The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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U.S. lithium production is ready to tap a massive aquifer that crosses six southern state lines. Global lithium consumption reached 180,000 metric tons in 2023, according to the United States Geological Survey, but the U.S. produces less than 1% of the world's supply. While most of the world's lithium still comes from countries like Australia, Chile, and China, the future of lithium production in the U.S. is ramping up in California, Nevada, and now Arkansas as companies like...
An expensive new risk for Western manufacturers and their investors. This past June, German chemicals giant BASF backed out of a planned $2.6 billion nickel refinery in Weda Bay, Indonesia. While the company cited changing dynamics in the global nickel market, BASF also faced calls to abandon the project from environmental and human rights groups. BASF's decision to walk away should focus the clean energy and automotive sector's attention on a new risk profile: Indonesia's... Full story
Changing how the West approaches globalism will be the key to a circular economy the whole world can get behind. The Western world has found itself in a unique crisis that has brought systemic vulnerabilities into sharp relief. An overreliance on problematic imports has been exposed (especially post-COVID) as a rat's nest of potential supply chain disruptions, global inequality, deregulation and competition-killing corporate consolidation – all while leaving the power of marke... Full story
American electric vehicle manufacturers are under pressure from the massive federal legislation aimed at creating a robust domestic value chain for several key battery minerals and rare earths. These materials are predominantly being imported for EV batteries – as well as the battery cells themselves in many cases – from problematic sources like China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Russia. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by Congress in August 2022 inc...
Li-Bridge alliance unveils blueprint to build resilient US lithium battery supply chain. A wide chasm lies between where the United States is today and securing the lithium battery mineral resources and manufacturing capacity required to achieve ambitious visions of a green energy future where electric vehicles are charged with low-carbon energy. An alliance of America's national laboratories and more than 40 companies representing the entire lithium battery supply chain have...
Every electric vehicle rolling off an assembly line increases the demand for graphite by an average of around 160 pounds. With more than 30 million EVs expected to hit global highways each year by 2030 and upwards of 45 million by 2045, the transition to e-mobility will require up to eight times more graphite than was mined globally during 2022. While graphite has not received the attention of other EV battery ingredients such as cobalt, lithium, and nickel, this highly... Full story
There is nearly a $1 trillion chasm between where the United States' lithium battery supply chain is today and where it needs to be by 2035 in order to build the envisioned green energy future where electric vehicles are charged with low-carbon energy. Roughly 40% of this investment will need to go toward ensuring there is a plentiful supply of cobalt, graphite, lithium, nickel, and other battery materials. Simon Moores, CEO of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and one of the... Full story
Collaborative investment of C$1.2 billion into future battery cathode facility. Coming out of the region that will hold one of the more prominent footholds for battery-related industries, Ford Motor Company announced an investment of C$1.2 billion (US$885,660) to build a battery cathode manufacturing facility in Becancour, Quebec, for future Ford electric vehicles. Becancour is a small town along the shores of the St. Lawrence River about halfway between Montreal and Quebec...
Loan will support the building of 3 Ford-SK battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee. In another sweeping step in support of the transportation industry's e-mobility transition and domestic infrastructure for electric vehicle and battery production, the U.S. Department of Energy has committed a loan of up to $9.2 billion to BlueOval SK LLC for the construction of three manufacturing plants to produce batteries for Ford Motor Company's future Ford and Lincoln EVs. "The DOE's...
Back in 1908, when Ford Motor Company first started cranking out the Model T, the innovative automaker championed new materials, new engineering designs, and new manufacturing practices. More than a century later, automotive companies are emulating Henry Ford's strategy as they tackle the supply chain challenges of a similarly groundbreaking electric vehicle revolution. Styled these days as 'vertical integration production,' Henry Ford's idea of "a continuous, nonstop process...
Ford Motor Company has stepped up critical metals acquisition, forging still more relationships with the likes of battery metal miners and developers and bringing the automotive manufacturer closer to its target of producing an annual run rate of two million electric vehicles globally by the end of 2026. In May, Ford and leading U.S. lithium miner Albemarle formed a partnership for the supply of battery-grade lithium hydroxide to scale up the automaker's EV production....
Enormous 140-metric-ton autonomous Cat trucks loaded with lithium-boron ore will be driving themselves around on the very first day of operations at ioneer Ltd.'s Rhyolite Ridge project in Nevada. Slated to begin operations in 2024, the Rhyolite Ridge Mine is expected to produce an average of 20,600 metric tons of lithium carbonate and 174,400 metric tons of boric acid annually for 26 years. Electric vehicle batteries are driving unprecedented demand for the lithium to be... Full story
The Inflation Reduction Act offers American car buyers a $7,500 tax credit for buying a new electric vehicle, as long as the ingredients in the battery of that automobile are mostly produced domestically, and none of the critical minerals in the EV comes from "foreign entities of concern" in China and elsewhere. The nearly decade-long process to permit a mine in the United States, however, has automakers concerned that none of the shiny electrified models they put on the... Full story
Conditional loan signals a major step forward for ioneer's planned lithium-boron mine in Nevada. As part of the Biden administration's ongoing effort to support projects that will provide a domestic supply of the minerals and metals critical to America's transition to clean energy and transportation, the U.S. Department of Energy has committed to loaning ioneer Ltd. up to $700 million to develop the Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron project in Nevada. "Rhyolite Ridge is a major...
One of several frontrunners in the race for additive manufacturing prevalence, Desktop Metal Inc. has garnered a $9 million order from a major German automaker for its binder jet 3D metal printing systems to support digitally casted powertrain components for a popular car line. Founded in 2015 by leaders in advanced manufacturing, metallurgy, and robotics, Desktop Metal sought to address the unmet challenges of speed, cost, and quality to make additive manufacturing an...
To encourage greater transparency in the inevitable battery-powered world, Ford Motor Company has partnered with Everledger to deliver the world's first passport pilot for the responsible recycling of electric vehicle batteries. Founded in 2015, Everledger is an independent technology company that aims to help businesses monitor asset information with various security technologies, such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, smart labeling with near field communication (NFC)...
Coming together to build North America's clean energy and e-mobility future The shift away from the fossil fuels that powered the Industrial Revolution and transported humankind through the 20th century, and toward the clean energy technologies that will propel us into the future, has the world at an inflection point – the decisions we make on how to supply, use, and recycle the minerals and metals that are the basic building blocks of the Renewable Energy Revolution will s... Full story
Electric Vehicles require six times the minerals than their fossil fuel forebearers With even the most basic models boasting sophisticated driver-assist, navigation, infotainment, diagnostics, and other advanced digital systems being fed power from oversized versions of the lithium-ion batteries found in your laptop or smartphone, electric vehicles are becoming personal computers that you can drive. While this puts a whole new spin on the term mobile computing, riding around i... Full story
By 2030, batteries will likely need more than 5x all the graphite mined in 2021 While shortages of the lithium and nickel needed for electric vehicle batteries has dominated news headlines over the past year, the massive demand for graphite has largely been overlooked. As the primary ingredient in the anode side of lithium-ion batteries, graphite is the single largest element in lithium-ion batteries and the mining sector's inability to keep pace with skyrocketing demand of... Full story
Looking to secure the materials required for the lithium batteries that will deliver power to more than 2 million electric vehicles per year by 2026, Ford Motor Company is adding the clout of its Blue Oval emblem to mining companies and projects that can offer low-carbon supplies of the aluminum, battery materials, and copper needed to build its envisioned e-mobility future. "Ford's new electric vehicle lineup has generated huge enthusiasm and demand, and now we are putting...
With the ability to charge faster, store more energy, and be less likely to catch fire than their liquid lithium-ion battery counterparts, solid-state lithium batteries are considered by many in the automotive industry as the Holy Grail of the electric vehicle revolution. With the June 6 announcement that Solid Power Inc. has completed a pilot production line, Ford Motor Company and BMW Group are one step closer to realizing their vision of producing longer-range, lower-cost,...
Car titans Volkswagen Group and Ford Motor Company have expanded their e-mobility partnership with Ford planning to produce another electric model for the European market based on Volkswagen's modular electric drive matrix platform, as well as doubling its planned MEB volume to 1.2 million units over the next six years. "Our strategic alliance with Volkswagen is an important element of Ford's commitment to offer an all-electric range of vehicles that are uniquely Ford and desi...
Lars Carlstrom, who has already founded two companies building lithium-ion battery gigafactories in Europe, has launched a third enterprise that plans to build a 54-gigawatt-hour battery facility in Southern California that will be supplied with geothermal power and lithium from Controlled Thermal Resources' Hell's Kitchen project in Imperial Valley. Carlstrom is a pioneering industrialist in the automotive sector who founded Britishvolt, which is developing a 30 GWh battery g... Full story
A recent analysis by the Zero Emission Transportation Association found that electric vehicle drivers save upwards of $10,000 in operating costs when compared to similar internal combustion engine cars, trucks, and SUVs. Given the increases in the cost of filling up an ICE vehicle at the gas pump, the savings of driving an EV are likely to increase. "This month's Consumer Price Index shows once again that gas prices are surging, which has been exacerbated by Putin's invasion... Full story
Does the United States' electric vehicle ambitions put the cart before the horse? Or, more precisely, place the EVs ahead of the raw material supply chains needed to build them? The Biden administration wants half of all vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2030. This comes at a time when the European Union has called for a complete transition away from fossil-fuel-burning automobiles by 2035, and China is making its own massive push into the EV sector. This envisioned... Full story
