Word: bolivia
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...needs to produce. But at Detroit's International Auto Show this month, the excitement surrounding the Big Three's announcements that they're shifting from gasoline to voltage has been tempered by another realization: most of the lithium used to make the batteries for those cars is found in Bolivia, whose leftist President isn't too fond of the U.S. (See the top 10 cars from Detroit's Auto Show...
Small, impoverished Bolivia, in fact, is the Saudi Arabia of lithium. It's home to 73 million metric tons of lithium carbonate, more than half the world's supply. The largest single deposit is the Salar de Uyuni, a vast, 4,085-square-mile (6,575-sq-km) salt desert in the southern Potosi region that is also one of Bolivia's biggest tourist attractions...
President Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous head of state, prides himself on state control over natural resources he nationalized the country's (massive natural gas reserves in 2006). If the past is any indication, electric carmakers should look to the Andes with sober eyes. "This is a unique opportunity for us," says Bolivian Mining Minister Luis Alberto Echazu. "The days of U.S. car companies buying cheap raw materials to sell expensive cars are over." Indeed, Bolivia's lithium abundance could put car manufacturers in the position of replacing one energy-rich Latin American U.S. critic - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez...
Many foreign carmakers have already found that out. Auto executives estimate the demand for lithium could exceed supply in a decade. As a result, representatives from companies like Mitsubishi and Toyota have approached the Morales government to get in on the ground floor of Bolivia's lithium development. They've been routinely turned away. "All they wanted to do was carry away the raw lithium carbonate," says Echazu, "and that's not what we're after." (See the top 10 green ideas...
...draconian restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances to Cuba - which mean a lot in a region where Monroe Doctrine is a dirty term. If Obama demonstrates that he's more interested in helping Haiti with green-energy projects like jatropha-seed oil than he is in making Bolivia eradicate more and more coca bushes, or more committed to steering U.S. aid toward micro-credit ventures for Mexican peasants than to building multibillion-dollar border walls to keep them out, it could go a long way toward making Latin America a more pro-yanqui messenger in places like the Arab...