China Reaches Peak Gasoline in Milestone for Electric Vehicles – Slashdot

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China can divert petroleum refinery capacity towards stockpiling fuel for ships, tanks and aircraft.
That is not how oil refining works.
To put it simply, you basically get a fixed amount of each kind of fuel (barring expensive chemical molecule level reactions)
Theoretically EVs are replacing both diesel and gasoline engines in China, as there is a much higher proportion of non-commercial diesels than you’d find in the US.
Naphtha and gasoline can be used to thin out your heavier fuels in cold climates, that’s something I believe they still do to marine diesel. And not making gasoline and collecting more naptha can make plastic production even cheaper, or allow manufacturing to continue even under war rationing.
While you mention “expensive chemical molecule level reactions” – I’d argue that to a point, said reactions aren’t that expensive. We’ve been doing it for decades in the form of steam cracking in order to increase the gasoline fractions.
So it’s more like that we “naturally” get a certain amount of everything.
What lower demand for gasoline will tend to do, I think, is reduce the demand for said reformulations, which should reduce prices(a little) for what gasoline demand is left, as refining shifts back to

China can divert petroleum refinery capacity towards stockpiling fuel for ships, tanks and aircraft.
It’s different fuel, all with longer hydrocarbon chains. You can adjust the mixture somewhat at the refinery, but you can’t turn hexane into diesel.
Ships use bunker fuel.
Chinese tanks all run on diesel.
Jets use kerosene.
As China shifts away from gasoline, they could import less expensive light oil from the Middle East, and more cheap heavy oil from Russia or Venezuela.
Ships use bunker oil because it is cheap, not because they need to. They generally use lighter oils like diesel or kerosene when in harbours because there is way too much sulphur in bunker oil and on-shore workers don’t want to breathe bunker oil exhaust.
Tanks have been multi-fuel for decades. They use diesel because it is cheap and hard to ignite. They can be fueled with gasoline or kerosene and the main difference between diesel fuel and kerosene is that kerosene doesn’t have a defined cetane number.
Jets use kerosene… well, you should get the point by now.
ICE engines are obsolete junk, whatever the fuel.
Perhaps, but until someone invents a battery with the energy density of gasoline, you’re probably not going to see a lot of electric powered tanks and military ships.
That is B.S.
You absolutely don’t need to match the energy density of gasoline, by a factor of 10x.
Yes, ICE engines are that bad.
trucking, light automotive: Clearly EV including trains.
maritime, aircraft: Longterm Probably Hydrogen, perhaps EVs for local/limited range stuff
>> Remote combustion engines
What is this ?
>> In before “EVs are the future”.
EVs are not the future. EVs are the present.
I just want something that can fill in 10 minutes and have me back on the road for another 5 hours in any weather, fairly consistently. Also id like to see the plethora of Ev stations existing on all highways so there is never a wait, before i make a many thousands of dollars mistake.
DITTO
ditto
DiTTo
You and I don’t agree on much very often, but you hit the nail right on the head with this one!!
You are not alone…I see this is the “want” that most average people want…something that is at least as good
Realistically, this is doable in much of the West in about 20-30 years. Basically you will need to refresh local grid in that time frame through maintenance, and while doing that you should install much more capacity and street side chargers that are capable of outputting DC at at least 500kW throughput (with reasonable locally used fast DC charging standard). Megawatt per hour would get you to 5-10 minutes on 100kWh batteries.
This is only something a person complains about when they fundamentally donâ(TM)t get EVs. The current, present, real world ownership of an EV is already way more convenient than gas. I wake up every single morning with a full 400 mile range on my battery. I NEVER EVER have to stop to recharge.
We also take the EV to Canada and Georgia every year from VA – about 650 miles each direction. Itâ(TM)s absolutely simple. There are fast chargers EVERYWHERE and it only takes like 15-20 minutes per sto
THIS.
This is something that EV fanatics don’t get about EVs. The present ownership of EVs is convenient as a second car, or when you’re in the top five to one percent of general population who live in a way that enables both charging at home AND very stable work situation in range of the EV.
For pretty much everyone else, it’s currently suitable as a second car, and as there are less and less married people, most people only have one. They’re utterly unsuitable for “15 minutes city” living, as there’s no way to c
What alternative solution do you have for general mobility, be it maritime, trucking, light automotive or aircraft?
Light automotive and trucking are in your list, in the comments section about how rapidly they’re switching over to electric even in low-GDP-per-capita China?
Remote combustion engines
Nice try, but coal is dying extremely rapidly in the developed world (and is peaking in the developing world, where its percentage-decline was historically over-offset by overall energy consumption growth). Coal got a brief small boost due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but temporary. By contrast, NG combined cycle plants are ~60% efficient (compared to ~25% for non-hybrid ICEs) while transmission losses are single-digit (as are motor and charging losses) – and it burns much cleaner than oil. NG used to be growing as coal died, but now it’s stalling out too. What’s taking over is renewables, continuing their exponential growth rate.
Since an EV bought today will be on the road for 15-20 years, it’s not a question of where power comes from today, but rather, where it will come from over the next 15-20 years on average. And the answer to that is: overwhelmingly low-to-no carbon sources.
Back to the first part:
What alternative solution do you have for general mobility, be it maritime, trucking, light automotive or aircraft?
Transportation is ~27% of global energy consumption. Of it, air is ~11% (3% of global energy consumption) and water freight is ~2,5% (0,7% of global energy consumption). Of these, only about half are long-distance. So you’re talking like 2% of the global energy picture. It’s not a lot, even if one wants to posit no future improvements in energy storage technology.
>Light automotive and trucking are in your list, in the comments section about how rapidly they’re switching over to electric even in low-GDP-per-capita China?
How fast they’re switching in PRC? They’re not at all. Most people still use mopeds and small bikes. Cities, trucking is almost all done on diesel. You can see this in fuel consumption numbers, until the recent economic crash, imports were climbing rapidly.
And for the EVs actually in use, they’re powered by one of the most coal-heavy grids on the p

How fast they’re switching in PRC? They’re not at all. Most people still use mopeds and small bikes. Cities, trucking is almost all done on diesel. You can see this in fuel consumption numbers, until the recent economic crash, imports were climbing rapidly.
This is literally what the article is about. They’re switching fast enough that the total fossil fuel consumption is peaking now and will be going down within the next few years.

Not really, no. The fundamental false assumption here is repairability comparable to that of ICE, and we already know that this isn’t the case. If you EV has any kind of an accident where there’s a risk of damage to the battery, it’s scrapped because no sane insurance company will allow it to stay on the road. Risks of collateral damage from sudden thermal runaway due to internal battery damage is far too great compared to charging more and just scrapping the vehicle. Something you’ll find out if you ever get one to use.
Do we really “know” this? 10+ year-old Teslas are still rolling on the roads as are Nissan Leaves (just with shittier batteries) just fine. Do you have any evidence to support your claims here?

Even if we accept that you didn’t obfuscate any meaningful numbers (which you in fact did, but let’s just grant you every lie of omission as fully true regardless) you still failed to offer any viable solutions and you appear unaware that things like maritime freight is by far the most important form of freight to humanity. Easily observable by looking at the map and noting that pretty much all large cities are co-located to a waterway of some kind.
What is your complaint with OP’s numbers? They seem to overstate the air and water contribution a bit, though it could be a difference between energy vs emission impact or just a different source: https://ourworldindata.org/emi… [ourworldindata.org]
Basically aviation + shipping is ~4% of total greenhouse gas emissions, we can simply ignore those sectors for now.
“Remote combustion engines” ?
Are you referring to ICE engines that are located in remote locations… kind of like driving your EV across country and charging every few hundred miles? … or possibly ICE engines located in areas where the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow?
EVs have the advantage that they don’t require a long, difficult supply chain of wells, pipelines, refineries and trucks to supply energy. Just plug them into the nearest solar, wind, battery, etc. and you have fresh supplies of

Ships use bunker oil because it is cheap, not because they need to. They generally use lighter oils like diesel or kerosene when in harbours because there is way too much sulphur in bunker oil and on-shore workers don’t want to breathe bunker oil exhaust. Tanks have been multi-fuel for decades. They use diesel because it is cheap and hard to ignite. They can be fueled with gasoline or kerosene and the main difference between diesel fuel and kerosene is that kerosene doesn’t have a defined cetane number. Jets use kerosene… well, you should get the point by now.
Multi fuel engines aren’t quite as much of a feature as people think. Just because you can run on multiple fuels doesn’t mean you can top up a tank half full of diesel with gasoline, kerosene, cooking oil, motor oil and a couple of litres litres of Chanel No. 5 perfume. You have to set up the engine to run reliably on a new fuel and then run just that fuel (because reliability is a thing in the military). If you choose to run your tank on a fuel other than what the rest of your army uses you also have to set up your logistics train to source, store and deliver that non-standard fuel. Logistics, for example, is why the Australians run their Abrams tanks on diesel, not jet fuel; apparently most of the rest of their army runs on diesel and making the Abrams run on it massively simplifies logistics for them. For all their multi fuel capabilities most tanks (the US A1 Abrams being an exception it runs on JP8 jet propellant) are always going to run on Diesel for the reasons you mentioned, it’s cheap and so hard to ignite that tanks have even been known to use diesel cans as appliqué armour [wikimedia.org] plus, running on diesel just increases range because of fuel efficiency (unless you are in an A1 Abrams irrespective of what it runs on). The whole Soviet army converted from gasoline to diesel after Japanese troops lit their T-26 and BT tanks up with Molotov cocktails causing large numbers of them to blow up in full Hollywood style during the Nomonhan incident back in 1939. Their reasoning, apart from logistics and fuel efficiency, was that while you can certainly run your entire tank fleet on gasoline you have to add a significant amount of weight in the form of armour protection and fire proofing to the gasoline fuel tanks that you don’t need so much of with fuel tanks full of diesel to achieve the same amount of crew survivability (and contrary to popular opinion the Soviets did care about crew survivability).

Their reasoning, apart from logistics and fuel efficiency, was that while you can certainly run your entire tank fleet on gasoline you have to add a significant amount of weight in the form of armour protection and fire proofing to the gasoline fuel tanks that you don’t need so much of with fuel tanks full of diesel to achieve the same amount of crew survivability (and contrary to popular opinion the Soviets did care about crew survivability).
They obviously didn’t, because they were outright known for tanks without compartmentalized designs. You still need those even if you run diesel and they skipped them on most vehicles.
Light oil is much cheaper to refine.
The situation with Venezuela is sad, the previous administration took a debt so tall it left the country basically indentured to China. Its a 60 billion dollar debt which is only paid in crude oil, terribly slowly, and the worse the price market (which for Venezuela it is $10 less than West Texas) the longer the payment (if ever).
In addition, the current administration is so inept they let the production fall under a million barrel per day, where in other hands it would h
This is largely due to the fact that China’s most popular BEV also happens to be extremely affordable [wikipedia.org].
That being said, if a car like the Wuling Mini were available here in the USA, it probably wouldn’t sell very well because American car buyers tend to utilize financing with long loan terms in order to stretch their monthly budget rather than simply going with a less expensive vehicle. As for the folks who are limited to shopping for inexpensive cars due to budgetary constraints, well, they generally don’t have the best credit scores. You’d pretty much have to be your own B and C lender if you wanted to sell a $6k car in the USA, and I bet you’d be doing plenty of repossessions.
Americans generally don’t buy tiny cars with 40hp motors and a top speed of 62mph.

Americans generally don’t buy tiny cars with 40hp motors and a top speed of 62mph.
That’s because you obviously need a 3 ton V8 truck to drive 2 miles to Walmart. Makes sense.
Seeing that most Americans are often so eager to say that China is the bad guy and should curb its emissions first, when was peak gasoline for the US again?

Why don’t you go lecture people in their 140hp, 3000 lb sedans or hatchbacks instead?
Sure, the same remark can be applied to them.
More generally, a lot of people don’t need as big a car as they think they do. And there is no biais in saying that americans in general (not all of them) tend to have much bigger cars than what they really need.

And there is no biais in saying that americans in general (not all of them) tend to have much bigger cars than what they really need.
The list of top selling vehicles is a pretty good basis for this: https://www.caranddriver.com/n… [caranddriver.com]

Why don’t you go lecture people in their 140hp, 3000 lb sedans or hatchbacks instead?
Sure, the same remark can be applied to them.
More generally, a lot of people don’t need as big a car as they think they do. And there is no biais in saying that americans in general (not all of them) tend to have much bigger cars than what they really need.
Yes, Americans can still choose what to drive, as opposed to being told what to drive. Hopefully that will still be allowed in the future.

I’m sure we will survive climate change, but you may still rue the day you advocated abolition of free will.

Yes, Americans can still choose what to drive, as opposed to being told what to drive. Hopefully that will still be allowed in the future.
I’m sure we will survive climate change, but you may still rue the day you advocated abolition of free will.
Choosing a big car when you don’t need one is not free will [wikipedia.org]. This is just americans being sheeps and doing as the neghbor is doing… Marketing works every time there, and car manufacturers do make more money for bigger models.
Then there is the question of whether your freedom (which is different from free will, see?) to buy a big car that you don’t need, can stomp over my or others freedom to live in a world not fucked by climate change. If you answer yes, I would argue that my freedom to shoot you in the

You are already an example to others, just not in a good way.
You can’t even see the irony of that.
The power of the Dunning-Kruger effect still amazes me sometimes.
So a significant tax on any large vehicle that isn’t bought through a company would be OK then? Since these are _work_ trucks?
That car is an upgrade for people who were driving electric scooters and very old fossil vehicles before.
They make plenty of high end, long range, high speed vehicles too. Nio has several models, which are not available in Europe too (i.e. they meet all European safety standards). They are extremely well built, with premium materials and quality rivalling German brands. They have battery swap technology too – 6 minutes and you are back to a 90% charged battery.
At the more affordable end of the market you ha
You could put in a 60hp motor, get a top speed of 80 mph, and sell it to Americans who are nostalgic for the Geo Metro. And there are a LOT of those out there. You would have to make it survive in an American crash test, though, which is extremely nontrivial. The lightest car to do it of late has been the Smart ForTwo, which is horrendously expensive for what it is. It accomplishes it with a fully boxed space frame, which is not cheap to manufacture.
It’s also mostly absent from the streets, just like pretty much all other basic EV models as their range makes them basically useless and people don’t buy them.
What happens instead is that those basic EVs are made in numbers needed to reach certain tiers of government subsidies, and then used as collateral for loans as a form of effective shadow banking model for auto manufacturers who then park them in massive batches of thousands to be never used. These are the EVs you can see so many videos with people f
That’s not what is happening in China. They are catering to the new middle class market. People who are coming up from electric scooters and old fossil fuel cars. They are targeting people who don’t want to spend 20-30k Euro equivalent on a car, but want something safer and more comfortable, and above all new. They can get used fossil cars, often imports from Europe or the US, as well as domestic models. They would prefer a clean, cheap to run, and brand new car though.
Another advantage is the lack of emissions, which means it can be stored indoors easily. The place where people used to keep their bike or scooter can instead store the car, with no worries about carbon monoxide poisoning.

Another advantage is the lack of emissions, which means it can be stored indoors easily. The place where people used to keep their bike or scooter can instead store the car, with no worries about carbon monoxide poisoning.
Mate, you literally had me rolling on the floor here. Do you hear yourself?
I don’t know in which world you live, but do you really keep your ICE car indoor, running all night? This is basically how you can worry about carbon monoxyde poisoning… Here is a breaking news for you: people have been keeping their ICE indoors for years, and when an ICE is switched off, it doesn’t emit carbon monoxyde.
What a bunch of nonsense.
Oh, it’s Amimojo posting. Nevermind.
Sonlas, I try to assume everyone here is of reasonable intelligence, but are you really this much of a moron?
People do manage to accidentally kill themselves by running cars indoors. That’s one of the reasons why we have separate garages that are usually not heavily insulated – airflow prevents death.
Common mistakes include thinking they will just start the car to warm it up, particularly in the winter with old inefficient heaters. Or starting the car with the intention of going, but then being delayed and
Suicide with car exhaust is not possible anymore thanks to catalytic converters.
That’s only if a lot of things go right – I’ll agree that it’s a lot more difficult these days, but it is still possible, if you have a small enough and tightly sealed garage, the cat isn’t in the best working order, there’s a leak before the cat, etc…
Still doable from eventual CO2 poisoning. It just takes way longer than the old CO method which put you out in a very short order. Now it’s slow exhaustion until unconsciouness na
Remember, most people who do it successfully don’t do the whole “sit in your garage with ventilation off”, but “sit in your car with a pipe from exhaust to interior and ventilation se to to off or circulation”.
If you look on that channel’s about page, it says they are based in the United States. Obviously, because YouTube is blocked in China and although you can use it via VPN, anyone who regularly posts anything critical of Chinese government policy gets their wings clipped pretty fast. It happened to Naomi Wu recently.
So their claim to be using “first hand” reporting is clearly a lie, and from the nonsense they spout it’s obviously they are just milking anti-Chinese sentiment for clicks. But yes, believe their
If you look at the channel more closely, you’ll note that this is a guy who lived in China for almost two decades, who is married to a Chinese woman and most of who’s friends are Chinese.
But as most of the modern Maoists, you see a man of European ethnic origin, see that he’s currently based out of US (where he’s notably also a foreigner, as he’s not American but South African) where he had to flee China to avoid persecution for some very mild criticism of China… and you assume that he has no first hand e

As for the folks who are limited to shopping for inexpensive cars due to budgetary constraints, well, they generally don’t have the best credit scores.
That’s backward. I have (and have always had) a near perfect credit score because I buy according to my budgetary constraints. I buy (relatively) inexpensive used cars that are in good shape, keep them maintained as well as I can, and drive them until they die. Because of my credit score, I can go to my credit union and get an unsecured $20K loan in less than half an hour if I were so inclined.
Buying a brand new car, which comes with a monthly payment that is three quarters of a home mortgage, would probabl

That’s backward. I have (and have always had) a near perfect credit score because I buy according to my budgetary constraints. I buy (relatively) inexpensive used cars that are in good shape, keep them maintained as well as I can, and drive them until they die.
But would you be interested in something like the Wuling Mini? It’s also likely that after modifications to meet US safety standards and import/tariff fees, it would end up priced similarly to used ICE vehicles which are larger, more capable, and don’t have the range issues of a low-spec BEV. That’s a big part of why this car would be a tough sell, it may be in your budget but would it also meet your needs?
And again, a big part of why new cars simply don’t sell well simply by virtue of being “cheap” is th
Has the US reached peak gasoline yet?
US probably reached peak gasoline in 2018, the drop is likely due to efficiency mandates.
https://www.reuters.com/busine… [reuters.com]
US and China use about the same amount of diesel: 3.8 million barrels/day each.
While China’s gasoline consumption is peaking at around the same number too, the US uses a massive 8.8 million barrels per day.
The good news is that this has been relatively stable for some years (covid excluded) and may already have peaked.
Wait, China is using less gasoline than the US (3.8M barrels/day vs 8.8M barrels/day), but with 5 times the population?
And the good news is that this number has been stable for some years in the US?

Wait, China is using less gasoline than the US (3.8M barrels/day vs 8.8M barrels/day), but with 5 times the population?
China even has more motor vehicles than the US does now. Obviously they don’t drive as much. Aside from the fuel cost, many people are in big dense cities – New Yorkers don’t drive much either. … And the obvious the 2-ton SUV problem in the US. Which has infected Australia 🙁

And the good news is that this number has been stable for some years in the US?
The good news is that it’s not going up, giving us some reason to believe that it’s already peaked (if at a very, very high level) and will begin to decline.
From the Bloomberg article [bloomberg.com], “Electric, fuel cell and battery-swapping options have quickly climbed to 12% of light commercial vehicle sales and 4% to 5% of medium and heavy commercial vehicle sales. That heavy-duty figure is likely to climb to over 10% by 2025.”
That means that the overwhelming majority of new car sales in China is non-electric, i.e., the number of non-electric cars continues to grow much faster than electric cars. It’s really hard to see how that signals an imminent peak in gasoline sales.
What, did they find a way to run vehicles on coal?
China, the same country that rolls out TWO new COAL powered power plants WEEKLY.
China lies about EVERYTHING, there’s no reason to believe this is true. In fact, there’s never any reason to believe anything they say.
I WILL get modded down, because the shilling is hard on Slashdot. People feel threatened by the truth when it doesn’t fit their narrative.
So, let’s see… China reduces oil consumption, replacing it with electricity consumption, generated by oil? Nope, by coal!
China has ample domestic supplies of coal, but it has to import most of its oil. Because this oil mainly comes by sea, in a war with Taiwan, the US could easily cut off this supply in the two or three chokepoints it has to go through, such as the Strait of Malacca. This is one of the reasons they are so active in the east and south China seas.

Huge rare earths price hikes.
There is idle capacity that will come online as prices rise. New battery designs use less rare earths.

Global lithium supply shortages.
There’s plenty of lithium. More of it becomes economical as prices rise. We are close to the point where it’s economical to pull it out of seawater.

Electric grid barely coping with the load.
This is a myth. Existing grids can handle EVs.

Battery cell recyling industry overloaded.
There’s a 10 to 20 year lag between putting EVs on the road and recycling the batteries. There’s plenty of time to prepare.

Increases in electricity demands require more coal-powered plants.
China is installing wind and solar faster than any other country. EVs mesh well with renewables, since they can be programmed to charge when power peaks and stop during troughs.
+5 informative.
+5 Insightful outlook
It’s sad, isn’t it?
The Chinese grid can clearly cope with all these EVs. You can be sure that there would be widespread reports of blackouts in China if it couldn’t. And yet, even in the face of evidence like this, the myth persists.
Chinese EV batteries are the best in the world, and have greatly reduced the use of rare earths. Everyone uses them, including Tesla.
The coal plant thing has been debunked many times. They built loads and then mothballed them due to incompetent local governments, and the rapid a

The Chinese grid can clearly cope with all these EVs.
Well, it can cope because they are adding capacity as much as they can, including coal plants unfortunately.

The coal plant thing has been debunked many times.
Nope.
> You can be sure that there would be widespread reports of blackouts in China if it couldn’t.
The CCP admitting failure ?
Are you high ?
China always lies about what’s happening within its borders to make it seem like everything is always gucci.
Blackouts can’t be hidden from satellite imagery.
If you knew anything about China you would realize that such things would not be, and could not be covered up.
Everyone in China has a smartphone with camera. The firewall can block keywords, but it’s not good at blocking the spread of photos and videos. Not that it even tries with stuff like that.
Some people seem to think that China is like North Korea or something bizarre like that.
We know you’re a CCP shill but seriously, you think people don’t read the news:
2023: https://www.reuters.com/busine… [reuters.com]
2022: https://www.theguardian.com/wo… [theguardian.com]
– you can keep going for several years
The media is willingly blind to much of this stuff, but like California or Germany, government-run electric has frequent (as in at least yearly) blackouts (unlike other places you probably will link that have a once in a 100 year event causing a partial blackout).

If you knew anything about China you would realize that such things would not be, and could not be covered up. Everyone in China has a smartphone with camera.
Even the Uighurs. And the people sad about the end of democracy in Hong Kong.

Some people seem to think that China is like North Korea or something bizarre like that.
Well they are both shithole dictatorships with no respect for universally accepted human rights, so there is that.
We know about both those things because China can’t cover them up.

The coal plant thing has been debunked many times. They built loads and then mothballed them due to incompetent local governments, and the rapid and massive rise in renewable energy.
Is that why they began construction on 50GW of coal in 2022 [energyandcleanair.org]? With another 60GW of coal permitted and waiting construction start?
Most of the new plants are replacing older ones. They are more efficient and capture more of the emissions. It’s a shame they can’t be replaced with something else, but at the same time China is also leading the world with renewable energy deployment.
We had the same thing with Germany. “Look! They are building new coal plants!” they wailed, but they were closing them even faster at the same time. Just as importantly, they had already set a sunset date for those plants in the 2030s, i.e. they were legally on
Except both Germany and China are importing and burning coal at record pace these days. Germany increased coal usage by 20% year-over-year, China nearly 5%.
Germany is just having a bit of a rebound after COVID. They have been on a downward trend for many years.
Cherry picking timeframes? Why am I not surprised.
“a bit of a rebound” is not 1/5th for 3 years in a row now.
According to the stats, coal accounts for more than twice as much electricity (36%) as nuclear (14%), while “other” (aka renewables) accounts for just 2.7% of the total. In 1990 coal accounted for 28% of electricity production, so electricity consumption from coal has gone back ~30-50 years in just 2 years after the failed Energiewende.
A couple notes:
  * Batteries don’t use rare earths at all. That’s motors. But not all motors. Also: “rare earths” aren’t rare.
  * Not only is your point about the lag between production and recycling correct, but it’s worth mentioning the result of this: because production grows at about 50% YoY, by far the vast majority of battery recycling is actually of *production scrap*. 🙂 All producers of course have recycling partners, as nobody has an interest in throwing away crates full of what’s effectively high-grade ore.
 
Lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite are crucial to battery performance, longevity and energy density. Rare elements like these are essential for both batteries and electric motors and they are becoming increasingly hard/expensive to find and extract, to the point that for consumer products they are unlikely to offset the carbon output of other established systems.
Eg. it is possible to extract lithium from sea water, but you’ll need to burn a LOT of energy to do so, more than the energy it will e

Lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite
“Rare elements like these”
The rare earth elements [wikipedia.org] are: Scandium, Yttrium, Lanthanum, Praseodymium, Terbium, Dysprosium, Neodymium(used for magnets primarily), Cerium, Europium, Lutetium, Gadolinium, Holmium, Thulium, Ytterbium, Erbium, Samarium, and Promethium.
Dude, Graphite is carbon. It’s all over the place.
Element frequency: [wikipedia.org]
Maganese is #12 at 0.095%
Carbon(graphite) is #17 at 0.02%
Nickel is #23 at 0.0084
Cobalt is #31 at .0025
Lithium is #33 at 0.002
Lead is less common than this stuff. Gold, silver, bismu
Indeed, costs estimates for seawater extraction have gotten staggeringly low, now a mere estimated $5/kg [acs.org] (carbonate-equivalent). While I don’t expect some massive switchover from mature terrestrial resources to (immature) seawater resources, it’s a nice backstop.
Lithium is a relatively easy ion to selectively pass through membranes or intercalate – Li+ is small compared to other monovalent cations (76 angstroms, vs. 102 for sodium and 138 for potassium; Mg+2 is about the same size as Li+ (72 angstroms), bu
Oh, and re: other “battery elements” it’s worth mentioning that batteries don’t need nickel, cobalt, or manganese (seriously, manganese is on their list of “rare elements”? The most common alloying agent in steel? Nickel is also common in most grades of stainless steel as well; cobalt less common but in tool steels, also used in oil refining). Lithium iron phosphate is currently taking over as the dominant cathode, and that’s formed from iron (the most common metal) reacted with phosphoric acid (one of th
Yes there are, cobalt and lithium are part of most lithium batteries these days.
>> And all those lithium batteries going into landfills today by the tens of thousands are just magically not there.
B.S. with “citation needed”
>> Are you telling us…. invest massively into grid… is wrong?
Nope. Infrastructure needs to improve, evolve, and adapt.
Distribution can cope with 100% EV.
Power generation still needs to get rid of fossils.
The big improvement still needed is long term storage, and “smart” management, on load and generation side.
5% of batteries or 5% of mass of lithium in batteries? It’s a very good scare statistic if it’s the former, given the number of tiny lithium batteries in domestic consumer items.
I also note that the article is US-centric. Round here there are warehouses containing lithium batteries for recycling, and companies waiting to get started on recycling it as soon as there is sufficient stock built up.
5% of mobile phone batteries.
Yeah. Try to recycle those small things.
that is pure greenwashing. Does not happen in reality.
>> In most countries, especially in China EVs are remote combustion engines.
That is just B.S.
> > New battery designs use less rare earths.
> “It will just materialize, magically”.
On the off-chance that you really haven’t heard about this, here are a few articles.
    For EV batteries, lithium iron phosphate narrows the gap with nickel, cobalt [reuters.com]
    Here’s why battery manufacturers like Samsung and Panasonic and car makers like Tesla are embracing cobalt-free batteries [cnbc.com]
> > There’s plenty of lithium.
> “It will just materialize, magically”.
The reports of lithium shortages are due to logistics, not lack of the material. The world has plenty of easily-accessible Lithium. It’s just a matter of ramping up manufacturing. More info:
    Lithium producers warn of a global supply shortage for electric vehicle demand [mining-technology.com]
> > There’s a 10 to 20 year lag between putting EVs on the road and recycling the batteries. There’s plenty of time to prepare.
> And all those lithium batteries going into landfills today
Car recycling (junk yards) were a big business before EVs, and will be even bigger for EVs. Nobody is throwing EV batteries into landfills – that’s a myth. The problem with EV battery recycling today is that there simply aren’t enough end-of-life EVs yet. That will change as EVs continue to become more popular.
    JB Straubel On Redwood Materials [cleantechnica.com]
    “One of the issues facing Redwood Materials is there are not yet a large enough supply of used EV batteries to meet the need for recycled materials…”
>For EV batteries, lithium iron phosphate narrows the gap with nickel, cobalt [reuters.com]
No, it doesn’t. It’s still the same basic chemistry with same basic limitations. Just because reuters reports on “yet another revolutionary advance in batteries TM” doesn’t mean that it’s any more real than the dosens of previous stories on the same subject, all of which never materialised into an actual product.
It’s still about 20% worse in terms of energy density, and automotive batteries are still hugely problem

>There is idle capacity that will come online as prices rise. New battery designs use less rare earths.
“It will just materialize, magically“.
No, there is no ‘magic’ involved, thanks to progress through scientific research, new battery designs will become available but you get some anachronism points for recycling an argument thrown at Rudolf Diesel back in the late 19th century when he suggested there might be a better way to power ships and heavy machinery than coal fed steam engines.

>There’s plenty of lithium. More of it becomes economical as prices rise. We are close to the point where it’s economical to pull it out of seawater.
“It will just materialize,magically“.
No, again there is no ‘magic’ involved, thanks to the ingenious workings of the free market, investment in mining operations will be increased as the demand for l
> He is saying that existing grids can handle EVs and any needed grid expansion is a solvable problem
There’s a bit of wishful thinking here though.
Ramping up grids is a time intensive task, and gets more and more expensive as you exhaust good sites to build said expansion.
Current grids are at capacity or near capacity during peak times with current low EV adoption. If EV adoption explodes, peak usage is going to go over capacity for quite a few grids around the world.

Current grids are at capacity or near capacity during peak times with current low EV adoption.
EVs don’t charge at “peak times”.
I come home, plug in my EV, and … nothing happens.
Then at 2 AM, it automatically starts charging. That is when the off-peak rates kick in.
My car already supports interactive charging, with the utility company telling it when to charge and when to stop. My utility doesn’t support that yet, but that will happen in the near future.

No, there is no ‘magic’ involved, thanks to progress through scientific research, new battery designs will become available but you get some anachronism points for recycling an argument thrown at Rudolf Diesel back in the late 19th century when he suggested there might be a better way to power ships and heavy machinery than coal fed steam engines.
And Rudolph Diesel need not fear being eclipsed in history by wind/solar/battery powered container ships anytime soon.

>There is idle capacity that will come online as prices rise. New battery designs use less rare earths.
“It will just materialize, magically”.
They’ve been already tested at the moment, e.g.:
Lihium-Sulfur Battery [wikipedia.org]
Supercapacitors [wikipedia.org]

>There’s plenty of lithium. More of it becomes economical as prices rise. We are close to the point where it’s economical to pull it out of seawater.
“It will just materialize, magically”.
Musk stated that there’s enough Lithium and very little is needed for a battery – it’s just like a salt in your salad.

>This is a myth. Existing grids can handle EVs.
Are you telling us that everyone who is even remotely serious about rolling out EVs at scale desperately trying to get grip companies do invest massively into grid… is wrong?
Grids naturally are being expanded, and some study shows that work done during normal maintenance is enough to keep up, additionally e.g. we’ve been phasing out incandescent bulbs for a while now, which caused drop in normal electricity demand: https://energyathaas.wordpress… [wordpress.com]

>There’s a 10 to 20 year lag between putting EVs on the road and recycling the batteries. There’s plenty of time to prepare.
And all those lithium batteries going into landfills today by the tens of thousands are just magically not there. Remember, they never get damaged in use. EVs don’t have accidents. Batteries always last at least 10-20 years, and EV batteries are perfectly safe even after crashes to be reused. Magically. All the insurance companies scrapping EVs even after minor crashes for safety reasons are fear mongering, and probably Big Oil something something.
Already at the moment, car bat

Wind and solar farms take up 15 times more land than Nuclear
That is true, but is an idiotic metric.
The important metric is the cost per kwh. Wind beats nuclear by a factor of four.
For those who don’t know, the only foreigners still posting videos out of China in person are the paid shills under strict control of the CCP. Just before the pandemic, there was a purge of foreign bloggers in China, where you were either signed on to spout party line of the day or were exiled out of the country.
So if you get one of those “let me show you dancing Uighurs, they’re so happy” crowd that remained in China and gets very few non-botting views, it’s usually one of the hired propagandists who were
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