I also agree that we will see far more vertical intergration in the EV supply chain from mining through to EV production. But I don't think the downstream battery producers or the EV producers will be the miners, but at the mine suspect they will certainly be in a JV but certainly not the operator of the mine. A bit like you see in say LNG where the power companies in Japan/China have stakes in Australian LNG projects, but are not the operator of the upstream gas production and LNG facilities themselves (but share allocation of costs etc etc). Certainly I can see EV battery makers and car producers taking stakes in companies, particularly prospective lithium/graphite/rare earth/etc companies that are needed to fill the supply gap to meet EV demand.
For background, 7 kg lithium metal is equivalent to a battery size in EVs of 41kWh (7 * 5.3)/0.9, whilst 10kg is equivalent to a battery size of 59kWh. So that gives the gauge of what is reported as it does align with the kWh battery kWh generally reported for EVs. So expect more kg the higher the battery size - refer
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I
f your battery size in an EV is 50kWh, then effectively you need 45kg LCE (50*0.9) in it. So 1 tonne LCE is equivalent to 22 EV batteries or t
aking this to 6% grade spodumene, in effect gets you 2.93 vehicles (22 EVs/7.5 tonne coversion). Clearly downstream players need raw materials.
Demand - lithium
This post gives lithium demand and how it translates to number of 6% grade spodumene mine equivalence (converting brine/hardrock to spodumene basis) -
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Just taking an example from the embedded post of 5000 GWh from the embedded post, you can see the number of mines needed, noting it will be far more than this because the majority of mines will not achieve 80% recovery an some certainly won't be able to serve the hydroxide market -
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Reason for post
There is one key element not discussed on lithium forums, been how improving lithium recovery in batteries will reduce EV costs. This is where a single source or two source spodumene supply is a benefit for a battery producer IMO because this is where significant cost savings can be made in lithium (and probably other battery materials). Been in a JV at the mining stage, downstream producers might have better luck in ensuring the LCE per kWh will head closer to the theoretical efficiency of the actual lithium need in batteries (the need for solid state batteries is higher than typical batteries, so not dealing here with solid state batteries in these conversions of theoretical efficiency). Currently you need roughly 0.9 kg per kWh, whilst the theoretical efficiency is closer to 0.4 kg per kWh.
The s difference as to why the theoretical lithium content in batteries differs to what you may see is simply that the batteries don't operate at 100% efficiency, and there are a number of reasons why, which are best explained in these links below. Reasons are among others irreversible capacity loss, discharge loss, cycle life capacity fade. IMO this is where I think the next phase of development will happen - improving battery efficiency to reduce the cost and thus exacerbate quicker EV takeup. Why this drivel - I think it is going to be a lot easier for battery makers to ensure they have a single source supply or few source supply options where been at the ground level (JV at the mine) they are able to get a better handle of the METs and what might need to be done to ensure that when they make the battery they can improve the efficiency and thus ensure greater energy density from each unit of lithium in the battery, thus getting closer to the theoretical efficiency, and that means lower cost.
All IMO IMO
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For those wanting to understand this I did this a while ago in excel and the spiel is below - and refer to section 2 of this post if want to know when I did this -
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Would be interested if others have done a similar exercise. I did the below, when seeking to understand the articles above.
2. You get one electron per lithium atom, and there are 96485 coulombs per mole of electrons (or what some may refer to as the Faraday unit of charge)
3. Further more you have 3 electrons and 3 ions in lithium so becomes 1:1 so probably makes conversions easier
4. One ampere is one coulomb per second.
5. One Amp Hour (Ah) therefore equals 3600 coulomb (60*60)
6. Theoretical lithium content becomes 96485/3600 = 26.80 AH, then divide by 6.94 grams/mole and you get 1 gram lithium = 3.86 Ah (or 0.26 grams lithium i= 1 Amp)
8. 1000 Watt Hours = 1 kWh so divide 1000/14.282 = 70 g of pure lithium per kWh. If voltage is say 3.2V * 3.86Ah = 12.352 and divide this by 1000 and you get 81 g pure lithium per kWh
9. Multiply point 8 outcomes by 5.3 (to get to lithium metal) and you get a theoretical 371 grams of LCE per kWh of battery capacity, or 0.371 LCE per 1 kWh.
(20min delay)