Batteries, and more precisely battery metals, are poised to replace chips as the new bottleneck for the auto industry.
While there’s been a lot of attention on nickel, especially after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, another key metal — lithium — is a source of concern for manufacturers dealing with all manner of supply chain challenges.
The cost of the metal — mainly used to produce lithium-ion batteries, but also for pharmaceuticals and industrial lubricants — has been soaring. An index of key prices more than doubled in the first quarter, after surging 280% last year, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
That jump is worrying government officials in China, my colleague Annie Lee wrote earlier this month. Elon Musk, largely seen as ahead of the pack on scaling electric vehicle production, flagged the lithium shortage several times during Tesla’s earnings call this week.
For the rest of this article: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/mr-lithium-warns-there-s-not-enough-battery-metal-to-go-around-1.1755459