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Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles

Northern Ontario has big role in developing province’s EV industry: Fedeli – by Hugh Kruzel (Sudbury Star – June 7, 2023)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Cabinet minister speaks to Sudbury conference about the future of battery electric vehicles

The Ford government is committed to making the province a leader in manufacturing electric vehicles, Ontario’s minister of Economic Development has told a Sudbury conference. Vic Fedeli, the Nipissing MPP, also said Northern Ontario – with its abundant supply of critical minerals needed to produce battery electric vehicles – will play a big role making sure that happens.

“They need us now … here in Sudbury is the battery grade nickel … then look at The Ring of Fire,” Fedeli said while speaking to the BEV In-Depth conference, held last week at Cambrian College. “We will be pulling the minerals out of ground and processing them here. In the North. Absolutely in the North.”

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VW Is on a Hunt for Resources to Remove China From Its EV Batteries – by William Boston (Wall Street Journal – June 4, 2023)

https://www.wsj.com/

U.S. and Europe lag behind China in the global race for components essential to carmakers’ electric transition

BERLIN—Volkswagen is searching the world, from Canada to Indonesia, for supplies to make the batteries in electric vehicles it sells in the U.S. and Europe less dependent on Chinese components, a senior VW executive said.

PowerCo, a subsidiary VW created last year, is leading the company’s search for natural resources and other critical battery ingredients. Ultimately, VW wants to secure its own supplies for battery plants outside China and not have to rely on Chinese suppliers for battery materials, most of whom are in China, VW board member and technology chief Thomas Schmall told The Wall Street Journal.

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The Critical Minerals Crisis – by Jack Lifton (Investor Intel – June 6, 2023)

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The Critical Minerals Crisis excerpt — “We are now at an inflection point for our society. If we can secure the supplies and the processing capacity for the minerals critical for the technologies we now take for granted in our daily lives, then our nations will flourish and grow.

If not, then our standard of living will decline, and those who have the critical minerals and the industrial bases to refine and fabricate them surge ahead of us. Our politicians and policymakers are woefully ignorant of this reality. This is the greatest danger of all to our lifestyle and security.” — Jack Lifton, Co-Founder & Co-Chairman, Critical Minerals Institute.

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Could there be an ‘OPEC of lithium’? – by Ognjen Š. Miljanić (Green Biz – June 7, 2023)

https://www.greenbiz.com/

Chile plans to nationalize its vast reserves of lithium, an element essential for development of batteries and electric vehicles. That could force new public-private partnerships for leading suppliers Albemarle and SQM.

Chile’s government in late April announced plans to nationalize its lithium industry. Such a policy could have worldwide repercussions on the battery and electric vehicle industries. Under the proposal, the world’s largest lithium-producing companies — U.S.-based Albemarle and Chinese-dominated SQM — will be allowed to continue their current contracts, but will be forced into public-private partnerships upon their expiration.

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How Vic Fedeli is trying to sell Ontario to the world – by Steve Paikin (TVO Today – June 5, 2023)

https://www.tvo.org/

The Nipissing MPP got off to a very rough start in government, but he’s found his calling as economic-development minister

Five years ago, Vic Fedeli was sure he’d got as high up the mountain of Ontario politics as he could. Yes, he’d run for leader of the Progressive Conservative party in 2015, but he didn’t make it to the finish line. And when leader Patrick Brown was turfed by his caucus in early 2018, MPPs picked Fedeli to hold the fort as interim leader.

But that was all temporary crisis management until party members chose a permanent leader in Doug Ford. After seven years in opposition, Fedeli figured he’d finally landed where he could have the most impact when the newly elected premier installed him as the first Tory finance minister in 15 years, back in June 2018.

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Winsome Resources inks deal to expand Adina lithium project footprint by half – by Blair McBride (Northern Miner – June 8, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Lithium explorer and developer Winsome Resources (ASX: WR1) announced Thursday the signing of an option agreement to expand its Adina lithium project in Quebec to 44 sq. km, a 50% increase, as it prepares for an initial resource this year.

The agreement would allow Winsome to acquire the 29 claims in the bordering Jackpot property and expand its total tenure in the James Bay area to more than 871.5 sq. km, the Perth-headquartered firm said in a release.

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America’s Long, Tortured Journey to Build EV Batteries – by Gabrielle Coppola (Bloomberg News – June 8, 2023)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The fall of startup A123 still haunts the US decades later—and reveals everything that’s wrong with this country’s approach to innovation.

On a 3-mile stretch of farmland in southwest Michigan, Ford Motor Co. is building a battery factory. The technology Ford needs to make cheap, stable batteries to power electric vehicles will come from China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., better known as CATL, the world’s biggest battery manufacturer.

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Is Yellowknife heading into a lithium rush? – by Talar Stockton (Cabin Radio – June 2, 2023)

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Lithium was once a forgotten element in the Northwest Territories. This summer, it’s sparking a hunt for profit.

For decades, nobody did much with the lithium-rich region east of Yellowknife. Suddenly, multiple companies are taking up the quest to find lithium and sending scouts to drill.
Drilling small holes across a property allows companies to get a sense of how large the deposit is beneath, and analyze samples for their lithium content.

For around half a dozen companies, that’s top of the to-do list. At least seven companies have NWT lithium projects in their early stages, most of them near Yellowknife. They hope to strike while the lithium iron is hot as demand skyrockets for the element’s use in the likes of electric vehicles.

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RPT-COLUMN-Nickel prices coming supply glut but stocks keep falling – by Andy Home (June 7, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, June 7 (Reuters) – Nickel has been the under-performer of the London Metal Exchange (LME) base metals pack this year. LME three-month nickel sank to a nine-month low of $20,310 per tonne last week and at a current $21,500 is now down by 31% since the start of the year.

Nickel is pricing in a looming supply glut as Indonesia builds out ever more production capacity in its race to be an electric vehicle battery metals giant. The country’s mined output grew by 48% last year and by another 41% in the first three months of this year, according to The International Nickel Study Group.

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Indigenous development groups kick off study for lithium processing plant – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – June 6, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Minodahmun Development and Three Fires Group shoulder their way into the BEV supply chain

Two Indigenous economic developments groups – one in northwestern Ontario and one in southwestern Ontario – are teaming up to break into the battery electric and lithium supply chain in a big way.

Greenstone-based Minodahmun Development LP it is teaming up with the Three Fires Group of Kettle Point to form a “Mines to Battery” partnership that involves advancing the concept of a lithium refinery. The two entities posted a joint news release on the partnership, June 6.

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Chinese mining company Sinomine planning Manitoba lithium refinery, eyeing Korea’s LG as joint venture partner – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – June 6, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Chinese mining company Sinomine Resource Group Co. Ltd. is considering building a lithium refinery in Manitoba, and is looking at teaming up with Korea’s LG Energy Solution Ltd. in an attempt to assuage any national-security concerns on the part of the federal government.

Last year, Beijing-based Sinomine put its Tanco lithium mine into production in Manitoba. It currently ships unrefined lithium concentrate from the site to China for use in the country’s electric-vehicle industry. China dominates the processing of lithium, with roughly a 60-per-cent share of the global market.

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Vale is ‘supplier of choice’ for automobile battery-grade nickel – by Len Gillis (Sudbury.com – June 6, 2023)

https://www.sudbury.com/

Company needs to keep up with the battery electric vehicle demand by expanding nickel and base metal operations in Sudbury by spending billions of dollars

Alfredo Santana, Vale’s chief operating officer for the company’s North Atlantic operations, told the Sudbury BEV In Depth conference last week that as his company has now become the nickel supplier of choice for the electric vehicle battery market, there will be an economic pay off with expansion of mining operations in Sudbury.

Santana was one of several speakers on the roster during the two-day conference held at Sudbury’s Cambrian College from May 31 to June 1.

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China’s EV Battery Sector Is Preparing a New Breakthrough – by Annie Lee (Bloomberg News – June 5, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — One of China’s top battery-makers reckons it has cracked a technology to provide even cheaper and more powerful packs for electric vehicles. Gotion High-Tech Co. recently unveiled a lithium-iron-manganese-phosphate battery — LMFP for short — which it says will power an EV for 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) on each charge. Until now, it’s largely the more expensive nickel-cobalt batteries have provided that kind of range.

“It’s an upgrade, it’s a leap for energy density,” Cheng Qian, executive president of Gotion’s international business unit, said in a phone interview from Tokyo.

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How new lithium extraction technology could help us meet electric vehicle targets – by Katie Brigham (CNBC.com – June 5, 2023)

https://www.cnbc.com/

The world contains vast quantities of lithium, an integral element in electric vehicle batteries. And though lithium is commonly mined from hard rock, the majority of the world’s lithium reserves are actually found in brine, extremely salty water beneath the Earth’s surface.

Today, brine mining involves evaporating the brine in massive, extravagantly colored pools over a series of about 18 months, leaving high concentrations of lithium behind. It’s a simple but inefficient process that takes up vast swaths of land and is ecologically disruptive.

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Battery electric vehicles transforming modern mining – by Hugh Kruzel (Sudbury Star – June 5, 2023)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Pace of change surprises observers, Sudbury conference hears

Traditionally, the mining industry has been slow – even loathe – to adopt change. However, the way the industry has taken to battery electric vehicles in the last three to five years represents nothing less than a paradigm shift, a Sudbury conference was told last week.

“We are changing how mining is done,” said Dale Rakochy of Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions. “We realized we were checking off so many boxes with deploying EV technology,” Rakochy said.

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