One of the things electric car manufacturers love about lithium-ion batteries is that lithium is so damn cheap. At less than one dollar per kilogram lithium a an electric car that has a lot of lithium carbonate in it, like the Chevy Volt, would have around $180 of lithium in it.

Now that is already triple the cost of what the same amount of lithium would have come to just three years ago and things aren’t going to be getting any cheaper.

Half of the world’s lithium is tied up in the brine beneath Bolivia’s salt flats. Which would be fine if Bolivia wasn’t looking to leverage its lithium deposits to help restore its economy. They aren’t letting any companies in to extract it because they want to build up the infrastructure to be able to harvest it themselves, which will take years.

The approaching lithium drought is definitely a reality and will require some serious innovation from electric car manufacturers to reduce the amount of lithium used in their batteries or switch to a new power system.