Concerns over lithium supply

The prospect of weaning our dependence from oil is wonderful, but in cars and other devices that can't be simply plugged in, something has to replace combustion engines. In the absence of any new breakthroughs in technologies like fuel cells, that something is batteries.

The state of the art in battery technology has been lithium-based for years, and there's no real candidate to replace it on the horizon. Lithium-ion cells provide a nice balance of power generation and light weight, which has made them the standard for all sorts of gadgets from the tiniest Bluetooth headsets all the way up to power tools. Now lithium batteries are making their way into electric vehicles (nickel-based batteries had been the standard in hybrid cars for years), and that shift is finally causing observers to worry that the supply of lithium may be stretched.

The Inquirer notes that we aren't really in danger of running out of lithium, but since it is produced by evaporating water from salt flats, the amount of lithium that can be produced globally can't be easily increased, nor can production be quickly "ramped up" like you could with a traditional mine. Creating salt flats isn't simple, and it's also environmentally damaging, so there's worldwide resistance to exploring new areas for them.

What's the upshot? Until research into batteries that use zinc, iron, silver, and other more readily-available materials advances to a state where the batteries meet or equal what lithium can do already, expect to see lithium prices start to rise, possibly dramatically. 

Read more at The Inquirer: Lithium supply in danger