Bolivia has half of the worlds reserve of lithium, in this desert. But president Evo Morales doesn't like foreign mining companies in his country, for historical reasons. "We will not repeat the historical experience since the fifteenth century: raw materials exported for the industrialisation of the west that has left us poor", as Bolivia's minister for mining, Luis Alberto Echazu has stated. That would not be a problem if their interest were to ship as much lithium as possible to battery-manufactories, but they have no interest in that. They are going to start mining in a very slow pace as explained here and here. If they ramp up production, and the world started to be flooded with high quality lithium from Bolivia, the price of the lithium battery sure would drop. This is why Elon Musk must send mr Morales a brand new car so that he can see what a brand new world his poor country could be part of making.
I think the lithium in the 85kWh battery is somewhere between $300 and $500 worth. If the price dropped in half, you wouldn't even notice. The cost of the battery is mostly manufacturing cost, very little is the raw materials, which is why the price will continue to come down.
I dont have any good numbers for the tesla battery but the price of purified lithium is at $27 per pound, and some general estimates say about a pound of purified lithium per kwh is used for batteries (including some production losses). Which would bring us to something like: 85 kwh*1 pound/kwh*$27/pound = $2 295 Any saving is good but as richkae said it doesnt seem to be very large numbers we are talking about, in the future there might be other supply/demand dynamics driving prices higher but there seems to be some margin. http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/How_Much_Lithium_Per_Battery.pdf
Ok, it seems I read some old articles claiming shortage of lithium, and that the cost for mining it is going to be a problem for EV:s. :redface: But if the demand for EV:s are growing we might be in a situation were more mines could come in handy. And Bolivia is not showing that it is interested in mining it in a bigger scale.
I would hazard to guess that if lithium demand rose, and with it lithium prices, that Bolivia would ramp up production in response. For those interested, there's a substantial literature on optimal depletion rates of natural resources. The critical factor is the time-horizon of the entity that controls the resource: those with a longer-term view of the situation will rationally delay production to take advantage of higher prices in the future.
Another important thing to remember is that lithium can and will be recycled. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/merit_review_2009/propulsion_materials/pmp_05_gaines.pdf