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Re: (ET) New Member


Lithium battery technology is not proven, and lithium is far less plentiful
than lead.  It's not clear that there's enough to mass-produce EVs using
lithium batteries for dozens of years.
    
Actually, lithium is considerably more plentiful in earth's crust than 
lead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Relative_abundance_of_elements.png
(note that that is a logarithmic plot)
To play the devil's advocate, that doesn't mean it is more readily extracted from the crust.

Lithium is also geographically concentrated in strategically questionable
areas : I may have misunderstood, but from what I've read, China controls
most of the world's supply of lithium.
    
Nope.
These two articles:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/mcs-2008-lithi.pdf
http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/lithium.pdf

have info on world production stats, but omit US production data after 1954, ostensibly because only one US company produces lithium.

This article talks about the overall lithium supply:
http://scitizen.com/stories/Future-Energies/2008/06/World-Lithium-Supplies-and-Electric-Vehicles-/


I don't know about lithium's ability to be recycled, but lead is certainly
proven in that matter.  If the supply is limited, let's hope it's easy - and
doesn't require a lot of energy - to recycle it!
    
Both can be recycled. Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, lead-acid 
batteries are not highly recycled anymore - at least if you look at it 
globally.
http://www.things.org/~jym/greenpeace/myth-of-battery-recycling.html
That citation uses sources from 1987-1993, with most from 1993.  Lead was inexpensive then, and is expensive now.

This article has prices graphed from 1959-1998, with the years 1983-1998 being some of the lowest:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lead/380798.pdf

This page shows lead prices have gone up about 6-8x from fall 2002 to fall 2007.
http://www.wdshopsupply.com/weight_price_increases.htm

This article says 76% of annual lead production is actually from recovered/recycled sources.  The other 24% may be in landfills or sitting on shelves or in junked vehicles.
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lead/mcs-2008-lead.pdf