Yes but this assumes infinite availability of the resources required for battery production. Given they are in Africa and Asia, this is gonna be way more difficult in the rising new world order with the shrinking influence of the US and EU as the Pax Americana is dying a slow death.

BRICS nations and friends will make the near future very uncomfortable for Westerners used to affluence.

Out of the world's five largest lithium producing countries, the largest one by far is Australia, only China is in Asia, and half the world's reserves are in South America anyway.

The US will simply do whatever it always did and, should the need arise, simply putsch away whoever governs these reserves.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_lithium_p...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_Triangle

Or companies will find alternatives.

Or someone will start digging for raw materials in a place that isn't hostile.

30TWh/year in 2031 is not infinite, and is in fact quite finite...

Also, essential minerals are alllllll over, only some (cobalt nickel) are concentrated in a few areas and those are actively being minimized and eliminated from future chemistries.

Isn't saltwater lithium extraction close to being a thing, as well as recycling?

Yeah, every non "western" country is just longing for suicide russia style.

This is one of the reasons I'm not sure why car companies are getting directly in to batteries. Plus they are locking themselves into a technology which may well be superseded.

It seems to me equivalent to pc manufacturers making their own chips.

With the coming shortages of production and massive demand, guaranteeing supply is table stakes for the game of game manufacturing.

There is no alternative around the corners IMHO car companies are not thinking big enough with their investments.

Table stakes for *car manufacturing

hi. interesting stats. Could you please give some references for this? thanks.

I appear to have lost my bookmark, it was about 30 minutes in to an episode of the podcast The Energy Gang, or their sister podcast, during an interview with a CEO that has raised nearly a billion dollars over the years for battery related businesses.

This is vague enough that perhaps you shouldn't take my word, but I unfortunately don't have the 15 minutes this weekend to track it down... if I find it again I will try to email you.