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One consequence of an electric car boom, page-3

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Facthunter

12,018 Posts.

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22/01/18

15:13

Post #: 30471664
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Originally posted by lurka ↑

The lithium mining boom is based on the anticipation of an electric car boom but if that happens, few are mentioning the consequence as far as electricity is concerned.

If there is an electric vehicle boom as foreshadowed by the car manufacturers, having the infrastructure in place sees little planning to meet this. Especially so in Australia where the government is like a rabbit caught in the headlights where energy policy has been failing for years.

It is estimated that there are around 18 million cars in Australia. I'm estimating in Sydney and Melbourne alone there would be around 6.75 million cars. Of these, if just one quarter were replaced by electric cars over the coming decade that would be 1.68 million electric cars, which sounds good for lithium producers who produce the battery component. But there's a catch.

To service this number of electric vehicles would require a lot of new vehicle recharge stations to be built. Yet that is the easy part. The hard part is if just Sydney and Melbourne had 1.68 million electric cars such as a Tesla Model S which has a 85KWh battery, to recharge say once per week, the added weekly electricity demand for these vehicles would be 142 Gigawatts. That is a lot of additional power stations that currently don't exist and they take a long time to build which presumably would be powered from renewable sources else the use of electric vehicles would become a nonsense if coal based was used, so let's presume renewable energy only. Either way it is still a lot of energy to find to run a million cars. And even if most of the lithium ends up in batteries for cars overseas, the problem will remain the same wherever electric cars take off.

I think this is the Achilles heel of the lithium euphoria. Yes, it is easy to charge a single electric vehicle battery, but vast numbers of electric vehicles will see electricity demand quickly outstrip supply. And until that supply is met this will have a huge impact on (1) the cost of recharging the electric car, so questioning its economics, and (2) the follow on impact on the cost of domestic electricity. But at this stage I don't t

hink many are thinking this far ahead.

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Solutions are readily available we could be 100% renewable and sorted if polly's with obstructionist behavior were removed from the picture 10 years ago.
The answer is very simple you get what you vote for.

GXY Price at posting: $3.45 Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
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