Is there enough lithium for all those electric cars?

Sometimes, we try so hard to dig ourselves out of a hole that we don't see ourselves falling into another. In the desperate struggle to free ourselves from oil, let's not make the same mistake with another finite resource - lithium.

Lithium, already a choice ingredient in laptops and mobile devices due to its light weight, has now caught the attention of electric car manufacturers. Lithium provides the light, powerful boost that will be needed to run the plug in cars of tomorrow. But if electric cars really catch on, there will be a demand for millions and millions of these batteries. As with oil, we must ask ourselves: Where does lithium come from?

The short answer is: South America. There, briny liquids are pumped out from under vast salt flats; the liquids dry into lithium salts which can be further processed into lithium metal. The largest of such salt flats is in Chile, although geological studies show large untapped resources in Bolivia.

But will the Bolivian lithium supply be enough? One geologist - R. Keith Evan - says not to worry; there will be an abundance of supply, plenty for all the cars we want to make. William Tahil, though, disagrees. In two papers he wrote for Meridian International Research over the past year, he claims that even if the current lithium manufacturers scale up their production levels as much as possible, there will only be enough lithium for 1.5 million Chevy Volt-type cars by 2015. Not to mention, he says, the untold environmental devastation that will take place as the lithium is plundered from the ground.

It is possible that Tahil is wrong, and Bolivia may be able to produce more lithium than he predicts. But the mere possibility of a resource shortage so early in the history of electric vehicles is frightening, and calls into question whether such a technology can truly be called sustainable.

Via CNET Green Tech