The Elements of Innovation Discovered
The Elements of Innovation Discovered
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Becancour, a small Quebec town along the shores of the St. Lawrence River about midway between Montreal and Quebec City, is rapidly emerging as an epicenter for producing the advanced materials needed for lithium-ion batteries powering the electric vehicle revolution. This rural Canadian town of around 12,800 people surfaced in the battery space about a year ago when Nouveau Monde Graphite Inc. announced plans to build a facility there to produce the coated spherical purified... Full story
By the end of next year, the powerful rare earth magnets vital to efficiently transform motion into electricity in wind turbines and electricity into motion in electric vehicles are expected to be rolling off the assembly line at a new 200,000-square-foot facility that MP Materials Corp. is building in Fort Worth, Texas. During a ceremony that attracted Texas lawmakers, General Motors executives, and even a GMC Hummer EV that benefits from the type of rare earth magnets that... Full story
In a landmark deal that is expected to further solidify Quebec as a major North American hub for the enormous quantities of graphite needed for the lithium-ion batteries powering the electric vehicle revolution, Nouveau Monde Graphite Inc. has agreed to invest in advancing Mason Graphite Inc.'s Lac Guéret graphite project toward development. Under an option and joint venture agreement announced on May 16, Nouveau Monde will invest up to C$5 million into the equity of Mason... Full story
To help shore up domestic supplies of the cobalt, graphite, lithium, nickel, and other materials that go into lithium-ion batteries, the U.S. Department of Energy has directed $3.16 billion from the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to bolster supply chains. This multi-billion-dollar funding comes a month after President Biden authorized the Pentagon to utilize the estimated $750 million of available Defense Production Act Title III funding to establish and... Full story
In another deal to secure the raw materials it needs to produce enough Ultium batteries to power up to 1 million electric vehicles per year by 2025, General Motors struck a multi-year agreement to purchase cobalt from Glencore's Murrin Murrin operation in Western Australia. A rare and critical metal, cobalt plays an important role in improving the energy density and longevity of the lithium-ion batteries powering EVs. "Future facing commodities like cobalt play a pivotal role...
Ontario has developed a mines-to-market critical minerals strategy that leverages rich stores of critical minerals in the northern reaches of the Canadian province, the already well-established mining sector found there, and the robust manufacturing sector that has been developed in the south. "The Critical Minerals Strategy is our government's blueprint to connect industries, resources and workers in our province's north to the future of manufacturing in the south as we...
Rising demand, tight supply, war, and a short squeeze on a China-based stainless steel titan came into perfect alignment to rocket the price of nickel to historic heights. The price for a pound of nickel soared nearly 250% over two days to a brief altitude above US$100,000 per metric ton, or US$45 per pound, on March 7. This prompted the London Metal Exchange to halt trading of the battery metal to deal with the aftermath of the largest move in the price of a metal in LME's...
Adding to a growing list of deals to source the materials and components needed for its vision to get everybody in on its transition to an all-electric future, General Motors is working with POSCO Chemical to develop a roughly $400 million plant in Quebec to produce cathode active material for Ultium batteries that will power GM electric vehicles such as the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC HUMMER EV, and Cadillac LYRIQ. Planning to have the capacity to build 1 million electric...
The U.S. Defense Strategies Institute (DSI) recognized Australian additive manufacturing company SPEE3D at the 6th Military Additive Manufacturing Summit, where the company was named the inaugural winner of the Institute's Award for Expeditionary & Tactical 3D Printing Excellence. Founded in 2015, Australia-based SPEE3D is the evolution of In Motion Technology, a company co-founded by Byron Kennedy and Steve Camilleri to commercialize their axial flux motor technology used to...
Part of a much larger critical minerals investment and strategy unveiled by the Biden administration on Feb. 22, the Pentagon has awarded MP Materials Corp. a $35 million contract to commercially separate and refine heavy rare earth elements at its Mountain Pass Mine. Located in California's Mojave Desert, Mountain Pass is currently the only mine in the United States that produces rare earths, a group of 17 elements critical to a wide array of technologies used for industrial...
In its race toward becoming North America's electric vehicle market leader by 2025, General Motors Co. has unveiled plans to invest roughly $7 billion in new lithium-ion battery and EV manufacturing facilities in Michigan, the single largest investment ever by the American automaker. "Today we are taking the next step in our continuous work to establish GM's EV leadership by making investments in our vertically integrated battery production in the U.S., and our North American...
To secure a long-term domestic supply of the rare earths needed to build electric vehicles in North America, General Motors has entered into a binding agreement to buy REE materials and magnets to be produced at a new facility MP Materials Corp. is building in Fort Worth, Texas. "We are building a resilient and sustainable EV manufacturing value chain in North America, from raw materials to cell manufacturing to electric drive motors and beyond, further accelerating GM's...
As rapidly advancing technology leaves behind printed circuit boards, old computers, obsolete televisions, and other electrical devices, mountains of electronic waste, or e-waste, being stockpiled around the world is becoming a major environmental concern. Considered the fastest-growing waste stream in the developed world, scientists and policymakers worry that these end-of-life products are spawning environmental contamination and seepage into the world's food chain. Others,...
Whether on the frontlines of a battle or on a humanitarian mission in some remote corner of Earth, military vehicles are usually far from a parts depot when they are needed most. This is why the Australian Army is rigorously testing metal 3d printing technologies developed by SPEE3D to replace armored vehicle parts in the field. During its annual bilateral military exercise between the Australian Army and the Marine Rotational Force – Exercise Koolendong – various parts for...
As one of the largest automobile manufacturers on the planet, Toyota Motor Corporation, has long spearheaded low-carbon transportation. The company's latest move shows it means business, with a 10-year, US$3.4 billion (380 billion yen) investment into electric vehicle technologies in the United States. Specifically, the investment is for the development and localization of EV battery production and is part of a global total of approximately US$13.5 billion (1.5 trillion yen) s...
With the global transition to electric vehicles charged with renewable energy creating massive new demands for rare earth materials and magnets, copper, and electrical steel, General Motors and GE Renewable Energy are working together to evaluate opportunities to improve supplies of the materials critical to a low-carbon future. "A secure, sustainable and resilient local supply chain for electric vehicle materials is critical to the execution of GM's vision of an all-electric...
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
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has thus far focused the automaker's efforts on manufacturing electric vehicles and the lithium-ion batteries that power them. This could change as a shortage of the minerals and metals critical to lithium batteries threatens to slow production and drive up the costs of EVs. "Price of lithium has gone to insane levels!" Musk tweeted on April 8. "Tesla might actually have to get into the mining & refining directly at scale, unless costs improve." In a... Full story
While laying out an action plan to establish the national network of electric vehicle charging stations needed to keep pace with its ambitious goal of 50% of all vehicles sold in the United States being electric by 2030, the Biden administration reiterated that domestic battery manufacturing and critical minerals supplies are key aspects of the overall EV strategy. The White House is backing up this commitment to domestic battery supply chains with roughly $20 billion in loan... 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
With the goal of delivering renewable energy to electrical grids by the end of 2023 and near-zero-carbon lithium for General Motors electric vehicles the following year, Controlled Thermal Resources has launched drilling at its Hell's Kitchen geothermal project in Southern California. "We are very pleased to kick start our drilling program and we are on schedule to deliver the project's first 50MW (megawatts) of baseload renewable power in late 2023 and an estimated 20,000 ton... Full story
The ambitious 2035 target for a complete transition to electric vehicle sales set by most global automakers hinges on establishing reliable and responsible supply chains for the batteries that will power this envisioned electric mobility future. To help meet the burgeoning EV sector's battery material needs, First Cobalt Corp. is moving forward with an integrated battery refining, recycling, and manufacturing park in Ontario. "We see serious strains in the automotive supply... Full story
Global governments and industries are setting increasingly ambitious targets for the phasing out of fossil fuel-burning automobiles in favor of electric vehicles charged with green energy. Achieving these grand climate objectives, however, is going to require an equally bold strategy to ensure there are plentiful supplies of the new generation of energy minerals and metals critical to building this revolution in the way the world generates and uses energy. The World Bank... Full story
The lightest of all the metals in the universe, lithium has emerged as the namesake for the batteries powering electric vehicles down global highways and storing renewable energy for those EVs to plug into. This is on top of the countless laptops, tablets, smartphones, wearable electronics, power tools, household appliances, electric bikes, scooters, toys, and the seemingly endless list of electric devices made possible by lithium-ion batteries. "Lithium consumption for... Full story
Reminiscent of America's gilded age, the world is priming itself for a new era of technology and energy centered on the electricity that sparked the imaginations of visionaries such as Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. This new era, however, sets aside more than a century of burning fossil fuels in favor of new clean sources of the electricity that will power human innovation into the 21st century and beyond. Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are but a few of the methods... Full story
