But the Bloomberg piece does provide some quantification:
"By 2014, the mine will produce 30,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate, more than Rockwood’s mine in Chile, which is the world’s second largest. Bolivian scientists say there are about 95 million tons of lithium under the Uyuni Salt Flat"
So: 95 million tons supplies 4.8 billion automobiles.
Simple division gives us 19.4 kg of lithium per vehicle.
The Tesla Model S battery weighs on the order of 400kg. I'll assume half that weight is lithium. Clearly the Bloomberg piece isn't referring to high-range Tesla-style plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), of which Bolivia could only supply 475 million batteries. That's enough to satisfy the US, but hardly the world, let alone give everyone in the world, or even one in ten, a PEV, plus LiON-powered smartphone, tablet, and other rechargeable devices.
And the rather more modest Wyoming find at 228,000 tons would be good four roughly 1.14 million vehicles.
The simple truth is that we've been able to rely on fossil fuels for much of the past century to provide a convenient energy storage package that's going to be exceptionally difficult to replace. And we will have to replace it.
The Tesla apparently uses LiNiCoAlO2 (NCA lithium ion). So just starting from the chemistry gets you to less than 4% lithium by weight (~3.8%). Throw in packaging and such and really, the individual cells are more like 2%. The cells apparently weigh ~50 grams, so 7000 of them weigh ~350 Kg (7000 is the Tesla cell count, really 6,831).
2.5% of 350 Kg is 8.75 Kg. So a slightly less conservative estimate scales your figures by a factor of 22.
Edit: The Model S probably uses NCA batteries (it's hard to say). Lithium is still only 7% by weight of LiCoO2 (Leaving at least a factor of 10).
But the Bloomberg piece does provide some quantification:
"By 2014, the mine will produce 30,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate, more than Rockwood’s mine in Chile, which is the world’s second largest. Bolivian scientists say there are about 95 million tons of lithium under the Uyuni Salt Flat"
So: 95 million tons supplies 4.8 billion automobiles.
Simple division gives us 19.4 kg of lithium per vehicle.
The Tesla Model S battery weighs on the order of 400kg. I'll assume half that weight is lithium. Clearly the Bloomberg piece isn't referring to high-range Tesla-style plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), of which Bolivia could only supply 475 million batteries. That's enough to satisfy the US, but hardly the world, let alone give everyone in the world, or even one in ten, a PEV, plus LiON-powered smartphone, tablet, and other rechargeable devices.
And the rather more modest Wyoming find at 228,000 tons would be good four roughly 1.14 million vehicles.
The simple truth is that we've been able to rely on fossil fuels for much of the past century to provide a convenient energy storage package that's going to be exceptionally difficult to replace. And we will have to replace it.