Word: bolivia
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...President Barack Obama were to decide that "change" includes rewriting the United States constitution, he would probably find himself on the curb of Pennsylvania Avenue quicker than you can say Bill of Rights. But for left-wing Latin American Presidents, redoing national charters has become a norm. On Sunday, Bolivia became the most recent nation to be reborn. (See pictures of people around the world watching Obama's Inauguration...
...What Bolivia is after is a largely, if not purely, state-run lithium industry from mining to industrialization, which might even include actual manufacturing of the coveted lithium-ion batteries. Morales recently announced a $5.7 million pilot plant to process raw lithium carbonate, now under construction on the edge of the Salar, which hopes to produce its first 40 metric tons of the material by the end of this year...
...core question is whether Bolivia's lithi-leverage will eventually drive up the price of those batteries, which can already add about $10,000 to the cost of a car. Experts say that as production of the lithium-ion packs increases, they're actually getting closer in price to cheaper but less effective nickel-based batteries. Still, a big factor will be whether the demand for them rises as much as anticipated. "It is difficult to predict just how many electric vehicles we will see in the market," says Jennifer Moore, a spokeswoman for Ford, which hopes to have...
...Bolivia analyst Erasto Almedia of the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group says automakers shouldn't panic. Morales may talk a big nationalist game, Almeida argues, but he always ends up accepting foreign investment and technological support that could give the car companies a foot in the lithium-production door. "The conditions exist for foreign investment and involvement in the lithium sector in Bolivia," Almeida contends, especially if Bolivia wants to expand beyond the initial pilot plant...
Foreign investors will have to be sensitive to Bolivian anger and resentment about the past, however. This is hardly the first time, for example, that Bolivia's Potosi region has been eyed by the outside world for its natural riches. During the colonial era, silver from the area's prodigious mines helped fund the Spanish empire. But historically, all that wealth has left the local population, especially the indigenous, with little more than desperate poverty and early death by mining-related diseases like black lung. Another concern is the environmental impact; but lithium mining, as observed in countries with deposits...