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Juan Carlos Zuleta's  Instablog

Juan Carlos Zuleta is an economist. He holds a master's degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota and did Ph.D. studies in Economics at the New School for Social Research. Since 1992 he has published a number of articles on the economics of lithium. Due to two... More
  • EXIDE TECHNOLOGIES IN THE LITHIUM-ION ENERGY SYSTEMS MARKET?
    As a recent report indicates, Exide Technologies has introduced a new division focusing on “development and pursuit of new markets for renewable energy storage and lithium-ion energy systems”. 

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    Nov 08 02:17 am | Link | 2 Comments
  • SQM Announces a reduction in lithium prices
    A couple of days ago, while I was giving a lecture on Bolivia´s lithium potential at the Bolivian Catholic University, I recalled two of the three conditions for lithium to become a key factor in the forthcoming  Sixth Techno-economic Paradigm  mentioned in a previous article, namely:   (i) clearly perceived low and rapidly falling relative cost; and (ii) apparently almost unlimited availability of supply over long periods. My commentary was that compliance of these conditions was subjected to a great extent to what the country holding almost half the lithium resources of the world finally decides to do in terms of how and when it enters the lithium market.
    To begin with, I argued that it is not the same to enter one of the hottest commodity markets nowadays with 480 MT of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) a year (the estimated production of the pilot plant project in 2010 currently pursued by the government of Bolivia) than looking for a more ambitious figure such as 30,000 MT of LCE (the estimated production of an industrial project to begin operation in 2015).  Here I was referring to another two points suggested by myself a few months ago for Bolivia to become the new Saudi Arabia of lithium, both regarding Bolivia´s imperative to produce lithium carbonate in a proportion to world´s needs and lithium prices not to increase so as to make other lithium resources (i.e. spodumene) commercially viable.   Needless to say, I was aware of the fact that the larger the production Bolivia throws into the market the larger the reduction in lithium prices that we will have to face as a result. I also commented on what happened to the value of the metal in 2001 and the following 4 years when SQM started to operate as the largest lithium carbonate producer of the planet and how this affected especially to other spodumene producers at the time. Of course it was then clear to me (as it is now) that an increased production today particularly coming from the world´s largest lithium deposit in the face of more than interesting prospects for an imminent electric car revolution in a few years amounted to quite a different story. It would pertain to paving the road for the arrival of the “Next Big Thing”. 
    Similarly, I contended that Bolivia should not wait one single day to start producing lithium carbonate because it was crucial to: (a) provide a correct signal to the world that it is capable of supplying as much lithium as the market requires; (b) contribute to reduce the cost of lithium-ion batteries to insure a massive access of consumers to electric vehicles; and (c) postpone the development of alternative technologies (e.g. hydrogen or methanol). 
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    Oct 01 08:43 pm | Link | 2 Comments
  • Commercialization of Lithium-ion Batteries: New Business Opportunities?

     

    Given the growing recent interest in Lithium-ion batteries for different applications, both within the electric car industry as well as outside of it, many new products and services are beginning to appear at the advent of a promising market.  Nevertheless, there is still some confusion as to the real potential for commercialization of this emerging energy storage technology.  

    In a recent interview  given to Business Week, Dr. Menahem Anderman, Founder and President of Total Battery, a consulting firm specialized in opening business opportunities in the advanced battery sector, for example, wrongly argues that since Lithium-ion battery technology is still in its infancy, the danger of using it may be not be negligible: "A significant risk is that one cell failure will take other cells with it and then [the trouble] could spread".  As is well known, the safety issue of Li-ion batteries was linked to use of Cobalt in their chemical composition. With the introduction of at least two other types of Li-ion batteries (based on Manganese and Iron Phosphate) into the market, most carmakers  now agree that the problem has been solved.  See, for instance, the recent interview given to CNN by Mr. Wan Chuanfu, Founder and President of Build your Dreams (BYD), a Chinese company that is revolutionizing the electric car market.     

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    Sep 02 03:21 am | Link | 3 Comments
  • Lithium-ion Batteries for the Hybrids?

     

    The recent Hitachi´s announcement that beginning next year and by 2015 it will increase its Li-ion battery production by 70 fold for hybrids is quite significant for the Li-ion battery market. Until now, most analysts thought that there was no real potential for use of Li-ion batteries in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs). They erroneously believed that Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries were the best choice for today´s HEVs, whereas Li-ion batteries were reserved for tomorrow´s Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV), Range Extended Electric Vehicles (REEVs) and Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs).

     

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    Jul 11 05:33 pm | Link | 1 Comment
  • The Rush for Lithium

        Are Bollore and Sumitomo-Mitsubishi the Best Options for Bolivia?

    According to recent news coming from Bloomberg, Mitsubishi and Sumitomo of Japan would have decided to propose a joint venture to exploit and industrialize the Salar of Uyuni. The report, which introduced a good deal of expectation in the global energy and car industries, does not appear to have had practically any repercussion in the national sphere where other problems – mostly political – seem to continue to captivating the attention of most Bolivian press.
     
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    May 30 01:10 am | Link | Comment!
  • A Critique of John Petersen´s `The Plug-in Vehicle Scam`

     

    In a recent article, John Petersen argues that “there is no such a thing as a cost-effective electric vehicle that will carry a family of four at highway speeds”.  Based on information from the Department of Energy (DOE)´s Annual Energy Outlook 2009, the  Obama Audit Task Force (OATF) formed to assess the viability of the General Motors (GM), and a paper on plug-in hybrid vehicles by a three-faculty team of  Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)  published this year on Energy Policy, he concludes, among other things, that:

     

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    Tags: GMGMQ.PK, SQM, Energy, Transport
    May 03 06:36 pm | Link | Comment!
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  1. Commercialization of Lithium-ion Batteries: New Business Opportunities? (3 Comments)
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  4. Lithium Batteries: Nothing but Illusion - A Rebuttal (1 Comment)
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