Industry committee  Thank you for inviting me as a witness. I'm a professor in the department of physics at Dalhousie University. I'm also chief scientific adviser to Novonix of Bedford, Nova Scotia. My research group of about 30 people is funded by Tesla and NSERC from 2016 to at least 2026 under

Industry committee  The technology is going in a good direction. The cost is coming down. The lifetimes are becoming longer. The safety is becoming better. Everything is becoming better over time. I really don't know how to answer your question, except to tell you that things are getting better al

Industry committee  I'm not sure I'm the right person to be answering that question. There are probably others in the mining sector who would be better. All I know is that lithium in the ground and highly pure lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide are not the same. To go from one to the other requi

Industry committee  Well, the gap is enormous. The governments have very nicely realized the importance of electric vehicles in eliminating tailpipe emissions. At the same time, we have to be able to get more renewables onto the energy grid, solar and wind, and for that we need energy storage, be it

Industry committee  No, I don't think that's right. The market is there at the moment. In my role with Novonix, we're developing energy storage products for residential homes. To try to get lithium-ion batteries for those products from tier one manufacturers is virtually impossible. You go to them

Industry committee  Thank you for that question. It's a really nice one. The moderate-range, lower-cost vehicle will have a battery chemistry based on lithium iron phosphate. This is really quite good, because iron and phosphorus are highly abundant and very sustainable. Another good thing about t

Industry committee  It's quite likely. One thing about these electric-powered yard machines is that they're incredible. I don't know if you own one.

Industry committee  They're awesome—no oil changes, no gas.

Industry committee  It's incredible. They're so great. I have an electric lawnmower and so on. It's awesome. In Quebec, there are all kinds of companies—and Sarah can talk about this—that make things like electric snowmobiles, electric jet skis and whatever the heck electric recreational vehicles.

Industry committee  Sure. Lithium carbonate is a chemical that's used to make some of the positive electromaterials for lithium-ion batteries. It's a combination of lithium, carbon and oxygen. It has some very nice properties in that it's quite stable in the air and relatively moisture-insensitive.

Industry committee  If you were making, say, very high-nickel-content positive electromaterials, you would naturally pick lithium hydroxide. If you were making low-nickel-content materials, you would pick lithium carbonate. There are uses for both. You can convert one into the other if you have to.

Industry committee  This again comes to the area of energy density. High-nickel materials will provide larger energy density cells, which translates to a larger driving range. Typically, those materials would give a shorter charge/discharge cycle life, hence a shorter total driving distance for your

Industry committee  I think the lithium producers are able to decide whether they are going to make a carbonate plant or a hydroxide plant. I don't think it's that difficult—and maybe Trevor can set me right here—to have both on site if you want: make one, make the other, either way. But the key is

Industry committee  It's not significantly different.

Industry committee  My view is maybe a little bit orthogonal to that of many other scientists and researchers. My view is that the future is in the longest-lived batteries possible, so that you minimize the need for recycling. You install a battery in an energy storage facility and it lasts 40 or 50