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Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles

Electric Vehicles: The Dirty Nickel Problem – by Cliff Rice (Clean Technica – September 27, 2020)

https://cleantechnica.com/

“Certainly, electric vehicle manufactures cannot live up to their
professed good intentions of using “environmentally friendly”
nickel if that nickel comes from laterite deposits.”

Electric vehicles are only a small part of the world vehicle market, but this is expected to change. While there are several competing battery chemistries which are likely to be used in this emerging market, many of them contain significant amounts of nickel.

This is a problem, and to understand why it is a problem, we need to understand the basics of where nickel comes from. It gets a bit complicated.

Nickel is mined from two types of deposits — sulphide and laterite. Sulphide nickel occurs in hard rock that has formed from crystallization of magma with the proper conditions and chemistry.

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OPINION: Courtesy of Ford, Canada’s EV moment has suddenly arrived. Are governments ready for it? – by Adam Radwanski (Globe and Mail – September 27, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Sarah Petrevan, policy director for the think tank Clean Energy
Canada, suggests that Canada could sell itself on ethical and
sustainable mining practices, which is a concern for some makers
of vehicles supposed to represent social responsibility. To get
to that point would likely require an expansive public-policy
tool kit – R&D, de-risking of capital, infrastructure in remote
areas – that governments have yet to formulate.

Suddenly, Canada has a foothold in one of the world’s fastest-growing and most pivotal clean-technology sectors.

Only days ago, being a player any time soon in making electric vehicles seemed preposterous. Ontario’s manufacturing heartland, despite its proud automaking history, had been passed over for new investments in the cars expected to take over global fleets.

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Battery metal miners trying to tap electric car boom want Elon Musk to stop killing their buzz – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – September 26, 2020)

https://financialpost.com/

As investor anticipation mounted for Tesla Inc.’s much-hyped, self-proclaimed Battery Day on Wednesday, Trent Mell was upset just thinking about it.

Mell, chief executive of Toronto-based First Cobalt Corp., has spent three years trying to secure a ground floor seat in the burgeoning electric vehicle industry.

In 2017, his company bought a long-forgotten refinery in small-town northern Ontario that could, if everything goes right, produce five per cent of the world’s battery grade cobalt, about 25,000 tons, by 2021. It would be the first, and only, refinery in North America producing battery-grade cobalt.

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Tesla’s hyped ‘Battery Day’ shows some kinks – by Dave Makichuk (Asia Times – September 23, 2020)

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Elon Musk had a lot to say on Tesla’s much-ballyhoed “Battery Day.” The day he said would revolutionize electric transport and get everybody excited. Well … it didn’t quite live up to expectations, to say the least.

According to Wired, this turned out to be a fat lithium-ion battery called a 4680 — a reference to its diameter, 46 millimeters, and its length, 80 millimeters — that is being produced in-house at Tesla.

To be sure, Tesla’s new battery appears to offer large performance gains in a few key areas, but it was unclear whether Tesla has actually achieved these upgrades or whether this is the projected performance for the finalized battery, Wired reported.

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The Secret to a Greener, Longer-Lasting Battery Is Blue – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – September 22, 2020)

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

(Bloomberg Businessweek) — A material that gave a vibrant blue to the foaming breaks of the famous Japanese print The Great Wave off Kanagawa and instilled the same color in works by Picasso and Monet is being used today for an entirely different but equally creative task: keeping energy-hungry U.S. data centers running.

Prussian blue, the pigment developed by a Berlin color maker in the early 18th century, is a key component in batteries made with sodium rather than lithium, which are intended for industries other than electric vehicles.

“It’s been used as a pigment, as a dyestuff, and has been a consumer product for centuries,” says Colin Wessells, chief executive officer of Natron Energy Inc., in Santa Clara, Calif., the battery maker behind the technology.

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Ford deal paves way for electric vehicles – by Josh O’Kane (Globe and Mail – September 22, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The Canadian and Ontario governments will partner with Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. to invest $1.8-billion in its auto plant in Oakville, Ont., Unifor president Jerry Dias said on Tuesday, a significant step toward creating an electric-vehicle industry in Canada that would include manufacturers and suppliers.

The deal is part of a tentative three-year labour contract that was signed at about 5 a.m. on Tuesday after marathon talks between the union and the automaker.

The $1.8-billion will be largely dedicated to retooling the Oakville plant to build five electric vehicle models, the first of which will be scheduled to roll off the line in 2025, Mr. Dias said. Batteries will also be assembled at the plant.

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The Age of Electric Cars Is Dawning Ahead of Schedule – by Jack Ewing (New York Times – September 20, 2020)

https://www.nytimes.com/

FRANKFURT — An electric Volkswagen ID.3 for the same price as a Golf. A Tesla Model 3 that costs as much as a BMW 3 Series. A Renault Zoe electric subcompact whose monthly lease payment might equal a nice dinner for two in Paris.

As car sales collapsed in Europe because of the pandemic, one category grew rapidly: electric vehicles. One reason is that purchase prices in Europe are coming tantalizingly close to the prices for cars with gasoline or diesel engines.

At the moment this near parity is possible only with government subsidies that, depending on the country, can cut more than $10,000 from the final price. Carmakers are offering deals on electric cars to meet stricter European Union regulations on carbon dioxide emissions. In Germany, an electric Renault Zoe can be leased for 139 euros a month, or $164.

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Tesla “battery day” a possible blow to cobalt miners – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – September 21, 2020)

https://www.mining.com/

Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla hosts its annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 22, followed by the highly anticipated “battery technology day”, a worldwide live-streamed event during which the firm is expected to unveil its own new type of battery cell.

Speculation points to a cobalt-free battery that uses more of less costly metals such as nickel and manganese.

Tesla currently uses the nickel rich nickel-cobalt-aluminum cathode chemistry, which has a low cobalt content of about 5%, for their cars produced outside China.

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Sourcing EV battery metals from deep sea claims 90% carbon footprint reduction (Financial Express – September 21, 2020)

https://www.financialexpress.com/

As the world rushes to replace internal combustion engines with electric vehicle batteries, a study suggests that polymetallic rocks found on the deep-ocean floor can be a source for hundreds of millions of tonnes of EV battery metals with dramatically lower climate impact than mining ores on land.

The study published in the Journal of Cleaner Production does a comparative life cycle assessment of battery sources, quantifying the direct and indirect emissions, disruptions to carbon sequestration services realised in the mining, processing, and refining of battery metals.

The carbon intensity of producing metals like nickel led to mounting interest in finding low-carbon metal sources, along with a plea by Tesla’s Elon Musk that promised “a giant contract” for nickel mined “efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way.”

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COMMUNITY VOICES: Mommy, where did my little Tesla come from? – by Jeff Vaughan (Bakersfield – September 20, 2020)

https://www.bakersfield.com/

Jeff Vaughan is an independent petroleum geologist who was born and worked in Bakersfield his entire career.

This is a take on the age old question that older siblings have been pondering forever. Surely the wise and elegant stork that delivered me home is not the same demented or inebriated one that delivered my defective younger brother?

So let’s take a look at electric vehicles and where they come from in comparing them to their internally combusted siblings.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. The following is a partial list of items in an electric vehicle that come from hydrocarbons (oil and gas). Hint – plastic is made from hydrocarbons, but it is not the only petroleum product used on electric vehicles.

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Ford reveals plan for $700M plant, jobs at Rouge plus all-electric Ford F-150 secrets – by Phoebe Wall Howard (Detroit Free Press – September 17, 2020)

https://www.freep.com/

Ford Motor Co. revealed Thursday an audacious plan to build a $700 million plant at the Rouge complex that would create the first all-electric F-150, the nation’s bestselling vehicle.

“This plant mirrors the story of America and American manufacturing,” said Bill Ford Jr., executive chairman, during an event at the manufacturing site livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.

“This is where the industrial revolution took hold, where the arsenal of democracy was forged, where parents and grandparents and great grandparents built not only cars and trucks but their own American dreams.

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Canada ranked 4th, US 6th in lithium-ion battery supply chain (Mining.com – September 16, 2020)

https://www.mining.com/

A new ranking for 2020 by Bloomberg’s clean energy, new materials and commodity research arm (BloombergNEF) shows China dominating the global lithium-ion battery supply chain, quickly surpassing Japan and Korea, leaders for most of the previous decade.

China’s dominance is based on its large domestic battery demand, 72GWh, and control of 80% of the world’s raw material refining, 77% of the world’s cell capacity and 60% of the world’s component manufacturing, according to data from BNEF.

Kwasi Ampofo, BNEF’s lead analyst covering battery raw materials, says China’s large scale investments into mining and refining has given it the advantage over Japan and Korea:

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EU deal could forge shiny future for Canada’s low-carbon metals – by Chris Turner (Corporate Knights – September 16, 2020)

https://www.corporateknights.com/

he Canada Nickel Company is a fledgling Ontario mining firm with a handful of leases in mineral-rich northern Ontario and ambitious plans to dig for nickel, cobalt and iron.

So it represents a particularly audacious move that the company recently announced the creation of a wholly owned subsidiary called NetZero Metals, charged with the task of mining those metals without a carbon footprint.

Green boasts can be a little suspect, especially since the net-zero goal is one that established players in industries like steel and oil have placed at the far end of a 30-year ramp.

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BHP nears completion of Nickel West plant – by Salomae Haselgrove (Australian Mining – September 16, 2020)

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BHP has confirmed that it will open its Nickel West sulphate plant in Western Australia this financial year after the development was delayed.

The delay means the first product from the plant is now expected in the second half of the 2021 financial year, a year behind the original schedule.

The facility that is located at the Kwinana nickel refinery is expected to produce 100,000 tonnes of nickel sulphate per annum during its stage one development.

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Tesla ‘In Talks’ To Establish Carbon-Neutral Nickel Mine – by Matthew Broersma (Silicon.co.uk – September 14, 2020)

https://www.silicon.co.uk/

Tesla reportedly in talks with Canada’s Giga Metals to establish environmentally friendly nickel mine in British Columbia as it expands battery production.

Tesla is reportedly in talks with Canadian mining company Giga Metals about developing a large mine to give it access to a ready supply of nickel and cobalt for its electric vehicle batteries.

The mine, located in north-central British Columbia, would also offer a way for Tesla to reduce its carbon footprint as it expands battery production, Reuters reported late on Friday.

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