Warning - I'm taking these numbers from an Electrek article and they seem an order of magnitude high compared to Jack Ricard. I tend to trust Ricard so I'm looking for issues with my math -be forewarned!
28,000 Tons - That's your lithium needs at Tesla's (Gigafactory) GF 1 in Sparks Nevada if they get to full blast production. This allows them to produce their target of 35 GWH of battery storage a year. So each Gigawatt hour of storage requires 800 tons of Lithium hydroxide if Electrek is on target.
Reference 1:
Electrek.co Tesla-lithium-supply-agreement-china-producer-batteries
( Electrek quote: "If Gigafactory 1 reaches its goal of 35 GWh of battery cell production by the end of the year, it is estimated to need about 28,000 tons of lithium hydroxide per year." This is sourced from Bloomberg - quote "Tesla may need as much as 28,000 tons of lithium hydroxide a year from late next year based on battery output at its Nevada facility reaching the equivalent of 35 gigawatt hours, according to Benchmark Mineral’s forecasts. " )
Note the way the quotes above inflate so again a warning that my estimates using it looks high.
This last year 2018 GF1 produced 1.1 GWH of Powerpack and Powerwall storage. Tesla Fremont produced 245,240 (Electric Vehicles) EV's in 2018. So we can extrapolate GF1 car GWH by 245240 x 75kwh = 18.4 GWH or 19.5 GWH with energy products. So estimate GF1 is for 2018 running at 56 percent of their possible production. Again a round estimate at total car lithium is 18.4 x 800 tons = 14,720 tons of lithium in Tesla 2018 EVs.
As usual the bloviating paid for shills of oil are spinning this as environmentally worse than their smoking clanking infernal combustion machine production and oil to gasoline production costs.
Let's go with a back of the envelope calculation:
35,000,000,000 / 75+ KWH = 450,000 Model 3's at full blast if the Model 3 continues to sell. So basically all Fremont could handle. Sounds ballpark. For now let's work with 2018's production of 245,240 EV cars at 18.4GWH of Gigafactory 1 output requiring 14,720 tons of Lithium hydroxide.
Each US ton would .63 cubic meters and 14,720 tons stores in 9273.6 cubic meters - about 100' by 150' by 20' high warehouse room would store that. Two rooms for the GF1 at full blast to store a years worth of lithium hydroxide for electrolyte. About 200 tractor trailer loads a year - less than 2% of what a big container ship delivers. So when a you think of the Lithium Hydroxide in your battery on a TM3 be thankful for a 60 lb cube of the stuff 11 inches on a side that has been mixed with liquid to become electrolyte for 4416 individual battery cylinder cells.
Don't believe the hype that this is worse than say the rare earths in the multiple catalytic converters that a gas car requires over it's life. My Honda Civic at 180,000 miles took 2 replacements at $1300 each for a total of three during it's ten years of service with me.
14,720 x @$20,500 per ton = $302,000,000 in EV Lithium hydroxide cost a year or $1230 a 75kwh car.
https://www.globalxfunds.com/benchmark-what-drove-lithium-prices-in-december/
But wait that's 60 lbs of Lithium hydroxide - didn't we previously estimate Li content at tops 20 lbs for the Model 3's 75kwh 1050 lb battery sled? Remember anhydrous Lithium Hydroxide is three times the weight per mole of straight lithium - or about three times the weight for similar volume. So maybe our Li element weight is still ballpark if high. Remember also Elon's projection of $100 per kwh for raw batteries this year? So your sled in the Tesla Model 3 is basically the world's finest $10K magic carpet - $7500 batteries and $2500 (SWAG) in the integrated penthouse electronics.
Again - trying to see if our estimate continue to stay in the ballpark - Jack Rickard mentions an eyedropper full of electrolyte is all that's needed in a 2170 individual battery cell. That's about a half a milliliter in a standard prescription bottle. He mentions the electrolyte liquid is ethylene carbonate. So a guess would be 1 ml x 2208 = 2.2 liters per pack. 2.2 liters seems too low volumn to be the solvent of the electrolyte so I continue to find the numbers for Lithium Hydroxide high.
I'm going to continue to recheck and resource these numbers - as the lithium amounts and costs compared to Jack (a serious battery expert) seem high. Please feel free to comment on any errors you see. For the moment it's an upper bound as we look for better numbers.
Jack Rickards Latest in Depth Discussion of the Model 3 battery pack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nhQw7iGukE
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