It seems that a junior lithium company called Lomiko metals is set to announce a joint venture with the Japanese govt. Tuesday morning and that all I know right now.

Regarding lithium I read recently that car makers were reluctant to use lithium batteries because of a fear of scarcity and yet according to some posters on this board they say we have plenty of lithium. Curious.

Plenty is a relative term. Consider the size of a laptop battery, then consider the size you'd need to run a car. Now multiply that by the North American automobile fleet which must be at least 800 Million.

The basic problem in re-powering your entire fleet is that you need a replacement that is both universal and scaleable. The only thing that meets that requirement at present is natural gas, and even that is subject to debate.

All of these approaches, however, are predicated on the survival of the automobile as a primary means of personal transportation, a fairly optimistic assumption I'd say. When you're talking about something on the scale of a new energy environment, it's as important to consider end technologies as well as primary sources. Industrial America was not built on the automobile, as much as some would like to believe - it was built on the railroads and their demand for steel and coal.

Present day railroads are a lot easier to power than private automobiles and can move a lot more people per unit of energy. Rather than trying to save the automobile, maybe we should be looking further ahead to something truly sustainable over the long haul.

ebear