RE: Zulu29 Apr 2018 17:58
million electric cars produced in North America means 45,454,000 kg/ 100,000,000 pounds or 45,454 tonnes /50,000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) has to be mined just for Tesla�s North American electric vehicle production � and Tesla has promised to source North American lithium. Elon Musk, Tesla�s CEO, also has plans to build four more Gigafactories other than the one currently being built in Nevada. And it's not just about the US. China is also building lithium-ion megafactories, and by 2020 these are expected to grow global production capacity by six times.
Think about those global 32,730,000 lithium battery packs.
If each used the same amount of lithium carbonate as Tesla�s electric vehicles, that�s 1.487 billion kilograms/ 3.273 billion pounds or 1,487,727 tonnes /1,636,500 tons of new lithium carbonate demand.
Current annual production of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE), for all purposes, stands at about 230,000 metric tonnes.