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Tesla is worried about the upcoming worldwide shortage of minerals used in the manufacture of batteries for electric cars, such as nickel, copper and lithium.
The electric revolution in the automotive industry is increasing the demand for batteries at an incredible rate, which is increasing the demand for certain specific minerals used in the production of Li-ion battery cells.
It is difficult to understand the impact of electric vehicles on the battery market.
For example, Tesla has become the largest consumer of batteries in the world just a few years after the volume production of its electric vehicles.
Sarah Maryssael, Tesla's global steel supplies manager for batteries, said at a Benchmark Minerals Intelligence conference that the builder worried about some of these minerals, sources said at the event through Reuters:
"Sarah Maryssael, Tesla's Global Head of Battery Supplies, told a closed-door conference of miners, regulators and legislators that the automaker was seeing a shortage of essential minerals for electric vehicles in the near future, according to the sources."
Many companies worry about cobalt, which is not widely exploited. Tesla uses on average less cobalt in its batteries than the rest of the industry.
Instead, Tesla is more concerned about nickel even though it is more widely exploited in the world:
"Maryssael added, according to sources, that Tesla would continue to focus more on nickel, as part of CEO Elon Musk's plan to use less cobalt in battery cathodes. Cobalt is mainly mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and some extraction techniques, especially those involving child labor, have made its use deeply unpopular in the battery sector, particularly with Musk. "
Tesla management also said the automaker saw "huge potential" to work with mines in Australia or the United States.
At the conference, a US senator also unveiled a new bill to help national mining of electric vehicle minerals.
Electrek's Take
The battery supply chain is an essential part of the electric revolution and automakers wishing to achieve mass production, like Tesla, must be involved in every aspect of it.
Tesla is well aware of this and he is deeply involved in the mining sector since he's started in the Gigafactory 1 project with Panasonic.
The company rarely comments on mineral supply issues and, when it has done so in the past, has largely dispelled its concerns.
This is partly because cobalt has been the main concern of many car manufacturers and the use of Tesla in cobalt-specific battery chemistry is somewhat limited.
Nickel and copper are the most common minerals in its batteries, but there are also the most exploited.
It is interesting that they now warn that there may be shortages. This is another indication that the growth of the industry will occur rapidly over the next few years, with as many mainstream EV programs on the market.
These are good problems because they indicate that we are going in the right direction and that they are fairly easy to solve. They just need investments.
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