Nissan Motor will use about 4 kg of lithium in each electric car battery produced at its new UK plant, according to Florian Wunsch, the company’s business development manager for electric vehicles in Europe.
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Reuters said the figure gives investors an idea as to the future demand for lithium, as automakers vie to be the first to make and sell mass-produced EVs.
Nissan said last month it would invest more than GBP200m (US$328.6m) in a new UK plant to produce 60,000 lithium-ion batteries a year over the next five years, for electric cars.
Wunsch told Reuters the Nissan Leaf battery would have a capacity of 24 kilowatt hours and uses roughly 4kg of lithium. Earlier this month, the automaker took the wraps off the much-awaited EV.
The news agency noted that the auto industry is far from united on whether lithium ion or nickel metal hydride batteries will power the electric cars of the future.
“There is a lot of conversation about lithium ion batteries out there in the market,” said Wunsch. “Very few automakers seem to be able to produce a fully electric car profitably.”
Lithium batteries are already used in mobile phones, digital cameras and laptop PCs. Wuncsh told Reuters: “You get a better capacity for the weight and performance with a lithium battery.”
Wunsch also believes there are ample supplies of lithium to cater for increased battery demand. Bolivia, a poor but resource-rich country, has about 50% of the world’s lithium deposits at about 5.4m tonnes, but he added: “”There is a bit of a myth out there regarding the lithium supply for Bolivia. If you really wanted or had to, you could extract lithium from many regions including sea water.”
He added that lithium resources known today, but not industrialised, would be sufficient for 200 to 300 years of automotive production. “Lithium is available also in other regions. There is no global bottle-neck in the availability of the material as such.”
Global lithium carbonate supply was about 100,000 tonnes in 2008, up 2,000 tonnes from 2007, while consumption was a little higher at 105,000 tonnes – up 2% year on year. Prices for lithium carbonate are currently about US$6/kg.
Although Wunsch did not know Nissan’s long-term plans on securing lithium supplies, he added that any pick up in demand for lithium and electric cars was unlikely to result in a spike in prices for the metal.
