Good news for the electric car: India has just found, on its territory, a deposit of 5.9 million tons of lithium. This is enormous, since it was considered that the world deposits represented 14 million tonnes in 2018!
We often hear that the electric car is not a solution in the fight against global warming. One of the reasons given is its greediness in lithium. Indeed, each battery incorporates several kilograms of this chemical element. Some experts fear that the rush for this white gold will create tensions and shortages, because supply falls short of demand.
A gigantic deposit on a global scale
But the recent Indian discovery, announced by the Ministry of Mines, calls into question, at least in part, this alarmist discourse. And for good reason: India has just discovered in the basements of the country, a deposit of about 5.9 tons of lithium oxide. Does this figure mean anything to you? It must then be put into perspective with world deposits. In 2018, these were estimated at around 14 million tonnes across the planet.
In other words, the Indian discovery increases these by more than 40%! But beware, the precise nature of basements is relatively unknown throughout the world. Thus, a more recent American study dating from 2019 announces, for its part, a global deposit of lithium of… 80 million tons! In this case, the Indian discovery represents less than 10% of the total already known.
For comparison, in 2020, Bolivia would contain about 21 million tons of lithium, compared to 17 million for Argentina, 9 million for Chile, 6.8 million for the United States, 6.3 million for the Australia and 4.5 million for China.
In France, a deposit of approximately one ton of lithium oxide should soon be exploited, in the Allier, making it possible to produce 35 million tons of lithium per year, for 25 years. Enough to equip around 700,000 electric cars per year.
The electric car can do without lithium
Above all, this discovery makes it possible to qualify the words of alarmist experts. Yes, the electric car is greedy in lithium. But this natural resource is not rare, and the discoveries of available deposits could well multiply in the years to come. Countries are starting to get serious about it, since the financial windfall behind tons of lithium is very interesting.
If in the short term, lithium is extremely valuable for the development of the electric car, this is much less true in the long term. The Chinese battery giant, CATL, to whom we owe the battery allowing electric cars to travel 1,000 km, knows something about it. It is preparing, for 2023, the first sodium battery, requiring no gram of lithium. There are of course downsides, but this will reduce the strain on the lithium.
Another avenue is recycling: the batteries of electric cars can be recycled extremely well, as shown by the figures from Tesla in particular. Volkswagen is working on its side on recycling which tends towards 100%, to create an almost closed circuit. But to achieve this, you need to have plenty of lithium to recycle. This should not happen for several years, the time that the first electric cars in circulation end up in the scrapyard.
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