Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles – Page 153

Transparent Nickel Miners Will Have an Edge with Car Manufacturers – by Georgia Williams (Investing News Nickel – June 7, 2018)

June 8, 2018

Investing News Nickel

The Investing News Network (INN) sat down with Srinath Rengarajan, senior automotive research analyst at Oliver Wyman, at the 6th International Nickel Conference last week.

Topics covered at the show included how nickel will remain relevant in the battery market, the evolution of the electric vehicle (EV) sector and what needs to happen next to ensure green vehicles become a common sight on our roads and highways.

The two-day conference, held in downtown Toronto, was the first time in decades that analysts and specialists from the automotive sector were invited to a nickel-centric conference, a welcome shift from the mining-focused nature of most industry conferences.

COLUMN-The battle for control of the lithium mother-lode – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – June 8, 2018)

June 8, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, June 8 (Reuters) – What’s happened to lithium? What was last year’s “next big thing” has been pushed out of the investor limelight by cobalt, another key metallic input to the electric vehicle (EV) revolution and one with an even more troubled supply profile.

Lithium prices have also been taking a breather after their meteoric rise over the 2015-2017 period. The lithium supply chain is currently absorbing a wave of new production, much of it coming from hard-rock miners in Australia.

Some analysts are now forecasting a surplus of lithium over the next two years. Fears of future shortfall, meanwhile, have been damped by the prospect of much higher production in Chile, which sits on the world’s lithium mother-lode in the form of the brine lakes in the Atacama Desert.

Glencore Faces New Legal Challenge Against Congo Cobalt Mine – by William Clowes and Thomas Wilson (Bloomberg News – June 8, 2018)

June 8, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

(Bloomberg) — For Glencore Plc in the Democratic Republic of Congo, problems don’t form an orderly queue: they pile up on top of each other.

In the latest example of the commodity giant’s deteriorating relationships in the country, a convicted fraudster has resurrected a legal claim the company considered dead, launching a billion-dollar bid for compensation for a 19 percent stake he previously held in Mutanda Mining Sarl — the world’s biggest cobalt miner.

The lawsuit, the third court action this year challenging Glencore’s control of its prized Congolese mines, is another headache for the Swiss commodity trader as it faces down the government over a new mining code that hiked taxes.

ALTERNATIVES TO COBALT, THE BLOOD DIAMOND OF BATTERIES – by Ellen Airhart (Wired Magazine – June 7, 2018)

June 8, 2018

https://www.wired.com/

WHEN JOHN GOODENOUGH created the first lithium-ion rechargeable battery at Oxford in 1980, he needed some cobalt. Experiments had already established that the metal is energy-dense, perfect for small batteries that need a lot of power.1 So Goodenough made the cobalt himself, heating the precursors at very high temperatures.

Today, cobalt appears in most commercial lithium-ion batteries—but it comes at a price. The silvery metal is expensive, yes. But it also has a darker cost: a long history of human rights violations, including child mining, associated with production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Electronics devices and electric car companies don’t want to pay big bucks and connect themselves with these atrocities, so they have tried to cut down on the amount of cobalt their batteries use. Panasonic, Tesla’s battery supplier, announced at the end of last month that they are developing batteries that don’t need cobalt. And they have some help: Goodenough and other researchers have also developed rechargeable batteries that don’t need cobalt.

Commentary: Tesla leads electric vehicle race to cut cobalt dependency – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – June 6, 2018)

June 6, 2018

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – If Elon Musk had his way, there would be no cobalt in any of the batteries powering the next generation of Tesla. At the very least, “we think we can get the cobalt to almost nothing”, he told analysts on the company’s first quarter results call.

Panasonic, which supplies the batteries for Tesla’s electric cars, is “aiming to achieve zero usage in the near future and development is under way”, according to Kenji Tamura, who is in charge of the Japanese firm’s automotive battery business.

The two companies are leading an industry race to reduce exposure to the metal even before the electric vehicle (EV)revolution truly builds momentum. It’s not difficult to see why. The London Metal Exchange price of the battery input has already rocketed from under $30,000 per tonne at the end of 2016 to a current $86,750.

Lithium booms shows no sign of slowing as new refinery announced for WA – by Jarrod Lucas and Jon Daly (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – June 6, 2018)

June 6, 2018

http://www.abc.net.au/

A Western Australian lithium miner is tipping the current boom for battery technologies will last at least a decade, as plans were revealed on Wednesday for a new lithium refinery in the Goldfields.

China’s appetite for lithium continues to drive the boom, with lithium most commonly used in new generation batteries for electric vehicles and home power storage. Lithium miner Neometals has revealed plans to build a downstream processing plant in Kalgoorlie-Boulder at a cost of about $200 million, creating more than 100 jobs.

The decision marks potentially the biggest economic shake-up for the regional mining hub since the construction of the Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter in the 1970s and the start of the Super Pit gold mine in the late 1980s.

Reliance on Congo Cobalt Grows Despite European Discoveries – by Jason Deign (Green Tech Media – June 5, 2018)

June 6, 2018

https://www.greentechmedia.com/

“Ultimately, there will be no lithium-ion industry without DRC cobalt.”

The lithium-ion battery industry’s dependence on cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo will rise despite ore discoveries in Europe, analysts believe.

Caspar Rawles, an analyst with Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, said the percentage of global cobalt supply coming from the DRC was set to go up from 66 percent in 2017 to more than 73 percent by 2023, even though mining firms are rushing to uncover deposits elsewhere.

Last month, for example, the Australian production and processing company Lithium Australia announced the discovery of cobalt mineralization at mines in Eichigt, in the state of Saxony in Germany.

About 75,000 jobs to go in Germany’s auto industry because of EVs — study – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – June 5, 2018)

June 5, 2018

http://www.mining.com/

The growing adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is expected to cost Germany’s key auto industry about 75,000 jobs by 2030, a study released Tuesday shows, with parts suppliers set to suffer the most.

The adoption of EVs will lessen the importance of petrol- and diesel-fuelled cars, an industry where German carmakers have built a reputation for decades and which currently employs about 840,000 people, with 210,000 of them working on powertrain production (basically engines and transmissions components), said the IG Metal union, which commissioned the study along with BMW, Volkswagen, Daimler and a string of suppliers.

The figures in the study, carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute of Industrial Engineering, were calculated on the assumption that by 2030, a quarter of all vehicles on Germany’s roads will be fully electric.

China goes all out to secure lithium, cobalt supplies – key to dominating the world electric car market – by Eric Ng (South China Morning Post – June 4, 2018)

June 4, 2018

http://www.scmp.com/

Cobalt, however, faces bigger challenges than lithium, which has seen bigger price gains over the past two years amid lack of certainty over new supplies, stockpiling and traders taking speculative positions

The emergence of electric vehicles has seen Chinese companies go on a global hunt to secure lithium resources. Now they are rapidly clinching deals to get hold of cobalt whose supply is even more concentrated geographically.

Cobalt, a hard, shiny, greyish metal, a by-product of copper and nickel mining, has seen the biggest price increase among various metals used to make electric vehicle batteries after a demand boom began two years ago, according to Ciaran Roe, global manager of metals pricing at S&P Global Platts.

“Unlike manganese, lithium and nickel, cobalt is limited in supply not just in terms of tonnage but also origin,” he said. “I can’t think of another commodity where supply is so reliant on one origin nation than cobalt.”

[Electric Vehicles] ‘There is no knowing where the change will end’ – analyst – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – May 30, 2018)

May 30, 2018

http://www.miningweekly.com/

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – The wave of change that the electrification of automobiles brings is moving beyond electric vehicles (EV) to the micro, artificial intelligence and autonomous mobility options, which should increasingly be brought into the outlook for the burgeoning market.

“Big gambles and bold leadership does not always guarantee results,” founder of The Daily Kanban and Bloomberg analyst Edward Niedermeyer cautioned an audience attending the recent Vancouver leg of London-based Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

From his qualitative analysis, it is evident that cars are a very emotional and even irrational topic, with sales of EVs, sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and sports cars driven by desire, rather than need, from a consumer perspective.

Battery taskforce powers up to supercharge WA lithium potential – by Stuart McKinnon (The West Australian – May 24, 2018)

May 25, 2018

https://thewest.com.au/

A taskforce to investigate how WA can cash in on a “once-in-a-generation” lithium and battery minerals boom will make recommendations to the State Government within six months.

Announcing the taskforce in Maylands in front of two Tesla demonstration Model X electric cars yesterday, Mines Minister Bill Johnston said the downstream processing of lithium and other battery minerals in WA could create thousands of highly skilled, high-paying jobs.

He said the taskforce, consisting of senior government representatives, would engage with companies operating in the sector and take advice from an industry reference group.

A Legacy of Mining Busts Haunts Chile’s Lithium Dreams – by Laura Millan Lombrana (Bloomberg News – May 25, 2018)

May 25, 2018

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Dozens of towns abandoned after a collapse in nitrate prices offer a cautionary tale for the next hot commodity.

Chile knows what it is to be expendable. Ghost towns that pepper the nation’s north are a painful reminder of a time when it was replaced almost overnight as the world’s top fertilizer producer. These days, the decaying buildings and rusty plants serve as a harbinger for miners embarking on a major expansion of lithium.

Lithium prices have tripled in three years, triggering a race to find a replacement for the soft, white mineral that is used to make batteries for a range of products from electric cars to mobile phones.
As researchers at institutions from the U.S. Department of Energy to Stanford University work behind the scenes to come up with a chemical alternative, local mining executives say Chile’s boom-to-bust past often weighs on the back of their minds.

While miner Soc. Quimica & Minera de Chile SA, or SQM, believes the lithium business “will go on for a while,” Chief Executive Officer Patricio de Solminihac acknowledges they always need to keep an eye out for the next big development. The nature of disruptive technologies means “they come out of nowhere and develop incredibly fast,” he said.

Electric vehicles seen driving cobalt crunch by mid-2020s – by Salvador Rodriguez (Reuters U.S. – May 24, 2018)

May 25, 2018

https://www.reuters.com/

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – The increasing popularity of electric vehicles may create a crunch for supplies of cobalt in the early-to-mid 2020s, miners and analysts say, adding that small operators trying to start up mines outside Africa could play a bigger role over time in satisfying demand for the metal used in rechargeable batteries.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) produces nearly two-thirds of the world’s cobalt as a by-product of its copper mines and is taking an increasingly confrontational stance toward foreign mining companies, including a new mining code that hikes royalties and taxes.

Human rights groups have said some cobalt from the Central African country could come from mines using child labor, raising additional concerns about sourcing within the industry and among buyers of the metal.

How dreams of ‘Mount Cobalt’ are dividing an old mining town – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – May 24, 2018)

May 25, 2018

http://business.financialpost.com/

As cobalt prices spike, some support levelling and gutting Cobalt, Ont., for mining’s return and economic prosperity, but others find the prospect ‘heartbreaking’

Gino Chitaroni keeps five different business cards arrayed at the front of his desk: He’s a geologist, prospector, land manager, salesman and, for many people, a go-to source of information for anything related to mining in Cobalt, Ont.

Until recently, as far as mining is concerned, there hasn’t been much happening around Cobalt. Located about five hours north of Toronto, it experienced a historic and prolific silver rush at the turn of the last century that sustained decades of mining. By the late 1980s, things had petered out.

Then, last year, in a welcome turn of events for a town that has struggled economically since mining disappeared, prospectors started flocking to the area in droves.

A Lithium Valley in Western Australia could power the world – by Cameron Jewell (Fifth Estate.com – May 24, 2018)

May 24, 2018

https://www.thefifthestate.com.au/

There’s more than 100,000 jobs and $50 billion in economic activity up for grabs if a “Lithium Valley” is set up in Western Australia, according to Curtin University’s Professor Peter Newman, one of the authors behind a new report calling for the state to become a battery manufacture and technology leader.

According to Newman, Western Australia is a one-stop shop for all the materials needed to power the new economy, and says a “Lithium Valley” should be set up in Kwinana, Perth, leveraging off the recent announcement of a lithium hydroxide refinery being built, and Tesla’s recent meeting with the state government.

The report – Lithium Valley: Establishing the case for energy metals and battery manufacturing in Western Australia – says WA is home to the world’s most accessible abundance of energy metals, including lithium, cobalt, vanadium, tin, tantalum, nickel, manganese, magnesium and rare earths – essential components in batteries and other renewable tech.