Exxon is getting into the lithium-producing business. From a report in the Wall Street Journal by Benoît Morenne and Collin Eaton:
Exxon Mobil is bracing for a future far less dependent on gasoline by drilling for something other than oil: lithium.
The Texas oil giant recently purchased drilling rights to a sizable chunk of Arkansas land from which it aims to produce the mineral, a key ingredient in batteries for electric cars, cellphones and laptops, according to people familiar with the matter.
Lithium is far removed from the fossil-fuel business, which has powered Exxon’s profits for more than a century, and signals the company’s assessment that demand for internal combustion engines could soon peak, the people said. It would also mark a return for the company to an industry it helped pioneer almost 50 years ago.
Exxon bought 120,000 gross acres in the Smackover formation of southern Arkansas from an exploration company called Galvanic Energy, according to some of the people. The price tag was more than $100 million, people familiar with the matter said, a relatively small transaction for a company of Exxon’s size.
This is good news. More EVs doesn’t make a great deal of sense if we’re importing batteries and/or the stuff needed to make them from countries that emit lots of carbon in the process. I expect more of these diversifications.
Indianapolis has just discovered that EV buses weigh a lot more than diesel buses (or overhead electric gantry buses, like Boston used to have), and that they break up the pavement at bus stops fairly quickly:
https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=20931
Someone in England has realized that EV automobiles are also very much heavier than gasoline/diesel cars, and there is a question as to whether parking garages are adequately designed for the increased loads.
It’s really all about depopulation, either to the level of 500 million or so medieval serfs and manors or to the level of a few million paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Environmentalist differ. But industry, modern agriculture, science, modern engineering, medicine, literacy, all must go.
PS. This morning I read that China is now the largest exporter of automobiles, displacing Japan. They are already the largest manufacturer of cars and the largest car market, by a factor of two. And virtually none of them is EV.
As of 2022 one in four new cars sold in China was an EV.
Did they say how much lithium —> how many batteries this could make?
For the umpteenth time. There is nothing inherently wrong with the notion of an EV. But the technology, infrastructure and strategic considerations wrt battery materials are simply not ready for prime time. I doubt they will be during the lifetime of anyone on this site. Forcing the issue over misguided ideology is costly folly.