The coalition government has set a political goal of having at least 15 million electric cars registered in Germany by 2030. However, this could soon be doomed to failure, because according to the latest calculations by the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, there will not be enough lithium available for the batteries.
Raw materials experts warn: not enough lithium available for electric cars
In an interview with Handelsblatt, Michael Schmidt of the BGR said. “Even if all projects currently planned and under construction are implemented on schedule and we assume medium demand growth, we will not have enough lithium to meet global demand in 2030”. According to research by commodity experts, global demand for lithium will increase to at least 316,000 or more than 550,000 tonnes per year in the coming years, depending on which scenario is assumed. For comparison: In 2020, global lithium production was just 82,000 tonnes. A good 90 percent of this goes into the production of lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. Experts assume that in the worst case, there will be a shortage of up to 300,000 tonnes of lithium per year in 2030. Even in the best-case scenario, the shortfall would still be 90,000 tonnes, which is more than the current annual production.
Image: Salar de Atacama Gebiet in Chile mit hohem Lithiumvorkommen Francesco Mocellin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Globally available lithium reserves are sufficient for a maximum of 25 million electric cars
However, with the planned EU ban on combustion engines from 2035, the demand for electric cars will increase even faster than assumed in the worst case of the studies. The BGR is not alone in this view. The British government’s scientific advisory body, the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC), comes to a similar conclusion. The analysts of the APC assume that the 40 million electric cars forecast worldwide cannot even be built due to the lack of lithium. They see the known lithium reserves already completely exhausted at 25 million electric vehicles. “There is simply not enough lithium, although geologically it is not a scarce resource,” the analysts warn.
The global lithium reserves are 21 million tonnes. The vast majority of these are in Chile and Australia. However, there are always lengthy approval processes for mining and projects that have already been planned are repeatedly brought to a standstill.
BGR expert Schmidt says Mexico is currently nationalising the entire lithium industry and Chile is also considering doing so. This would already have an impact on prices. The price of lithium has already more than doubled in the last two years. With the increasing shortage, however, prices are likely to rise disproportionately. The hope that electric cars can soon be produced more cheaply than vehicles with combustion engines is also dying.
Habeck warns of lithium shortage
The supply situation has now also reached our Minister of Economics, Robert Habeck. His authority warns of a lithium shortage. However, warning about it alone will not be enough, but a plan on how to proceed against it is, as always, in vain. Habeck thus runs the risk that the next project will blow up in his face, given the planned sales figures for electric cars and the ban on combustion engines. With the expansion of gas-fired power plants, he has already created a billion-dollar grave in a very short time with the gas bottleneck.
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