Comments on: Jack Lifton: North America Doesn’t Need China’s Rare Earths

By: steve

steve — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:11:10 +0000

John, your calculation brings out a very interesting point: when you consider that a Prius alone uses roughly 7 pounds of neodymium, another quick calculation shows that there sure isn’t anywhere near enough of it being produced to make the switch to electric vehicles on this planet. In fact, there isn’t nearly enough known mineable resources to provide more than a tiny fraction of the population with a Prius. So either there needs to be some HUGE deposits found QUICK, or the electric “revolution” is bound to short circuit.

By: John Petersen

John Petersen — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:02:46 +0000

I’ve found that readers often read tables like the one you used and think “wow, 19,000 metric tons is a lot of Neodymium.” At a recent presentation in Berlin I took your table one step further and calculated that 19,000 metric tons works out to 3 grams per capita based on a global population of 6.8 billion people. People’s eyes always glaze over when faced with large numbers and I found that taking it down to a per capita level raised a lot of eyebrows.