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Gold/Mining/Energy : Mining News of Note -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LoneClone who wrote (74390)	1/22/2011 6:14:12 PM
From: LoneClone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 192884

Lithium in, palladium out as electric car bandwagon develops Some thoughts on the advancing mood favouring electric vehicles, their potential speed of development and the likely long term effects on the global lithium and palladium markets. Author: Lawrence Williams Posted: Tuesday , 18 Jan 2011 mineweb.com LONDON - Palladium was the fastest advancing metals commodity last year in price terms, but if one wants to look ahead really long term - say a decade or two - palladium's and other pgms' days as autocatalysts could be numbered as the electric car firstly becomes reality and then comes to dominate as the internal combustion engine vehicle is driven to extinction. In this time of climate change correctness, governments will be taking decisions to ‘green' us all, and with the weight of the media and of politicians not wishing to appear to rock the boat, the individual will probably also be coerced into buying electric, or at least hybrid, vehicles even if they are more expensive than their fossil fuel driven alternatives. This whole process could happen far faster than we currently envision. Once the bandwagon starts rolling it would be difficult to reverse it, even if one wanted to. And let's face it, if the current shortcomings of electric vehicles can be overcome - notably range, performance and cost - who wouldn't switch to a non-polluting, virtually silent, means of transportation regardless of climate change. And governments may well indeed provide incentives - and develop infrastructure, to support such a move. If a Reuters report today is correct, and we have no reason to believe it isn't, the Chinese government is actively looking at providing at least 10 million - yes 10 million - specialist parking spaces for electric vehicles by the end of this decade. And we assume by specialist parking spaces these would include their own battery charging stations as, at this stage in their development, range between charges, together with charging time, is the potential Achilles heel for the all-electric vehicle. Admittedly, by the end of the decade Chinese auto production could be as much as 50 million units a year so autocatalysts won't have had their day by then on these projections, but the writing will already be well on the wall. Nonetheless, all-electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf are already hitting the market. In the U.K. at least we have had electric milk floats on short local delivery runs for years and these will have run on lead acid batteries with a very short range and slow speeds. But even these low-tech vehicles do show that there is a usage in an urban environment where few journeys may be much longer than 10-15 miles - most probably less in a run to the local supermarket. But, of course, if you want to use your electric vehicle to visit friends or relatives perhaps a hundred miles or more away, or travel distances on holiday etc. the true electric car is not really a practicable option - yet. But as technology progresses, which it seems to at enormous speed nowadays, battery range may well be extended until it becomes equivalent to, or perhaps in excess of, that of a fully fuelled internal combustion vehicle. If charging times can also be brought down to a similar time as for refuelling a car as well then there is literally no contest. The electric car will win hands down and the petrol (gasoline) driven vehicle be confined to the history books, museums and private collections only to brought out for vintage car rallies (for which a special permit will also be required to allow such polluting vehicles on the roads). Climate change or no, the reduction of pollution envisaged by such a change will be staggering. Even today, once enough such vehicles become available, and as oil prices and fuel taxes continue to rise, the typical two-car family may well go for one electric vehicle just for short distance trips plus an internal combustion one as standby and for longer distance driving. Longer term the internal combustion engine - at least for motoring - may even be outlawed, not that it will happen in my time! Hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius or the Chevrolet Volt may serve increasingly to fill a gap in the meantime, with electric power for shorter distance trips and an internal combustion engine kicking in when the battery dies down. This, and regenerative electric braking systems will help repower the battery and reduce recharging times when a charging point is reached. But what will this do for metals? Well as we surmised at the beginning of this article once the electric vehicle is dominant, palladium's use as an autocatalyst would seemingly be dead and buried - platinum too, although alternative uses may be found. At the moment lithium would be the major beneficiary as it is some form of the lithium-ion battery (perhaps supported by that other metal of the moment, vanadium, which appears to help extend a battery's power over its charge time) which is the dominant lightish weight battery technology. If by say 2025 the world will have mostly switched, then global lithium supply may start to be stretched to support the demand. People will then soon be talking about peak lithium as the huge Chilean, Argentinian and Bolivian salars start being diminished. But then some other battery technology - or non-polluting vehicle technology - may be developed - think solar and fuel cell - and lithium could also then be beginning to have had its day reverting to a fraction of the demand it may have experienced in the interim. Who knows what the future of technological advance has in store for us and the global metal markets?