Diarmuid O'Connell VP buss. Dev. Tesla on everything from Roadster to G3

[RobStark]

Approximate prices.
Cobalt $29k/ton
Nickel $13k/ton
Lithium $7k/ton.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

How have the lithium mining sticks been doing? Given that a battery is only 3% lithium (by weight probably and lithium is light) I wonder how much battery demand is placing on lithium production.

There'd be more pressure at high volume, and that's why car companies have bought mining rights. Car battery sizes obviously dwarf others. In 2011 58M laptops were sold, and their batteries are up to 12 cell. 6000/12=500. 27% of lithium use was for batteries. 80M cars sold in 2011 and rising.
58M laptops ~ 118k Tesla cars. Obviousky laptops are only some of the batteries, but to make all cars Tesla-stylee there would need to be up to 183 times current lithium production. Then all cars were PiP-stylee, the multiplier would be around 13, Volt-stylee 50. Of course, wih a gradual process scaling up wouldn't be a near-term problem, plus while there could be significant multipliers, there would be comprehensive recycling, and as such you really would likely only need about 20-25 years worth of supply to meet the needs of all vehicles, especially when you consider that better recycling would likely also increase recycling of other lithium in its wake. The demand is why the gigafactory plan includes recycling. I'm sure they'd be hiring some top boffins to work on he recycling processes, which are energy-intensive.