I look forward to the lowering of gas prices due to electric vehicles making an impact. That has yet to happen but will hopefully before to long.

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1180

Lithium is too expensive as it is with the North Dakota source drying up after 40 years of mining. There is spudomene apparently in Canada, Australia, and Bolivia, but that mineral has to be processed with caustic chemicals to extract pure Lithium Carbonate. Commiting to 100,000 large format Lithium ION batteries will not dent the car market much. There are 170k gas stations in the U.S. alone serving probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 170+ million cars and trucks. To scale up EV
production in order to address peak OIL, Lithium is not the answer.
At the rate fuel cell technology is coming down in cost and getting better, fuel cell cars are the way to go.

To extract Lithium from sea water, you are talking 70 parts per billion concentration. Those are very low concentrations. It
makes more sense to electrolyze sea water for hydrogen and
use the hydrogen for PEM fuel cells. Sea water by the way is easier to electrolyze than fresh water. The seawater can be electrolyzed by solar, nuclear, or wind powered ships.

Fortunately, the advancement of the Volt gas/electric hybrid will further electric drive where the battery can be replaced with a fuel cell and a hydrogen source once the technology becomes practical.
I firmly believe in six years time that the automakers will be able to
say, fuel cells are practical and they are the best option for replacing the internal combustion engine.

Most Lithium comes from salt lakes which are lined with toxic PVC plastic. Lithium is an alkali metal that is highly toxic. Breathing Lithium dust can cause pulmonary edema and death. If it’s true that 50% of the world’s current Lithium reserves are in Bolivia or Chile, that could make these South American countries the new OPEC. Retrieving Lithium from sea water is impractical, so forget about that idea. Lithium mining can absorb an excessive amount of a region’s drinking water.

Now then: tin, nickel, zinc, etcetera are much safer to mine and much more abundant than Lithium.

Sadly, most Lithium ION batteries last about 3 years and then get thrown out. GM wants us to believe that it has invented a Lithium ION battery that will last 10 years… Yeah right. In Europe, 25% of the Lithium batteries that are produced MUST be recycled. Mine to
wheels, Lithium is very harmful to the environment if it has to travel half way around the world to become part of a battery.

Need I mention that Lithium being highly reactive tends to be chemically bonded to other elements?

Drinking water shortages are real and exist today all over the world.
A mining process that is water intensive which pollutes water will only exacerbate this issue. China, Bolivia, and Chile are the major sources of Lithium right now with Brazil potentially being another source. Lithium ION batteries themselves may not be toxic, but the mining procedures that are used to recover Lithium are. The more recycling of batteries that happens, the less mining that is
needed. Currently in the U.S., battery recycling is not commonplace at all. There is some Lithium mining in the U.S., but
the bulk of the mining happens in China and South America. This
is why LG Chem is a Chinese company.

A green automobile is one that doesn’t pollute the air which is made from locally available materials so that you don’t have to excessively pollute the air building it.

What we’ve seen recently (last summer) is how little it takes to make the price of oil suddenly double as supply more than halves.

What am I doing? This is an old thread!

My bad about the temperature of the wire! It’s easy little sloppy about that when I’m hooking up power tools to the wall-socket, where voltage is more-or-less fixed…

If I’m going to be pedantic, I’d better get it completely correct.