The most important implication of this discovery is that while the price of lithium could plunge, decreasing the costs of lithium vehicle batteries, unless we put a system in place that uses regulatory and market forces to guarantee that this lithium is recovered and recycled, we will have a huge environmental problem on our hands. Disposal and sequestering of lithium metal is a significant part of the overall cost of an EV-focused transport system. Global demand by 2020 is projected by USGS to be about 300,000 tons a year, so the effect of this single discovery might not be that large; the major advantage is preventing China from exercising monopoly power on Li production. But I am confident that many more discoveries are out there (I used to be a geologist and worked around Silver Peak in the past), so I think the time is now to start figuring out how to avoid taking all that Li in brine and spreading it throughout our waste stream.
