy as the lead acid batteries most of our cars we currently use. Lithium ion batteries are also less poisonous to the environment. They are about half the size of the batteries nickel-based batteries most electric cars use today. So, what is the problem?

Lithium Ion Battery Production

The lithium ion battery pack in your electric car will probably be made in China, Japan or Korea. While the technology to make these batteries has been available for more than 20 years, no factory in the US currently produces them. Massachusetts's A123 Systems, which has received funding from GM, manufactures its batteries in China. A plant is being manufactured in France by Saft and Us owned Johnson Controls. All of these were subsidized by the governments. In the US the relatively low profitability of lithium ion batteries did not encourage manufacturing. Until the electric car.

On December 18, 2008 a coalition of 14 companies asked the US government to subsidize the building of a plant to produce lithium ion batteries for the electric car market. This late realization by US industry will certainly contribute to a worldwide shortage of effective storage systems for electric cars and hybrid cars that depend on them. Building a factory for the batteries would be an excellent component of President Obama's jobs stimulus and green infrastructure at the same time. If we do not start producing lithium ion batteries in the US we will necessarily be further behind the curve in electric car usage.

But where do we get the lithium?

Most of the world's lithium supply is in South America, specifically Bolivia and Chile. More than 2/3 of the quality lithium is found in these two countries. The US's statistics on lithium production are proprietorial and unavailable but according to the USGS less than one percent of the world's lithium reserves are in North America. Chile and Australia produce most of the marketed lithium. Not good news for our electric cars.

While the lithium ion battery is the best current option for electric and hybrid cars, we will be trading dependency on middle east oil for dependency On other countries for the batteries themselves and the lithium to manufacture them. Serious recycling plans and building manufacturing facilities in the US will help our trade balance and our hopes for electric cars.

Sources:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d1257b82-cf9e-11dc-854a-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/mcs-2008-lithi.pdf

http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/peripherals/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=BVZQIPPSP1WPQQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=212501310&subSection=News&_requestid=497856

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS168206+14-Oct-2008+PRN20081014

http://gm-volt.com/2008/03/07/a123-systems-currently-makes-enough-batteries-for-100000-cars/

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d1257b82-cf9e-11dc-854a-0000779fd2ac,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fd1257b82-cf9e-11dc-854a-0000779fd2ac.html%3Fnclick_check%3D1&_i_referer=&nclick_check=1

http://www.huliq.com/3169/74545/byd-f3dm-electric-hybrid-car-goes-sale