Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles – Page 146

Electric car demand fueling rise in child labor in DR Congo: campaigners – by Nellie Peyton (Reuters U.S. – November 2, 2018)

November 5, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Demand for electric vehicles is fueling a rise in child labor in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, experts said this week, urging companies to take action as the industry expands.

Cobalt is a key component in batteries for electric cars, phones and laptops, and Congo provides more than half of global supply. Tens of thousands of children as young as six dig for the toxic substance in artisanal mines in the country’s southeast, without protective clothing, rights groups say.

As companies move to secure their supply of cobalt, they should also make a push to improve transparency and labor rights, said U.S.-based advocacy group Enough Project.

Mining Veteran Wants to Build a $1 Billion Battery Metals Giant – by Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – November 1, 2018)

November 1, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

South African mining veteran Brian Menell wants to build a battery material giant to help challenge China’s domination of the nascent industry.

It’s still early days for his privately funded company, TechMet Ltd., which controls just a handful of assets from Canada to Rwanda. But he’s raising more money and sees countries such as the U.S. and Japan as potential partners to help catch China in the rapidly growing industry to provide battery grade supplies of everything from tin and tungsten to nickel and cobalt.

“There’s a degree of urgency now,” said Menell, who started his mining career with diamond giant De Beers in the 1980s and whose family built one of South Africa’s largest mining companies. “It’s a massive problem” that China has dominated supply of these materials for about 15 years, he said.

Borden mine innovations tested at Hoyle Pond – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – October 31, 2018)

October 31, 2018

https://www.timminspress.com/

The Hoyle Pond Mine in Timmins has become something of a testing ground for many pieces of mining equipment destined for the new all-electric Borden Lake gold project near Chapleau.

It might also turn out that Hoyle Pond and other “traditional” mines will eventually rely more and more on using all-electric equipment.

Borden is the newest gold mine operation for Goldcorp’s Porcupine Gold Mines division, which also includes Hoyle Pond, the Hollinger open pit and the Dome Mine and milling complex now being studied for the possible Century Project.

COLUMN-China’s Tsingshan rains on nickel bulls’ party – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – October 30, 2018)

October 30, 2018

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Oct 30 (Reuters) – Has nickel lost its electric buzz? Bull spirits had been galvanised by the potential boost to demand from the electric vehicle revolution. Nickel is expected to be one of the winners in the battle for more efficient batteries.

The price of nickel on the London Metal Exchange surged by 63 percent between October 2017 and April 2018, hitting a three-year high of $16,690 per tonne. It is now trading at $11,750.

Trade war anxiety has played its part in the price fall. But nickel has its own worries. Assumptions as to how both nickel’s price and supply chain would need to adapt to the new electric demand driver have just been upended.

Battery Metal Bulls Fear China’s Big Disrupter to Hit Nickel – by Mark Burton and Jack Farchy (Bloomberg News – October 28, 2018)

October 30, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Commodity traders expect nickel, the silvery-white metal used to make stainless steel, to be a winner from the electric-vehicle revolution — it’s a key component of batteries.

But a Chinese metals giant with a knack of upending markets is threatening to spoil the party. Tsingshan Holding Group announced last month it’s building an Indonesian plant to produce nickel-cobalt salts for the battery market.

Transforming the Southeast Asian nation’s low-grade deposits into “class 1” metal — the equivalent of turning cheap table wine into a prized vintage — would disrupt the bullish narrative that’s helped shield nickel from a broader selloff in metal markets this year.

Even the World’s Biggest Miners Are Switching to Electric Vehicles – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – October 29, 2018)

October 29, 2018

https://finance.yahoo.com/

(Bloomberg) — BHP Billiton Ltd.’s giant Olympic Dam mine in Australia’s Outback is a labyrinth of 450 kilometers of tunnels and roads — an ideal testing ground for the industry’s burgeoning shift toward cleaner power.

Taking about 30 minutes to drive from top to bottom, there’s ample opportunity for the world’s biggest miner to test electric SUVs in a bid to cut both costs and pollution, including potentially harmful diesel emissions. BHP will make a decision by the middle of next year whether to extend the program across a 240-strong fleet of light vehicles at the South Australia operation.

“Getting mines to be completely diesel free is our end goal,” said Andrew Draffin, a project manager at Voltra, a supplier that’s provided BHP with adapted Toyota LandCruiser models fitted with an electric motor and lithium-ion batteries. “We’ve started with light vehicles because that’s the easiest for companies to prove the electric concept.”

Better nickel, base metal prices in 2020, Vale says – by Staff (Sudbury Star – October 26, 2018)

October 26, 2018

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Lower prices for metals, including nickel, and the planned maintenance shutdown at its Sudbury operations, ate into Vale’s third-quarter revenues of its base metals division.

In a presentation Thursday, Vale said its base metals division generated US $778 million in the second quarter, but only $528 million in the most recent quarter.

“About 65 per cent of the decrease (in the third quarter) is related to the exogenous factor of lower prices of nickel, copper and cobalt, and 35 per cent mainly associated with Sudbury’s annual planned maintenance shutdown and its effects on lower by-product volumes and higher costs.”

Vale still keen on nickel, at least in the long term – by Staff (Sudbury Star – October 25, 2018)

October 25, 2018

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Vale said Wednesday it remains optimistic about the long-term prospects for nickel. The short-term, however, is another matter.

The company’s third quarter “results represented a tipping point for the Base Metals business,” Eduardo Bartolomeo, executive officer for Vale’s Base Metals division, said in a release. “We are undergoing an important restructuring process led by our new management team with the focus on optimizing our operations, stabilizing our cost structure and reviewing mine plans.

“We are creating the basis for the nickel business to generate strong cash flows in any price scenario, while keeping the optionality to capture the upside of emerging demand for nickel in electric vehicles.” Part of that restructuring has led to mine closures and job cuts in Sudbury and Thompson, Man.

How Ivanhoe Mines is helping China in its quest to dominate electric vehicles – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail/Report on Business Magazine – October 24, 2018)

October 25, 2018

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

China wants to be No. 1 in electric cars, so it needs copper and cobalt. Where does it find its most helpful suppliers and allies? On Canadian stock markets

Robert Friedland, the founder and executive co-chairman of Vancouver’s Ivanhoe Mines, calls copper “the new oil.” By that, he means copper is essential to the new electrified, battery-powered economy in the same way oil, a century ago, was essential to the era of mass mobility.

Copper’s conductivity – its ability to transmit electricity – is superb. You cannot build a smartphone, an electrical grid or an electric car without copper, and lots of it.

China has figured out that copper and other common and rare minerals are essential to its long-term industrial ambitions. It wants to own the source of those minerals, rather than buying them on the spot market. The country’s leaders believe that whoever controls the minerals controls the end product, not just domestically, but globally. Call it an extreme form of vertical integration – from mine site to retail channel.

The Future of the Car May Be Older Than the Model T – by David Stringer, Chisaki Watanabe, Jie Ma, Jack Kaskey, Andrew Noel and R.T. Watson (Bloomberg/Mining.com – October 21, 2018)

October 22, 2018

http://www.mining.com/

Vale has said it expects the EV revolution to boost battery market
nickel demand to as much as 700,000 tons in 2025, from just 36,000
tons this year.

(Bloomberg) — It took more than seven years for automakers to sell 4 million passenger electric vehicles. It’ll take about six months to sell the next million.

That surging demand is transforming the lithium-ion battery business, with more power packs expected to be installed in EVs this year than in consumer electronics, according to Bloomberg NEF. China, where subsidy-toting drivers own a third of the world’s passenger EVs, is doing the most to fuel the boom.

The market value of batteries used in electric cars, electric buses and related energy storage should multiply by about 10 times to a potential $500 billion by 2050, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. research. Many of the biggest battery producers aren’t benefiting now because they’re spending billions of dollars to add manufacturing capacity and form global partnerships with automakers. Down the line, though, the trend changes.

The dirt on clean electric cars – by Niclas Rolander, Jesper Starn and Elisabeth Behrmann (Toronto Star/Bloomberg – October 21, 2018)

October 22, 2018

https://www.thestar.com/

Beneath the hoods of millions of the clean electric cars rolling onto the world’s roads in the next few years will be a dirty battery.

Every major carmaker has plans for electric vehicles to cut greenhouse gas emissions, yet their manufacturers are, by and large, making lithium-ion batteries in places with some of the most polluting grids in the world.

By 2021, capacity will exist to build batteries for more than 10 million cars running on 60 kilowatt-hour packs, according to data of Bloomberg NEF. Most supply will come from places like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland that rely on non-renewable sources like coal for electricity.

With $4.1 billion at stake, Nutrien waits on Chilean court to rule on ‘Hail Mary’ lawsuit – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – October 20, 2018)

October 22, 2018

https://business.financialpost.com/

The giant potash company is tussling with a powerful businessman: the former son-in-law of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet

Saskatchewan-based Nutrien Ltd. persuaded antitrust authorities earlier this month to sign off on its US$4.1 billion sale of its stake in a South American lithium producer. But now the giant potash company is tussling with a powerful businessman: the former son-in-law of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Julio Ponce, a billionaire with a checkered past whose father-in-law previously ruled Chile, has filed a lawsuit seeking more time to review Nutrien’s US$4.1 billion sale in Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile to a Chinese buyer.

If the lawsuit delays the sale long enough, some analysts believe Nutrien may be forced to ditch its Chinese buyer and sell its stake in SQM on the open market — for as much as US$1 billion less than the original price.

Lithium miners’ dispute reveals water worries in Chile’s Atacama desert – by Dave Sherwood (Reuters U.S. – October 18, 2018)

October 18, 2018

https://graphics.reuters.com/

Earlier this year, the world’s two biggest lithium producers publicly celebrated new deals with Chile’s government that will allow them to vastly increase output of the ultralight battery metal from the Atacama, the world’s driest desert.

U.S.-based Albemarle Corp and Chile’s SQM operate just 3 miles (5 km) apart in the remote Salar, a basin in the Atacama that is home to one of the world’s richest deposits of high-grade lithium. Lithium-ion batteries are key components for most consumer electronics, from cellphones and laptops to electric cars.

In celebrating the new contracts, the two companies said they were confident they could significantly boost output without drawing more than their current quotas of lithium-rich brine, or saltwater, that has for millennia accumulated in pools beneath the Atacama. The rivals said each had all the brine they needed for current and future production.

World’s Top Miner Embracing the Boom in Electric Car Batteries – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – October 16, 2018)

October 18, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

BHP Billiton Ltd. is boosting sales of the top-quality nickel that’s needed for electric vehicle batteries, another sign the world’s biggest miner is targeting more opportunities in the booming sector.

Sales of refined nickel, a category that includes the premium products used for battery production, jumped 18 percent in the three months to Sept. 30 from a year earlier, according to a statement Wednesday. The company has begun offering more detailed data on nickel and cobalt production amid investor interest in its exposure to the rise of EVs.

BHP’s Nickel West operation in Western Australia aims to sell 90% of output to the battery sector by the end of 2019, switching away from a traditional customer base in the stainless-steel market.

Chinese electric car makers, nurtured by state, now look for way out of glut – by David Stanway (Reuters U.S. – October 16, 2018)

October 18, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

HANGZHOU, China (Reuters) – Humming away in an industrial estate in the eastern Chinese resort city of Hangzhou, electric vehicle designer Automagic is one of hundreds of companies looking to ride the country’s wave of investment in clean transportation.

The company wants to find a niche in a crowded sector that already includes renewable equipment manufacturers, battery makers and property developers like the Evergrande Group, as well as established auto giants. But not all of these electric vehicle hopefuls will make it to the finish line.

“This (large number of firms) is inevitable, because whenever there is an emerging technology or emerging industry, there must be a hundred schools of thought and a hundred flowers blooming,” said Zhou Xuan, Automagic’s general manager, referring to Chinese leader Mao Zedong’s ill-fated 1956 “Hundred Flowers” campaign aimed at encouraging new ideas.