The problem is that the United States doesn't want to contaminate its own land, so what it does is let other countries process the lithium for American companies at a cheaper price. The same goes for Australia. They transport raw materials from Western Australia to our country, Malaysia, for dirty processing, and then transport the refined rare earths back to Australia. They get the final product, we get the contamination. Another good example is plastic recycling, where waste is collected in the West including Australia, Canada, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, etc. and then dumped in Malaysia. The wealthy West gets clean land and we get trash, all in the name of recycling. You can easily google those facts online.
If your country (insert any here) wants to control the supply chain, they must face the downsides as well. No trade on earth is perfect. You can't complain about contamination but not complain about the profits your country is getting from this transaction. The US could choose this as well, but apparently politicians / corporations in your country deem this "contamination" to be a good trade. If you don't like it, perhaps your country should not offer this kind of business. Nobody is forcing lithium to your country. I would also like to hear more about the contamination you think of, I'd like to discern if it is hearsay / conspiracy theory or a real concern of yours. It sounds great to be against some kind of global scheme, but it takes two parties to tango. China stopped accepting recycling of foreign plastic a while back, why is your country accepting it?
@@htko89 Very true it's very profitable just like China they did this waste management in the 1970s and now the world's leading 'everything' now China and Malaysia dominates the market
A massive volcanic lithium reserve was just discovered in the northwest of the U.S. But the American lithium industry needs to build up its refining and processing capacity; until they do, China will remain the dominant supplier.
Lithium Americas owns what's known as the largest Lithium deposit in the world, in Nevada. Now that all the court cases have been resolved and permits obtained...that is going to change pretty quick. The government is also rumored to be providiing a 1 billion loan to accelerate that mining. They also own a lithium mine in South America. Check out LAC in the market. Rarely have I seen all experts state universally it is a 100% buy and hold. Better get in quick because this stock is going to explode. Also....it's pretty tough to mine a volcano. Maybe in 20 years?
@@DK-ev9dg See Science Times Sept. 11 "Massive Lithium Deposit Unearthed in Nevada-Oregon Volcanic Caldera: A Game Changer for Battery Production?" Estimated reserves 20m to 40m tons, which is more than Bolivia's salt flats. Would be the world's biggest.
BUT SIR MY INDIA IS THE REAL SUPERPOWER NUMBER ONE🤗🇮🇳 WE HAVE THE BEST INFRASTRUCTURE AND HIGHSPEED RAIL 🤗🇮🇳 MEANWHILE IN CHINA PEOPLE STILL RIDE RICKSHAW EVERYWHERE AND THEY ALSO POOR DONT HAVE CAR . THIS WHY IM SO LUCKY LIVE IN SUPER INDIA THE CLEANEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD 🇮🇳🤗 , WE NEVER SCAM! WE GIVE RESPECT TO ALL WOMEN THEY CAN WALK SAFELY ALONE AT NIGHT AND WE HAVE CLEAN FOOD AND TOILET EVERYWHERE 🇮🇳🤗🚽, I KNOW MANY POOR PEOPLE JEALOUS WITH SUPER RICH INDIA 🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳🤗🇮🇳
@@Blau_Max The proof that Wall Street writes Foreign Policy, not any form of democracy allowing consent from the average Citizen. Either way, the Oligarchs in the USA appear to be attempting to create another Gold Rush. Economic pressure to open new forms of delivering profits. Can Capitalism survive?
Everybody: "The sky is falling!" Panic is not science. Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, is one of the most prominent skeptics of anthropogenic global warming and makes very solid arguments.
The US needs to spend money looking after its own people rather than having a cold-war mentality focusing on war and outdoing other countries. It breaks my heart seeing all these people living in tents after my last visit. The future is about countries working together, not against each other.
@@randomguy7175 Zelensky is just a regional player. US, China and Russia trying to carve up spheres of influence in Europe. All this sabre rattling caused Finland to join Nato, a major power grab for the west. To focus only on zelensky is short sighted.
The achilles heel of lithium is it's massive water use in refining. 500,000 gallons per ton. It already uses 1% of all fresh water on the planet, but BEVs are only 2.5% of the new light vehicles. To get to 25% of all new vehicles would required the equivent of all the water in the Great Lakes Michigan and Erie combined! So no matter how much Lithium ore you find most cannot be refined due to a lack of water.
A big difference between lithium mining and fossil fuel extraction is that, when a battery reaches end of life, all the lithium that went into making the battery is STILL in that battery and can be recycled. A point of inflection would occur in lithium mining when lithium from the recycling of batteries will surpass any new lithium that needs to be mined. Over the next decade, the first generation of lithium batteries will be reaching end of life and the recycling industry will really get off the ground.
Nuclear power and de-salination of sea water can be an alternative, though probably expensive. My guess os that the world will turn to more public transit in the future instead of a private vehicle for every human.
@@AgentSmith911 The control of US Government since the mid 1950's has been reflecting a profound investment from the same folks who profit from Fossil Fuel investment. That appears to continue. But as in 1967 when the realization that providing real assets to support currency used to promote the profits of Investors like the Brown and Root Folks who enjoyed a good return on investment that bought them a Senator in 1948, appear to still profit, so the corruption continues. The Currency changed in 1971, but the Oligarchs remained. I assume Capitalism will be the big loser this time.
@@Heist1000 You are right, the US is home to the largest lithium deposit - 7.9 million tons. However various interest groups do not allow it to be mined.
>> The value of lithium is tied to the ability to process the mineral. < LOL. The problem is of mining which could take anywhere between 2+ years. The most pouplar brine extraction method likewise takes anywhere between 2 months to 2 years. It's not the refining process that's the bottleneck or adds the most value.
At any rate, Lithium is only a bridge-gap solution. Lithium will soon be replaced by other materials in the battery. Sodium batteries and Graphene batteries are already on the market.
China is ahead of the US in EV tech because unlike the US, China has to import most of its oil and gas. The EV industry will help China become greener and more self-reliant when it comes to energy imports
Greener probably not so much considering the volume of coal power being brought online, and we can question how their raw resources are being secured. China is doing this for their own independence and for financial reasons, not environmental.
Now imagine if the US and China could just get along instead. The two countries are good at different things, they should complement each other economically.
The US is only interested in global domination and absolute power so that they can bully all nations. China is more interested in modernising China and improving standards of living through production and trade .. I live in Africa and can attest to the fact that China has been uplifting Africans from poverty when the US has been doing the opposite (entrenching absolute poverty) ....The differences btw China and the US is like that of light and darkness....The US represents nothing but evil across the globe...It is why many countries are choosing to work with China and Russia including African countries .....The US has been self destructing for decades and is doing more harm to itself by its current policies....Russia and China are getting along so well because they do not see each other as competition that must be contained
China is winning the race for batteries not because of resources but technology and know-how. Today, the Chinese are 10 years ahead in battery technology. The US needs to run double the speed but the Chinese are willing to double the efforts to keep their advantage. I personally don't think America will catch up... The only solution is to cooperate with china in a win-win deal. America lost the monopoly of power and technology, it must completely change policies. Times of invasions and endless wars of agression are over, we're entering times of either cooperation or annihilation of all...
China's BYD is going to announce sodium ion battery powered cars by next year. This will drastically reduce the price of their low range vehicles. Lithium will still be used but sodium ion will be what will revolutionize the EV space. Lithium will slowly be used for niche vehicles. Ie: Only for long range vehicles.
@@slomo4672 : ESS == energy storage systems. Think Tesla Powerwalls or stationary power grids. Not all batteries are suitable for moving vehicles b/c of weight and EVs are already much heavier than ICE counterparts.
Sodium ion has very low energy density. It will not work on most vehicles. There is a lot of lithium in the world, look at lithium prices in last 2 years
US has probably the most undiscovered lithium deposits under its feet, but it will destroy the environment and the natural beauty of the US. The US should look into sodium batteries as an alternative.
No need the USA has discovered a huge deposit on US soil if you make this kind of video don’t you think you should be up to date with current news items
The US has a huge potential to become independent when it comes to lithium. They have the 3rd largest reserves of resources in the world. The 2nd and 1st are located in Argentina and Bolivia so close to the US. Canada also has large amounts of the resource and so does Mexico to a smaller extend. Australia is also rich and is already a leader when it comes to mining.
I assume the US is just going to colonize Argentina and Bolivia, and consider it USA's "backyard". Canada also has no strategic independence and is just a resource colony for Anglo-Saxon empire.
potential lol, your government is shutting down as of the time of this comment over dumb culture wars. You need long term 20 yr planning to even get in the door in terms of refining and supply chain creation. 4 yrs from now everything will be same again, back to square one.
@@Western_Decline The US is unlikely to touch Argentina because it's large and the political and refugee crisis would be huge. Argentina is the second-largest recipient of IMF loans likely for that same reason. However, Bolivia isn't so safe. US foreign-policy in Central and South America has always been counterproductive and that's partly what helps China so much. The US needs to change its approach, including against Venezuela and Cuba. They were never a threat to the US, and the US should mend ties with them like it did with Vietnam decades ago.
but the cost and time are big it take many year for construction of plant then another year for debugging and placing the equipment for refinement and the cost would be a tens of billion of dollar
I've been saying the same thing on this chain but man......there are some ignorant people out there concerning lithium. I'm buying LAC hand over fist on each dip.
Lol. WSJ is lying again. After processing, most of the lithium stays in China as China is the most advanced and dominant battery maker in the world. Some lithium does go to Japan and Korea as East Asia overall controls entire world’s battery production
There is no rush to sodium, b/c our immediate priority is to electrify moving vehicles. Low energy dense batteries such as sodium are mainly for ESS -- eg, powerwalls or grid, which can wait til 2030 or so.
Do you understand that it was the West that brought China out of poverty and misery by pouring trillions of dollars of direct investment and immense amount of technology transfer into China during the last 4 decades!
"It's incredible how the United States and China seek every possible way to achieve their independence, while the EU doesn't innovate at all and will end up becoming a pawn of the USA or the Anglo-Saxon world like Canada, Australia, the UK, and Ireland."
You Wumaos are second to none, you have posted this comment under another account name, "@MarktYertd", everyone knows that Wumaos have multiple account names, at least be smart about it.
We are not racing to acquire, lithium, lithium, companies, and suppliers. Want you to race to get it before we don’t need it anymore I think we’re almost there right now.
Except tesla already sells 50% of all their evs with lfp since late 2021 they use no cobalt or nickel. And the lfp market is 43% of all ev cell production this year through q2 reported numbers. With lmfp and m3p chemistries just coming out and on par energy density wise with the best nmc cells from just a few years ago. And sodium has entered the mix for low end short range city evs and energy storage applications as well. Plus recycling is ramping up every where these day's. Redwoods materials in the us wants to supply enough recycled materials for 10,000,000 U.S. evs by 2030. 👍🏻😎
This is also why there is a *LOT* of money being invested into using something besides lithium for EV car batteries. One promising material is phosphorus, which is found around the world.
Phosphorous is a bad choice. We're reliant on it for fertiliser and that alone is decreasing the known reserves while slowly ticking up the cost, start turning it into batteries and you're fast tracking famine.
lithium isn't a rare mineral, bear in mind. The problem lies in the existing capacity to extract lithium from the earth. So while phosphorus might be a viable alternative, there is no incentive to divert supply from an already mature phosphorus market into a very immature EV battery market.
Most rock phosphorous (superphosphate) is contaminated with cadmium, a banned toxic metal. It is so hard to separate that the super sold for fertiliser still has the Cd in it and the build up in soils is starting to show in human urine.
CCP did not want to do this, they had no choice or they would of had a revolution that ousted them. Energy Security + Breathable Air was threatening their power domestically.
It's remarkable how both the United States and China are actively pursuing avenues for their self-reliance, whereas the European Union seems to lack significant innovation and risks becoming subservient to either the USA or the broader Anglo-Saxon sphere, akin to Canada, Australia, the UK, and Ireland
You Wumaos are second to none, you have posted this comment under another account name, "@marcussver620", everyone knows that Wumaos have multiple account names, at least be smart about it.
The story of the US and China reminds me of the tale of the hare and the tortoise. Where the tortoise 🐢(China) just keeps it's head down, works hard and moves toward it's goal, the hare 🐰 (US) is consumed by doing everything in its power to sabotage the tortoise' progress. We all know who wins at the end.
You overlooked Afghanistan, it has the worlds best quality lithium, and in abundance. So China is already making deals with Kabul, it is the U.S. thats missing out here.
That's why the US "accidentally" left so many weapons behind in 2021. To ensure that the most extreme Islamic groups would have what they need to keep the Chinese out.
The fact the US' goal is to focus on its competitors while China is to self improve is a disaster in the making for the former. Apple suceeded cos they focus on their own products and services. Not on what the competitor is doing.
@@Simon-dm8zv It is when big auto companies want to go carbon neutral and use green energy. There's a reason the emv industry is expanding in Ontario and Quebec, cheap green hydro and nuclear power, and access to minerals up in the parr of the provinces.
@@Tjd1982 Of course. But even if they use non renewable energy for production, total life cycle emissions are still vastly improved compared to gasoline cars.
China already has a cheaper and eco friendly alternative to Lithium in the form of Sodium ion batteries. China is targeting the production of very cheap EVs to capture the entire global market including those in the poorest parts of the world like Africa. If anything , Lithium will loose value as China create more affordable Alternative batteries technologies that employ abundant raw material.
Interestingly China is doing more when it comes to developing alternative tech to combat pollution than the US in the world ...Examples, China is the leading producer of solar panels in the world and also wind turbines....You have to remember that even the Chinese want clean air hence they are doing so much to cut down on emissions at the fastest rate possible....China now leads the world in not just the production of electric cars but also the purchase.. China is doing more for the environment right now by modernising public transport that includes electric buses and of course trains ...More Chinese use public transport more than Americans. China has been reducing the use of dirty coal power plants and is replacing those with clean coal tech, use of gas turbines , nuclear power plants etc.
Lithium is a commodity and no country is going to be able to monopolize it. This is not OPEC. While we should take steps to secure a healthy lithium supply chain, it's not nearly the Achilles' heel everyone assumes it is. Prices will jump up and down just like with other resources.
Sodium ion batteries will replace Lithium ion in EV batteries, once the the super fast charging network is mature and fully deployed across the nation in sufficient saturation. EV Range anxiety simply wont exist once the charging network is fully mature. Sodium is far more abundant than Lithium, cheaper, can charge faster and is safer and works better in winter.
Good news for the US, in the long term. That's probably why you don't see them panicking about this. Lithium processing also requires huge amounts of fresh water, which the US also has in abundance (for now).
Actually the US gov’t is only investing millions spread over many companies. A mere drop in the lake while the CCP is actually investing billions in their industry. The US gov needs to step up immensely if they want to expand lithium mining in a total tanked Lith market. Instead of sending billions to Ukraine, spend billions in basic US infrastructure and industry.
Ironic to talk about a green sustainable world when mining lithium is very damaging to the enviroment. AA car battery and all its components is very demanding on the planets resources and Co2 etc.
Not a single word on Tesla's Corpus Christie's mega lithium refining facility, currently being built since spring of this year!!! They will process enough lithium there to make 1 million cars every year.
Again, market is most important. Without market for it, there won't be industry supply chains for it. Smaller market will not grow the supply chains bigger.
China has advanced to sodium based battery which more environmentally friend than lithium, cheaper, way more abundant and performs better in cold weather.
