trickle down theory of lithium economics

[auraslip]

I had a mind to call this Obama's trickle down theory of lithium economics, but I actually can't hate on a man that mentions EVs in almost every speech

However I take concern with the administrations approach to achieving the goal of "1 millions electric vehicles on the road by 2015."

Massive subsidies are given to battery makers and automakers to this end, but what are the effects of this? Battery plants around the country get ready to fill big orders; spending millions of taxpayers money building new factories. Yet these big orders haven't come in. For the most part, American lithium, is still almost impossible to get your hands on.

We all know that EVs need cheap batteries to be competitive against gasoline. The point of these subsides seems to be to enable battery makers to make. They aren't though. They are waiting for giant million dollar orders. While they wait hundreds of battery factories in China get better and better at producing cheap cells. By the time their is an actual free market demand for batteries, American factories won't be able to keep up with demand. I don't mean that as a good thing. I mean it as in they'll be over taxed, under experienced, and we'll be looking towards a country with ten years history of large scale lithium battery production.

But I digress. The trickle down theory of lithium is that we, the ev community, are waiting for American companies to use lithium batteries at economies of scale for them to be competitive in price against Chinese lithium batteries. A flood of cheap cells could jump start a EV revolution in small towns around the nation; instead we wait for affordable batteries to trickle down to us.

[neptronix]

Or ya know.. we could roll up our sleeves and just start making them, as the Chinese have.

I believe it is a motivational problem. Companies only have their eyes on the big mega order, and nothing below that..... huh?

Meanwhile we seem to be motivated to find more and more gas, even crap like the bakken shale in North Dakota.

I don't get it. We could do it if we put our mind to it. The mind part is not there. As far as i know, there are no lithium battery manufacturers in the USA at all.

[wiredsim]

I live in a town with two major lithium battery plants (Holland, MI) and can tell you first hand that lithium battery production in the US is real. The thing is we as a nation are starting from behind, and these plants aren't an overnight thing. They are really more like a chip Fab then your standard factory..

Honestly we wouldn't even be where we are now without government investment. I often see the same people complain about tax payer money being spent on this industry and at the same time complaining because no one is making them in the US. Gee why do you think that is?

The other issue is the reluctance of american manufacturers to sell straight to end users. Not much us going to change that for now, all US production is largely booked for contracts anid three legal environment makes it difficult to sell as we would like them to.

Saft is the most likely I've seen to sell smaller quantity of cells without a huge issue, so that will be interesting once production is fully underway, they are in the process of building more plants. I think it likely that within the next few years there will be access to american made cells for hobby users, but I doubt if it will bee straight forward.. Nor will it be the Budget option.