Posted on 12/23/2021 5:39:09 AM PST by Red Badger
Electric car manufacturing is running into a hiccup as the price of one key material is rising. This will also cause problems for President Joe Biden and his administration, as they were planning on growing the electric car industry in order to promote sustainability.
The price for lithium, a key material for electric car batteries, is skyrocketing.
In the past 12 months, the cost of lithium has gone up more than 250 percent, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, meaning the price of batteries is going up as well.
Overall, there has been a downward trend in the pricing of battery packs over the past several years. Research by the Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office, shows that the price of a vehicle lithium-ion battery pack declined 87 percent between 2008 and 2021.
But that does not make battery packs cheap. The cost of electric vehicle battery packs is about $132 per kilowatt hour (kWh), Electrek reported at the end of November. The average Tesla battery pack has a capacity of 100 kWh, which means a battery pack would cost over $13,000.
Generally, $100 per kWh for a battery pack is the benchmark price necessary for electric vehicles to be cost-competitive with gas cars.
At Tesla, one of CEO Elon Musk’s goals is to produce a $25,000 electric vehicle, Bloomberg reported. That is about $15,000 cheaper than the current Model 3, which is the cheapest car Tesla has on the market.
But producing a cheaper model is difficult when the raw and necessary material of lithium is so expensive. At the beginning of the month, the price hit about $31,395 per ton, according to Benchmark’s Lithium Assessment.
These cost problems are also going to cause political problems, particularly for the Biden administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at westernjournal.com ...
Sucks to be a woke driver.
Balderdacious drivel
Tesla will prevail as the leader. Leon knows his stuff
The bitch at GM knows only PR and will go bankrupt as soon as China sales disappear in the immediate future
But...But...maybe they can just pass a law that batteries must be made with garbage.
If you have a hurricane bearing down on your town, do you put your family inthe Tesla and join a 50 mile traffic jam?
Leon knows his stuff?
Leon who?........................
We’ve reached “Peak Lithium” and the world will have to transition to other, more renewable sources to meet our energy needs.
I recall there was a lot of lithium in Afghanistan, and they don’t give a flying f**k if you strip mine 9/10 of the country to get to it, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the poppy harvests.
Which is why this guy blew up his tesla instead of replacing the battery
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4023259/posts
Does this mean that my little used lithium batteries might have some worth?
Leon is the engineering administrative assistant to Elon Musk
No problem. Biden will call on Xinhua to hook him up. 10 percent for the big guy.
Guess who bought the mining rights to Afghanistan? If you guessed China, You’re a winner
Very good point.....and what do you do if you need to go to the hospital in an emergency, don’t have time to wait on emergency services and your battery operated car isn’t charged...walk?
Biden’s solution will be to raise the subsidies on electric cars.
The poor and middle class will further subsidise the Rich Leftist.
environmentalists are holding a rally to secure more child labor for the stripmining of lithium to meet the demand of their EVs to save the earth from the evil use of fossil fuels.
The Klingons have monopolized the lithium crystals!
I know where there us a very large untapped resource of lithium.... Afghanistan.
Yea, fossil fuels. Takes fossil fuels to generate electricity for the electric vehicle.
“Bad News for Biden”
Why? Once again our side NOT GETTING IT. The purpose of electric cars is NOT to ‘save the planet’, it is to help TRANSITION US to new society where we no longer have individual transportation (and also live in high-rise apartments...without parking). So, yea, shortages help drive up prices, which drives the ‘transition’.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.