lithium car batteries pie in sky, page-4

" Pure lithium metal is vastly more expensive than lithium carbonate, which Peter P seems to have erroneously substituted for it. All of his figures are grossly inaccurate."

As far as I'm aware pure lithium is roughly twice the cost of lithium carbonate - and I doubled an often quoted amount required (1kg). But look, lets make it ten times or a hundred times if you like. It makes no difference the material cost is still dirt cheap compared to the (current) cost of engineering the battery. Since you're accusing me of supplying inaccurate figures - lets see yours. Do you have any?

"The auto industry knows that the lithium price is highly elastic because of extraction constraints and regional political instability. That is why cheaper alternatives are being sought before higher demand appears."

Plenty of alternatives have/are being investigated. None is being pursued by so many major companies with so much money being thrown at it as lithium. If you know of one please share it with us.

"US car industry sales are at a 25 year low and hydrid sales are falling. Bankruptcy of all major US manufacturers is being predicted in their bond ratings and by serious commentators. What worse a set of customers could there be?"

Luckily they're not the only customers. There's also the Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Germans, French and Chinese - all looking at lithium technologies. Toyota, Nissan, Renault, BMW, Mercedes, Tata, Mitsubishi, etc etc. then there's all the customers that aren't even in the automotive world.

"Peter P's disingenuity is exposed by his professed ignorance of "asset confiscations in Argentina". Only last month, the entire nations' pension funds were expropriated by the government. In the 1993 Argentine Crisis, bank failures cost most depositors their entire savings. Argentina is a serially bankrupt nation."

No I'm not ignorant of that - I asked you to name one. Argentina isn't without sovereign risk however I've never heard of anyone having title to a mining lease being stripped from them. Plenty of mining companie shappy to do business there - RIO is currently in process of setting up a huge Potash operation, Vale too.