Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[RiverCard]

You’re stating that would be “Bad.”, but provide no evidence for that. Even if it devastated some local environments(yet to be proven), that’s still less than the wholesale, worldwide destruction worsening climate change will do.

Mining and processing each constituent in an Li-ion cell has its own environmental challenges. Lithium compounds wreck havoc on local water resources. Then there is graphite:

Graphite pollution: Lead in Jixi's water 700 times over national limit - China.org.cn

If you bother to look, there are similar nasty emissions in purifying Ni, Cu, and Al-- mining and most of the pyro-processing relies heavily on combusting hydrocarbons

 

[KarenRei]

Mining and processing each constituent in an Li-ion cell has its own environmental challenges. Lithium compounds wreck havoc on local water resources. Then there is graphite:

Graphite pollution: Lead in Jixi's water 700 times over national limit - China.org.cn

If you bother to look, there are similar nasty emissions in purifying Ni, Cu, and Al-- mining and most of the pyro-processing relies heavily on combusting hydrocarbons

Everything we make, for every product, including ICE vehicles, has an impact. Its grossly unfair to only single out the sources of materials that go into batteries as if they're the only things on Earth that have an environmental impact. And it's also ridiculous to act like because a mine in China operates without any environmental controls and just dumps its wastewater out into local rivers, that this is the only way EV batteries can get graphite.

Heck, some EV battery anodes don't even use natural graphite - using instead synthetic graphite or amorphous carbon. Synthetic graphite and amorphous carbon being of course petrochemical products. So I guess maybe should switch to covering the environmental impact of oil production? Be sure that if you do that that you kindly skim over the fact that the world is currently consuming unthinkably vast amounts of oil just to burn it up into our breathing air, in order to run all of our ICEs!

You talk about nickel, copper, alumium, and I should add, you left off the elephant in the room, iron... what the heck do you think an ICE vehicle is made out of? Parts are generally steel and alumium. Stainless steel parts use nickel. The wiring harness (something Tesla is notable for its extensive efforts to vastly reduce) is copper - about 25kg per vehicle nowadays. What parts of an ICE vehicle, exactly, do you think are harmless to produce, as though they were zapped into existence by magical fairies? Ever seen a steel smelter?

Step Inside China’s Hellish, Illicit Steel Factories

This sort of "Let's all pretend that only EV components have environmental impacts so that we can keep pumping up and burning ten million tonnes of oil every year" nonsense drives me crazy. Do I even need to post pictures of what oil production has been doing to Nigeria, for example?

 

[jbcarioca]

...
Lithium supply is effectively inexhaustible, calling it a "rare earth" is one of the more brazen TSLAQ lies.

It is quite rare to have the opportunity to fact check @Fact Checking. This one is a clear chance to do so.
Rare Earth elements, 17 of them are so called because they are rarely found alone and typically found in very low concentrations so are not usually simple to extract:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs087-02/fs087-02.pdf

Of course Lithium is not technically one of the 17 rare earth elements, but it definitely shares the characteristics of being found in plentiful supply, but in very low concentrations. That makes refining expensive and inefficient, not to mention capital intensive. Rare earth is an entirely appropriate description of lithium.

Repeat please. The word 'rare' in this context means such elements are nearly never found in high easy to extract conditions.

 

[winfield100]

Anyone who thinks the world is going to "run out of lithium" must not be aware that sea salt is about 5ppm lithium It's an effectively limitless reserve.

Lithium is produced today from salar brine and spodumene, as well as some new emerging sources (none of which are "running out") because it's cheaper than from sea brine. But the price to recover lithium from sea brine is not at all "prohibitive" for EVs.

@KarenRei @Fact Checking
http://ocean.stanford.edu/courses/bomc/chem/lecture_05.pdf
"...Lecture 5 - Trace Elements in Seawater Trace Elements – Those elements that do not contribute to the salinity. All elements are present in concentrations less than 1mg kg-1 Many of these elements are present at very low concentrations (as low as 10-21 M). 1 ppm is equivalent to 1oz of salt in 32 tons of potato chips! 1 ppb is like 1 drop of gin in 100,000 liters (back yard swimming pool) of tonic water. This presents analytical challenges to measure and avoid contamination. Why study trace element distributions? 1. Many are nutrients and required to sustain life (e.g. P, N, Fe, Cu) 2. Others are toxic (e.g. Cu, Hg) 3. Some are tracers for redox conditions (Cr, I, Mn, Re, Mo, V, U) 4. Some form economic deposits such as manganese nodules (e.g. Cu, Co, Ni, Cd) 5. Some are tracers of pollution (e.g. Pb, Pu, Ag).."

 

[mongo]

Lithium supply is effectively inexhaustible, calling it a "rare earth" is one of the more brazen TSLAQ lies.

They are wrong to say Lithium is in the category of rare earth elements. However, it does share some properties with RE elements.
Wikipedia:Rare-earth element - Wikipedia

Despite their name, rare-earth elements are – with the exception of the radioactive promethium – relatively plentiful in Earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element at 68 parts per million, more abundant than copper. However, because of their geochemical properties, rare-earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated in rare-earth minerals; as a result economically exploitable ore deposits are less common.[5]

Treating Litium as a non dispersed material is actually a bigger falsehood, as this Cleantechnia discusses: Lithium Mining vs Oil Sands Meme: A Thorough Response | CleanTechnica

On the other hand, the world produces about 650,000 tons of lithium each year. Lithium exists mostly in the form of concentrated salts. Almost all that lithium—greater than 95 percent of it—is produced through a process of pumping underground brine to the surface and allowing it to evaporate in big pans. It’s separated from the brine using electrolysis.

@jbcarioca beat me to it...

 

[KarenRei]

It is quite rare to have the opportunity to fact check @Fact Checking. This one is a clear chance to do so.
Rare Earth elements, 17 of them are so called because they are rarely found alone and typically found in very low concentrations so are not usually simple to extract:
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs087-02/fs087-02.pdf

Of course Lithium is not technically one of the 17 rare earth elements, but it definitely shares the characteristics of being found in plentiful supply, but in very low concentrations. That makes refining expensive and inefficient, not to mention capital intensive. Rare earth is an entirely appropriate description of lithium.

Repeat please. The word 'rare' in this context means such elements are nearly never found in high easy to extract conditions.

No. "Rare earth" has a specific definition, describing a specific list of elements. Lithium is an alkali metal, not a rare earth. What you're doing is akin to saying that plutonium is an alkali metal because it's reactive, or that a platypus is a bird because it lays eggs. It doesn't work that way.

And no, there are strong concentrations of lithium. That's what salar brines, spodumene deposits, etc are.

 

[⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️]

The thing that struck me most about the video was how much more freely and fluently Elon was speaking compared to today; he was so much more relaxed.

I wonder what happened to his ability to speak smoothly. I have read that sleep deprivation causes brain damage. I think that’s what happened to my brain.

 

[EVNow]

I think those models have been talked about ad naseum and have lost some of it's luster/anticipation. Glad we don't know what the pickup looks like, keep that a mystery until the unveil. But then what, what's next? Pickup reveal is only a few months away.

Actually, at this point Wall St doesn't care about long term at all. They want to see near term performance for SP to bounce back.

For FSD they need to show proof that they are comparable to Waymo/Cruise. This is why completing City NOA ("feature complete") and releasing it to the fleet is so important. When people can do what Waymo cars do with their own Teslas in any city (in US) it becomes hard not to add the same kind of value for Tesla FSD as they now do for Waymo.

 

[RiverCard]

Everything we make, for every product, including ICE vehicles, has an impact. Its grossly unfair to only single out the sources of materials that go into batteries as if they're the only things on Earth that have an environmental impact. And it's also ridiculous to act like because a mine in China operates without any environmental controls and just dumps its wastewater out into local rivers, that this is the only way EV batteries can get graphite.

Heck, some EV battery anodes don't even use natural graphite - using instead synthetic graphite or amorphous carbon. Synthetic graphite and amorphous carbon being of course petrochemical products. So I guess maybe should switch to covering the environmental impact of oil production? Be sure that if you do that that you kindly skim over the fact that the world is currently consuming unthinkably vast amounts of oil just to burn it up into our breathing air, in order to run all of our ICEs!

You talk about nickel, copper, alumium, and I should add, you left off the elephant in the room, iron... what the heck do you think an ICE vehicle is made out of? Parts are generally steel and alumium. Stainless steel parts use nickel. The wiring harness (something Tesla is notable for its extensive efforts to vastly reduce) is copper - about 25kg per vehicle nowadays. What parts of an ICE vehicle, exactly, do you think are harmless to produce, as though they were zapped into existence by magical fairies? Ever seen a steel smelter?

Step Inside China’s Hellish, Illicit Steel Factories

This sort of "Let's all pretend that only EV components have environmental impacts so that we can keep pumping up and burning ten million tonnes of oil every year" nonsense drives me crazy.

I agree all human activities have adverse impacts on nature, and the world-wide population continues to expand. There are trade-offs and consequences to all alternatives for individual transportation. The better solution is to educate everyone on decreasing consumption and recycling everything that can be reused or repurposed. Fractionation of hydrocarbons produces numerous compounds that are converted to useful conveniences, but I have no interest in arguing about the application of which technology is more meritorious to produce and use modern (often discretionary) conveniences. MarcusMaximus said the environmental impact of cell production "has yet to be proven." He never bothered to look.

 

[JRP3]

Of course Lithium is not technically one of the 17 rare earth elements, but it definitely shares the characteristics of being found in plentiful supply, but in very low concentrations. That makes refining expensive and inefficient, not to mention capital intensive. Rare earth is an entirely appropriate description of lithium.

Then why is lithium so cheap?

 

[Unpilot]

I'll happily donate all my cheap jewelry. Should be plenty of nickel in those. Tesla has my contact info.






Or a clever prankster with his hand on the bottom of the steering wheel?

Yeah I mean how did they know he was asleep for 30 miles?
Seems dangerous to follow a car while filming for 30 miles.

 

[SarahsDad]

More FUD from Bezo’s WaPo. https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.w...it-risks-becoming-niche-brand/?outputType=amp

Almost embarrassing how slanted the article is against Tesla. Compare that to an Audi E-Tron video review that essentially turns into an ad for Tesla...

 

[Unpilot]

The better solution is to educate everyone on decreasing consumption and recycling everything that can be reused or repurposed.

That is one path...which is idealistic and will in reality not be followed.
Sustainability in a MUCH less damaging way is a path Tesla and others are trying to follow.

 

[UncaNed]

MODS-
Could somebody move all the Lithium posts to a new thread!

 

[Yonki]

MODS-
Could somebody move all the Lithium posts to a new thread!

Thank you! - I’ve had to double my daily lithium intake just to cope with all those posts...

 

[NicoV]

OT: I’ve just received confirmation from the Flemish government that they have granted me 2500 euro subsidy for my Model 3 purchase.
This is a subsidy, not a tax rebate, and I will receive the money in 2 months.
OT2: Normally I would only get 2000 euro subsidy, as I bought before the price drop, but the government seems to take the current list price into account.
OT3: The last few days the inventory of pre-raven S/X has gone down from 16 when I reported it first (last week or so) to 3. No X inventory anymore, only 3 S. Last week there were also 100+ Model 3 available, today only 13.

 

[Big Earl]

It's on the website. Look under charging->adapters in the "shop" section.

That's the 14-50 adapter for the UMC. The wall connector is not available with a 14-50 pigtail. It was briefly, but it was discontinued and only a few people took delivery of one.

Home Charging Installation

 

[jerry33]

That's the 14-50 adapter for the UMC. The wall connector is not available with a 14-50 pigtail. It was briefly, but it was discontinued and only a few people took delivery of one.

Home Charging Installation

My mistake. I though it was the UMC connector that was discussed.

 

[EVMeister]

Some positive UK press coverage about the Model 3 - Tesla Model 3 Long Range: Grin-win situation for car company | Express.co.uk.

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Seriously people, why are we discussing the 14-50 adapter for UMC in this thread? And now that we are all up to date on lithium mining, that discussion also stops here.

RSF