Nissan Leaf vs Prius

Great, but until then...

Maybe? Hopefully? Could be? Not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about right now, in my region of the country. And the numbers that i worked indicate my G3 will add (virtually) no less, or no more than what an EV would contribute from plugging into our coal-fired power plant. It's a wash. May not be a wash 10 years from now. Who knows? I don't, and you don't.

In reverse order - What is a more "efficient technology"? As per the numbers shown in a prior post...the efficiency from getting energy from the car battery to drive the wheels is more efficient than an ICE. That we agree on. But, if you work through the numbers (again) back through the grid and into the coal-burning power plant, the efficiency numbers for the entire EV process are about only 5% more efficient than the overall efficiency of a conventional gas-powered car. However, if you compare it to a hybrid, I suspect this too will be a wash (but have not worked those numbers).

Yes, by getting your energy from something other than oil, you reduce the dependence on foreign countries supplying our energy. I agree with that. But to be perfectly blunt - If I had to choose between dependency, and having another coal-plant built in my region to accomodate the additional electrical demand from EV's, sorry, but all go with the dpendency every time. Nobody complains about fossil fuel plants...just so long as it's not anywhere near them.

 

...and good luck to the S. Koreans. So what? You have no idea what their extraction (from the ocean) costs will be, and ultimately, how much of that cost will be passed on to the consumer? My bet is they recognize the limited supply, and are willing to invest big $$, in the hopes of reaping a big return when Lithium demand goes through the roof...


Sorry, but "all the experts" have NOT predicted a price drop for batteries. LOL. And how could anybody, with any shred of cred make such a claim? They can't. It's quakery, plain and simple.

 

Having a 4.8 Billion car reserve of Lithium in Bolivia may not mean the price will fall much, but it will certainly stabilize things, and ease worries about "not having enough" Lithium. That number is almost enough to make an EV car for every person on earth.

"By 2014, the mine will produce 30,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate, more than Rockwood’s mine in Chile, which is the world’s second largest. Bolivian scientists say there are about 95 million tons of lithium under the Uyuni Salt Flat, more than 12 times Chile’s reserves. Car and battery companies want a piece of the action. Bollore and his friend, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, have met with Morales to discuss lithium. Bollore, who controls a multibillion-dollar banking, media and shipping empire, owns a lithium battery plant in France and plans to build electric cars. "

 

If they don't Xcel Energy will be paying a lot of money for violating state law. With what is already in the works we were set to exceed the old legal requirement of 20% by 2020, so they moved the goalpost.

My dad said the demise of the electric car in the early 20th century was a real shame. As noted in my link, the figures for gasoline-powered cars do not include the pollution from Saudi oil fields or Canadian tar sands, the fuel used in transporting it to US refineries or in distributing gasoline. And what coal we burn is almost entirely from Colorado, Wyoming or Montana...

Not to mention the fact that I've never forgotten the Arab Oil Embargo and never forgiven the oil companies for putting us in that position (along with our government).

 

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1531762


The Bolivian Government stability, and their friendliness to the West aside, please provide a credible link that shows their is this kind of reserve that is readily accessible? There are oil reserves in this country - unfortunately they are not economically viable (at this point). Maybe when oil gets to $200 a barrel?

To my point - Do I think that there is enough Lithium barried beneath the earth's crust to support millions of EV's, as well as 100's of millions of laptops and cell phones, etc etc...probably. But getting to it may prove to be a big financial hurdle. But hey, anything can be gotten for a price.

Oh, and can you provide the link that says there is "4.8 billion car reserve". I'd like to look at the caveats and fine print in those numbers. Not that I don't trust what you are telling me, or what they are telling you...but I don't.

 

Any country with a coastline could extract lithium from seawater. Whether there are enough economically viable lithium deposits is certainly up for debate and depends on transportation, market price, etc. As demand goes up the price will go up and supply will follow. Can't be any worse than the direction oil and gas prices will go over the next 10 years.

According to the calculator at codaautomotive.com, I would save $1700 a year just on electricity vs gasoline for the Blazer. Even if the battery only lasted 5 years, $8500 might cover it. If not, the savings in oil changes and other ICE maintenance might be enough to make it work. Not to mention Colorado will give me $6000 to buy and EV (no matter how much I owe or don't on state income taxes).

 

It's the link from post #298
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aVqbD6T3XJeM

Bolivia see's this as a way to bring their country into the 21st century, and improve their country. They WANT hard currency, and want to be brought into the modern world, and see their Lithium deposits as a way to get it done.

"
Lithium for 4.8 Billion Electric Cars Lets Bolivia Upset Market


Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email | Print | A A A


By Michael Smith and Matthew Craze




Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- The wind whips across a 3,900-square- mile expanse of salt on a desert plateau in Bolivia’s Andes Mountains. Plastic washtubs filled with an emerald-colored liquid rich in [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium"]lithium[/ame] dot the Uyuni Salt Flat, all the way to the volcanoes on the horizon.
Waist-high slabs of salt are piled around a pond that’s shimmering in the sun. Francisco Quisbert, an Indian peasant leader known as Comrade Lithium, sits inside a crumbling adobe building on the edge of the desert. He’s explaining how Bolivia, South America’s second-poorest country, will supply the world with lithium, which will be used in batteries that power electric cars.
“We have this dream,” Quisbert, 65, says. “Lithium could bring us prosperity.”
The world’s largest untapped lithium reserve -- containing enough of the lightest metal to make batteries for more than 4.8 billion electric cars -- sits just below Quisbert’s feet, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The automobile industry plans to introduce dozens of electric models with lithium batteries in the next three years. Bolivian President Evo Morales says his country can become one of the world’s biggest suppliers of lithium, making the nation of 10 million people a major player in the drive to cut the use of fossil fuels.
Even with its massive reserves, Bolivia has never built a lithium mine.
‘Lithium Is the Hope’
“Lithium is the hope not only for Bolivia but for all the people on the planet,” says Morales, who, according to polls, was probably elected to a second term in elections yesterday.
If Morales gets his way, he will upset a market now controlled by two publicly traded companies: Princeton, New Jersey-based Rockwood Holdings Inc., which is 29 percent owned by Henry Kravis’s KKR & Co., and Santiago-based Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile SA, or Soquimich.
These two companies produce about 70 percent of the world’s low-cost lithium from a salt flat in Chile, just across the Andes from Bolivia.
Investors are wooing President Morales to be partners in building a Bolivian mine. French billionaire Vincent Bollore, South Korea’s LG Corp. and Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. and Sumitomo Corp. offered to join with Morales in the project. They’re already helping the government at no cost to design the mine.
So far, Morales has rebuffed outside investment, saying he wants to keep lithium in government hands to provide local Indians with jobs. Morales says he may change his mind if Bolivia can’t raise the $800 million it would cost for construction of a mine and processing plants.
‘Like Saudi Arabia’
“If the Bolivian state had the money, it would invest it,” he says. “If the state doesn’t have cash, then we’re going to look for investment.”
Quisbert, the orphaned son of a llama herder, helped persuade Morales in 2007 to pledge $6 million to start work on what could be the largest lithium mine in the world by 2014, says Saul Villegas, who oversees lithium reserves at state-owned mining company Corporacion Minera de Bolivia. Bolivia has 35 percent of the world’s lithium resources, according to the USGS.
“Bolivia could become like Saudi Arabia,” says Gabriel Torres, an economist for Moody’s Investors ­Service Inc. in New York. “It has a huge amount of the world’s reserves.”
Carmakers are betting that electric vehicles built to run on lithium batteries will help the industry recover from its worst crisis in three decades. U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration is providing $11 billion in loans and grants to car and battery makers to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil.
42 New Models
The world’s auto companies plan 42 new electric models by 2012, according to an October study by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Instead of running on gasoline, these vehicles will be powered by lithium batteries that are charged with electricity made in plants fueled by coal, natural gas, nuclear power, solar power and wind.
General Motors Co. says electric cars are critical for the once-mighty carmaker to restore its technical edge after it filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Electric models, such as the Volt, will help GM meet U.S. standards requiring automakers to increase the average mileage of their fleets as much as 40 percent by 2020.
“The Volt remains our top priority as far as advanced technology goes,” GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz says. The company expects the Volt to get the equivalent of 230 miles (370 kilometers) per gallon (3.8 liters) of gasoline.
Treating Depression
By 2020, one in 10 cars manufactured -- or more than 6 million vehicles -- may be powered by lithium batteries, says Carlos Ghosn, chief executive officer of Nissan Motor Co. Car battery sales could jump to $103 billion a year in the next two decades, up from $100 million a year as of October 2009, according to a report by Credit Suisse Group AG. Ventures backed by A123 Systems Inc., Dow Chemical Co. and Johnson Controls Inc. are planning to ramp up production of lithium car batteries or cells.
About 75 percent of commercial lithium is still used for other things: It helps make glass and ceramics heat resistant, it’s a lubricant and it’s used in a drug to treat depression.
No other metal is better at holding a charge and dissipating heat with as little weight, making lithium the best ingredient known to make batteries for electric cars. Such batteries use a derivative called lithium carbonate to hold electricity they get when plugged into an outlet to be charged.
“Lithium is a very important commodity for the battery,” Ghosn says. “Obviously, we’re going to need to import a lot of it. Countries that have reserves of lithium are going to benefit.”
‘Could be a Rush’
Companies such as Apple Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Nokia Oyj started using rechargeable lithium ion batteries a decade ago, and today they are in millions of iPods, computers and mobile phones.
“There could be a rush to grab up supplies of lithium,” says Alex Molinaroli, president of Johnson Controls Power Solutions, part of the world’s biggest car battery maker. “You’ll see different folks positioning themselves to secure rights to lithium in the future.”
Still, electric cars are a gamble. No one knows how many consumers will buy them, and they’re a long way from performing like gasoline-powered vehicles. GM’s Volt, planned for production in 2010, can go only 40 miles before its battery is drained. Then, a gasoline-powered generator kicks in. An owner can recharge the battery by plugging it into an electrical outlet at home.
Starting the Mine
Bolivia’s desolate salt flats are at the center of a global rush for lithium. Villegas, the state mining company executive, says a processing plant will start making lithium carbonate in 2010.
By 2014, the mine will produce 30,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate, more than Rockwood’s mine in Chile, which is the world’s second largest. Bolivian scientists say there are about 95 million tons of lithium under the Uyuni Salt Flat, more than 12 times Chile’s reserves. Car and battery companies want a piece of the action. Bollore and his friend, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, have met with Morales to discuss lithium. Bollore, who controls a multibillion-dollar banking, media and shipping empire, owns a lithium battery plant in France and plans to build electric cars.
In February 2009, Morales, during a state visit to France, test-drove Bollore’s Bluecar. Bollore then told Morales they would fund a $5 million study for a mine and help finance construction of a lithium-processing plant.
‘The 21st and 22nd Century’
“It’s you who controls the raw materials for the 21st and 22nd centuries,” Bollore told Morales, according to a videotape of the meeting. “You are like Saudi Arabia.”
Bolivia is up against big odds, says Eduardo Morales, manager of Rockwood’s mine in Chile’s [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Atacama"]Atacama Salt Flat[/ame]. Bolivia’s salt flat has few paved roads, and most communities don’t have electricity. The country is landlocked; the nearest port is across the Andes, hundreds of miles away in Chile. And Bolivia has no experience mining lithium.
“They will need outside investors,” says Morales, a Chilean national unrelated to Bolivia’s president.
Rockwood and Soquimich can sell lithium for about three times what it costs to produce because, until now, production hasn’t been able to keep up with demand, says Brian Jaskula, a lithium specialist at the USGS in Reston, Virginia.
Evaporating Pools
On Chile’s Atacama Salt Flat in the driest desert on Earth, Rockwood and Soquimich produce lithium from evaporating pools that stretch for miles across a sea of formations made of salt. They create those ponds by pumping out lithium-rich water, and then wait 18 months for most of it to evaporate.
Then, they process the remaining liquid into powdered lithium carbonate. It costs about $1 to produce a pound (454 grams), Rockwood’s Morales says. Rockwood and Soquimich sell the powder for about $3 a pound.
“This is a good business, and here’s the money, right here,” says Eduardo Morales, standing at a 1,000-foot-wide (300-meter-wide) pool filled with lithium-bearing water that looks and feels like olive oil at Rockwood’s mine in Chile.
Rockwood and Soquimich have big sway over prices because they have few competitors.
“That’s what this market is,” Jaskula says. “It’s dominated by one or two big players.”
Lithium Carbonate Prices Jump
Kravis’s KKR created Rockwood in 2000 with the acquisition of U.K.-based Laporte Plc’s specialty chemical business, and four years later acquired the lithium mine by purchasing Chemetall Plc. Under CEO Seifi Ghasemi, Rockwood boosted annual revenue fourfold, to $3.4 billion in 2008.
KKR took Rockwood public in 2005 and reduced its 100 percent stake to 29 percent. KKR co-founder Kravis declined to comment.
In 2009, lithium carbonate prices jumped to $6,500 a metric ton, almost tripling 2006 values, because of surging demand for batteries, Jaskula says.
Swedish pharmaceutical researcher Johan August Arfvedson discovered lithium in 1817. It wasn’t until 1923 that German steelmaker Metallgesellschaft AG began producing lithium on an industrial scale. Bolivia’s government and USGS geologists discovered lithium beneath the Uyuni Salt Flat in 1976.
Quisbert inspired Bolivia to move to the center stage of the market. The orphan took off on his own at the age of 12 to dig minerals by hand from the salt flats of South America’s Andes Mountains.
Generating Jobs
By the time he was in his 20s, in the 1960s, Quisbert was organizing farmers to pressure for jobs and better living conditions.
Quisbert says he became convinced that Uyuni’s lithium, if mined by the government, would generate jobs and revenue that could bring prosperity to the impoverished Indian families who live in mud huts amid the desolation of the salt flat.
Quisbert envisions lithium bringing power to a place where electricity is a luxury. He grew up around Uyuni, which is one of Bolivia’s poorest regions. It’s inhabited by subsistence farmers and llama herders who tend small farms with no electricity. Towns around the salt flat have frequent power outages.
“Roads and electricity come with a lithium mine,” says Quisbert, whose face is tanned and wrinkled from a life in the intense sun of Uyuni. “We still live with candles, with oil lamps.”
Lobbying Government
In the 1980s, Quisbert lobbied the government, unsuccessfully, to construct a mine. In 1991, he organized street protests to successfully block plans by Philadelphia- based FMC Corp. and Soquimich to build a lithium mine in Uyuni. FMC gave up and opened a mine across the border in Argentina.
In 2005, Quisbert’s friend, Morales, was elected as the first Indian president of Bolivia. Morales had grown up poor, like Quisbert, in Bolivia’s Andes, working on farms since the age of 6.
The two men first met in the 1980s, when Morales led Bolivia’s biggest coca farmers union.
As Quisbert pushed for a government-run lithium mine, Morales organized protests that helped to force two presidents from office because they had allowed oil companies to exploit Bolivia’s natural gas reserves.
Both men believed that foreigners had looted Bolivia’s riches, starting with Spanish conquistadors five centuries before, leaving its Indian majority in poverty.
Presidential Palace
Today, Bolivians have an annual per-capita income of $1,716, according to the International Monetary Fund. Bolivia is the second-poorest nation in South America, after Guyana.
“He was fighting for coca; I was fighting for lithium,” Quisbert says.
In November 2007, Quisbert walked into the presidential palace in La Paz, past guards dressed in red uniforms. It was 5 a.m., when the president routinely starts his workday, and Quisbert sat down in the palace’s Room of Mirrors to propose that the government mine lithium.
Morales, who calls Quisbert Comrade Lithium, agreed within minutes, saying the project would provide jobs.
“The president was very enthusiastic,” says Quisbert, who in turn calls Morales Comrade Coca.
The president chose two of Quisbert’s friends and advisers to lead the lithium program. One was Villegas, a tattooed, 34- year-old union leader who’d worked for years with Quisbert, to oversee lithium mining.
Planning the Project
Belgian physicist Guillaume Roelants, who had spent 28 years mining southwest Bolivia and teaching Indians how to farm and mine, was charged with planning the project.
On the Uyuni Salt Flat, engineers fill metal and plastic containers with brine to test how quickly it will evaporate. Workers are building a small plant to test how to process lithium carbonate.
Roelants, the mine planner, is working with car and battery makers who could become investors to solve the challenges of building a lithium mine from scratch.
He set up a committee that includes French mining company Eramet SA; state-owned Japan Oil, Gas & Metals Corp.; South Korea’s LG Chem and state-owned mining company Korea Resources Corp.; Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology; and Bollore. University researchers in Brazil and South Korea, working with the committee, are studying how to process the lithium.
Thierry Marraud, Bollore’s chief financial officer, has technicians testing brine samples. Researchers at Paris-based Eramet are seeking ways to separate magnesium impurities from the brine.
‘Huge Potential’
“We are going to try to evaluate the total potential, which is huge,” Roelants says.
Bolivia is looking, for the first time in its history, to take over bragging rights from Chile. Quisbert is convinced Bolivia can succeed. He sits in his office in a dusty desert town, backed by a portrait of President Morales and the checkered flag of Bolivia’s Indians.
For decades since geologists discovered the Bolivian reserve, political opposition and a lack of funds have gotten in the way of developing it. Quisbert says that will change.
“We want a different Bolivia,” he says. “We want development in our country.”
Battery and car companies around the world are hungry to tap into Bolivia’s massive reserves of lithium. The country is betting that lithium can turn it into a global force in the auto industry.
The odds are stacked against it because of its poverty, politics and lack of know-how. If Bolivia chooses to partner with investors from around the world, it may yet become the Saudi Arabia of lithium.
To contact the reporters on this story: Michael Smith in Santiago at [email protected] Or Matthew Craze in Santiago at [email protected].
Last Updated: December 7, 2009 00:00 EST"

 

I have no idea how this relates to what I said, or what I am talking about?

And mining coal, refinig coal, and transporting coal makes no pollution? Let alone burning it? Hello?

"But coal also has a dark side — its high carbon content means it emits more carbon dioxide than other fossil fuels, giving it a disproportionately big carbon footprint. Add in the ecological costs of mountaintop removal, fly-ash storage and coal transportation, and the black lump loses even more of its luster.

The U.S. Department of Energy and the electric power industry have invested heavily over the years to clean up coal, from its sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides to its particulates and mercury, with some success. Its greenhouse gas emissions, however, have so far defied cost-effective containment efforts. The DOE recently announced $408 million in stimulus money for two "clean coal" power plants — not to mention its $1 billion investment in the FutureGen Initiative — but such technology is still years away from widespread ."

Should oil prices reach a certain level (not sure exactly where that is), we will get our oil from Canada. As with the mining of Lithium - At some point, everything becomes financially viable.

"Crude oil varies greatly in appearance depending on its composition. It is usually black or dark brown (although it may be yellowish or even greenish). In the reservoir it is usually found in association with [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_gas"]natural gas[/ame], which being lighter forms a gas cap over the petroleum, and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saline_water"]saline water[/ame] which, being heavier than most forms of crude oil, generally sinks beneath it. Crude oil may also be found in semi-solid form mixed with sand and water, as in the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_oil_sands"]Athabasca oil sands[/ame] in [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada"]Canada[/ame], where it is usually referred to as crude [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitumen"]bitumen[/ame]. In Canada, bitumen is considered a sticky, tar-like form of crude oil which is so thick and heavy that it must be heated or diluted before it will flow.[5] Venezuela also has large amounts of oil in the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orinoco_oil_sands"]Orinoco oil sands[/ame], although the hydrocarbons trapped in them are more fluid than in Canada and are usually called [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extra_heavy_oil"]extra heavy oil[/ame]. These oil sands resources are called [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconventional_oil"]unconventional oil[/ame] to distinguish them from oil which can be extracted using traditional oil well methods. Between them, Canada and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela"]Venezuela[/ame] contain an estimated 3.6 trillion barrels (570×10^9 m3) of bitumen and extra-heavy oil, about twice the volume of the world's reserves of conventional oil.[6]

 

I asked you first? Provide the link, if you can. LOL.

 

I was, he was discussing Ozone and you attempted to move the goalposts by ignoring his point and acting like he was discussing CO2. I caught you and pointed that out, as politely as I could. Maintaining politeness with you becomes increasingly difficult as you appear to be here to disrupt rational discussion rather than participate in it. I hope for improvement from you. I always feel I have failed when I just ignore everything a poster writes because he says nothing honest or factual. (If it is your job to disrupt this forum, just let us know, we have ignore buttons)

 

You questioned whether I knew what I was talking about regarding Colorado's law requiring 30% renewables by 2020. I was talking about my decision-making process.

Coal is not a particularly happy source for electricity. My point was that imported oil has to be transported a longer distance to the US and then the gasoline to Colorado, than transporting coal mined in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana into Colorado. Comparing gasoline produced from Saudi oil and Montana coal might just be a wash.

Not that they will, but what if Canada's environmentalists convince their government to halt the extraction of oil from their tar sands (they are trying)? What if Chavez decides he really doesn't like us and cuts off all oil exports to the US? And the only refinery in Colorado uses oil extracted from Canada's tar sands. A Canadian Oil Embargo would be really bad for us.

 

Very difficult to have a conversation with somebody who only seems to read what they expect to hear. I don't find it hard to accept that an EV may "come up short" for your "needs." Not hard at all.

The statment was this:
"Electric vehicles are fine in theory but come up short in practice."

And my response was in pointing out that the poster has no experience with the cars in practice. Only in theory. So to the poster, the cars are fine in theory, but come up short in some other theory he has. You do know what "practice" means, right? The people who actually use these cars... in practice... have a different take on them than the people who don't. The fact of the matter is that EVs have not and do not "come up short in practice" (or in theory!) as long as the driver has realistic expectations - in the same way that I wouldn't expect a gas car to have no tailpipe emissions, for example). In fact the theory and the practice of these cars have proved to be quite on par.

I have publicly posted tens of thousands of times about EVs (only thousands here though!). Not once will you hear me say that EVs are the right choice for every driver.Not once will you hear me say that EVs are perfect (well, except for the typical American commute!) Hundreds of times you will find me saying that they are the wrong choice for some drivers. The only thing that keeps me coming back to conversations like this, is the burning desire to correct the ignorant crap that I keep hearing from the people who know nothing about the cars except what they read or "feel" about them. (Ooh, I can't wait to do this....) FACT!

If an EV doesn't work for you, don't buy one. I want them available for those who do wish to buy them and can use them "in practice" quite comfortably. I'm sure that you feel that you're injecting more "reality" into these conversations than I am, since you've said that I'm just trying to convert you to my religion. Please read a bit closer and note that I'm only trying to correct the innacuracies and ignorance that you continue to propose and stick up for from others. FACT!

 

received an email from Nissan Today, here is the important text:

 

I continue to wonder why it is that those few posters who feel the
strongest that the members of this forum at-large are in desperate
need of "education" as they call it don't drive a Prius.

What could have brought them here?
What compels them to stay?
Why are they so unremittingly unpleasant in their dogged determination?
Do they believe they are on a "mission from god?"
What god would that be?

Lord, preserve us from your most ardent followers.

 

yes, most of them live under bridges, normally we call them "Trolls"

 

Rokeby, a simpler explanation would be that they are paid trolls, that covers questions 1 and 2, Question 3 can be answered with a question "What kind of person would take money to lie to people?". Questions 4 and 5 become "you can't serve both God and money".

GM, release us from your paid followers.