Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles – Page 170

Tech Guru Bill Joy Unveils a Battery to Challenge Lithium-Ion – by Brian Eckhouse (Bloomberg News – August 4, 2017)

August 4, 2017

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Elon Musk isn’t the only visionary betting that the world will soon be reliant on batteries. Bill Joy, the Silicon Valley guru and Sun Microsystems Inc. co-founder, also envisions such dependence. He just thinks alkaline is a smarter way to go than lithium-ion.

On Thursday, Joy and Ionic Materials unveiled a solid-state alkaline battery at the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Energy Innovation Summit in Basalt, Colorado, that he says is safer and cheaper than the industry leader, lithium-ion. The appeal of alkaline: it could cost a tiny fraction of existing battery technologies and could be safer in delicate settings, such as aboard airplanes.

“What people didn’t really realize is that alkaline batteries could be made rechargable,” Joy said in a phone interview Thursday. “I think people had given up.”

Electric-Car Revolution Shakes Up the Biggest Metals Markets – by Mark Burton and Eddie Van Der Walt (Bloomberg News – August 2, 2017)

August 4, 2017

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The revolution in electric vehicles set to upturn industries from energy to infrastructure is also creating winners and losers within the world’s biggest metals markets.

While some of the largest diversified miners like Glencore Plc argue fossil fuels such as coal and oil still play a crucial role supplying energy needs, they’ll also benefit the most from a move to electric cars, requiring more cobalt, lithium, copper, aluminum and nickel.

The outlook for greener transportation got a boost this year as the U.K. joined France and Norway in saying it would ban fossil-fuel car sales in coming decades. That’s as Volvo AB announced plans to abandon the combustion engine and Tesla Inc. unveiled its latest, cheaper Model 3. Such vehicles will outsell their petroleum-driven equivalents within two decades, Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates.

Clean electric cars are built on pollution in Congo – by David Pilling (Financial Times – July 26, 2017)

July 26, 2017

https://www.ft.com/

Behind every clean electric car there is cobalt. And behind cobalt is the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Cobalt is a critical element in lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars. Such batteries already consume 42 per cent of the metal and demand will soar as the world switches from petrol and diesel cars to electric ones.

This week, Britain followed France in declaring a ban on such vehicles from 2040. Soon, almost anyone in the rich world will be able to drive safe in the knowledge that they’re being kinder and gentler to the planet.

Did I mention the Democratic Republic of Congo? Some 60 per cent of the world’s cobalt comes from this central African country, one the size of western Europe and with gargantuan problems to match. Some industry analysts are predicting a 30-fold increase in cobalt demand by 2030, much of which will come from Congo.

Electric vehicles could be a game changer for high-grade nickel producers – by Tess Ingram (Australian Financial Review – July 25, 2017)

July 25, 2017

http://www.afr.com/business/

Strong interest in a new battery-grade nickel product Western Areas plans to produce reinforces suggestions the growing electric vehicles sector could deliver a “renaissance” for the flagging nickel market, Western Areas managing director Dan Lougher says.

Western Areas started work in the June quarter on its mill recovery enhancement project, which plans to produce a high-grade nickel concentrate product from its Forrestania nickel operations in Western Australia from the March quarter of 2018.

While the project will produce only about 1400 tonnes of the 45 to 50 per cent nickel concentrate, compared to Western Areas’ annual nickel production of about 25,000 tonnes, Mr Lougher said the Perth-based miner had already fielded interest in the product from multiple global battery market players.

Spongy zinc battery may beat lithium-ion on safety, price, recycling – by James Dunn (North Bay Business Journal – July 24, 2017)

July 25, 2017

http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/

If nearly 500,000 deposits of $1,000 each on the new Tesla Model 3 indicate bridled demand, the electric cars have a sure future. Tesla plans to start delivery of the $35,000 vehicles on July 28, when it will release the first 30. Palo Alto-based Tesla aims to crank out about three cars a day in August, boost output to 1,500 in September and build to a rate of 20,000 a month by the end of 2017.

Tesla electric cars rely on lithium-ion batteries. The company is building a gargantuan battery factory in Nevada — some 5.8 million square feet — slated for completion in 2020. The enormous production capacity could drive down battery costs by about 30 percent, Tesla said, from batteries now produced by Panasonic in Japan.

But a Marin-based aerospace engineer sees problems with lithium-ion technology: potential for explosions as occurred in Samsung phones in 2016; high cost; and poor recyclability. He suggests zinc, the metal used to stop corrosion in galvanized steel, as an alternative.

COLUMN-Lithium supply pipeline is filling but will it be enough? – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – July 19, 2017)

July 19, 2017

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, July 19 (Reuters) – The electric vehicle revolution is gathering momentum. Barely a week goes by without a fresh, starting revelation, whether it be Sweden’s Volvo promising to phase out traditional internal combustion engines from 2019 or France aiming to end the sale of gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2040.

And, of course, leading the electric charge is the poster child of the green technology revolution, Tesla, which is gearing up to roll out its Model 3, the long-awaited break-out from niche to mass market.

The ambition is to be producing 20,000 per month by the end of the year. Whether reality matches such lofty goals remains to be seen. Tesla delivered around 47,000 vehicles in the first half of the year, at the lower end of its own forecasts, due to a “severe shortfall” of battery packs.

No cobalt, no Tesla? – by Sebastien Gandon (Tech Crunch – January 1, 2017)

July 18, 2017

https://techcrunch.com/

The battery industry currently uses 42 percent of global cobalt production, a critical metal for Lithium-ion cells. The remaining 58 percent is used in diverse industrial and military applications (super alloys, catalysts, magnets, pigments…) that rely exclusively on the material.

Approximately 97 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt comes as a by-product of nickel or copper (mostly out of Africa). Freeport-McMoRan Inc. and Lundin agreed to sell to Chinese players their respective stakes in the Tenke Fungurume mine, one of the largest known cobalt sources, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Tesla has stated that the cobalt it needs will be sourced exclusively in North America, but the math doesn’t seem to add up.

Is Tesla doomed? Not necessarily…

Tapping into potential graphite boom no easy task – by Jennifer Wells (Toronto Star – July 12, 2017)

July 12, 2017

https://www.thestar.com/

Any talk of electric vehicles draws intense response from readers, much of it positive, some of it smartly critical.

Here’s one. “Remember a Tesla battery contains about 150 lbs of graphite which is a product so toxic that it is only allowed to be mined in CHINA (where worker safety is of little importance).”

Yes, China produces the lion’s share of the world’s graphite, as key a component in the lithium-ion battery as the lithium itself. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, China produced 66 per cent of the world’s graphite in 2016. India was a distant second at about 14 per cent.

Tesla wades into Australia’s battle over energy future – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – July 10, 2017)

July 10, 2017

https://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, AUSTRALIA – There is a lot more riding on Tesla Inc’s deal to install the world’s largest grid-scale electric battery in Australia than whether Elon Musk can meet his bold commitment to finish within the 100-day deadline.

Under an agreement made public on July 7, Tesla must deliver the 100 megawatt (MW) battery within 100 days of the contract being signed, or the government of South Australia state won’t have to pay the electric car, clean energy and space exploration company.

On the surface, this is a deal aimed at providing back-up electricity to South Australia, a state that has been plagued by blackouts since it closed coal-fired power plants and moved to being powered mainly by renewables such as wind, and to a grid connection to neighboring Victoria state.

Tesla to build titanic battery facility – by Dennis Normile (Science Magazine – July 7, 2017)

July 10, 2017

http://www.sciencemag.org/

Tesla announced today that it will build the world’s largest lithium-ion battery system to store electricity in Australia. The 100-megawatt installation—more than three times as powerful as the biggest existing battery system—will be paired with the Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown, operated by the French renewable energy company Neoen, in a deal with the state of South Australia. The Tesla battery should smooth out the variability inherent in sustainable power generation schemes.

“Cost-effective storage of electrical energy is the only problem holding us back from getting all of our power from wind and solar,” says Ian Lowe, an energy policy specialist at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia, near Brisbane.

The Tesla system, he says, will “demonstrate the feasibility of large-scale storage.” It might also win over skeptics who doubt that renewables can match the dependability of conventional fossil fuel and nuclear power plants, says Geoffrey James, a renewable energy engineer at University of Technology Sydney.

Tipping Points and Tesla’s battery dilemma – by Alf Stewart (Resource World Magazine – July 6, 2017)

July 7, 2017

http://resourceworld.com/

Tony Seba’s excellent You Tube video, Clean Disruption – Why Energy & Transportation will be obsolete by 2030 – (Oslo, March 2016), covers the concept of tipping points and expands on the concept of our society being on the cusp of a revolution in energy and transportation.

It explains that new developments in solar panels, lithium ion batteries, electric cars and autonomous driving are simultaneously converging to create a shift away from oil and towards electricity to power self-driving cars, charged on smart grids, using power from solar renewable energy. Resource World readers, however, are mostly interested in any new opportunities in resource stocks stimulated by this shift.

At the centre of this are Elon Musk and his revolutionary Tesla cars, Powerwall batteries, and solar panels. Musk has disrupted the automobile industry by launching electric cars with performance characteristics so good that they broke Consumer Reports reporting scale for cars by scoring a perfect 100.

Electric car growth sparks environmental concerns – by Henry Sanderson (Financial Times – July 7, 2017)

July 7, 2017

https://www.ft.com/

Tesla Motors and now Volvo may have big plans to end the addiction of drivers to fossil fuels via electric vehicles, however the environmental footprint of mining raw materials used in car batteries and their eventual disposal are emerging as a flash point.

As the mining sector presents a green face and extracts raw materials from lithium to cobalt and nickel that constitute electric batteries, so the focus on their environmental standards and energy efficient production methods will intensify. At the tail-end of the electric vehicle boom is the matter of improving the recycling of lithium-ion batteries and making sure the environmental impact is also contained.

“There will be more scrutiny over the supply chain for electric vehicles than there is from the consumer electronics industry due to the green credentials of EVs,” says Robert Baylis, an analyst at consultancy Roskill. “And recycling is probably not going to have an impact for 10 years, and may not reach significant volume for 15-30 years.”

Elon Musk Won’t Save Big Mining – by David Fickling and Elaine He (Bloomberg News – July 6, 2017)

July 6, 2017

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The world’s biggest mining companies have more or less recovered from the commodity boom and bust of the past decade. At the same time, they’ve been left with an existential crisis: What minerals are going to drive their growth in the decades to come?

Aluminum was white-hot in 2007 when Rio Tinto Group paid $38 billion for Alcan Inc., but it’s since been sunk by a wave of Chinese oversupply. Coal and iron ore helped drive the Bloomberg Commodity Index to its most recent peak in 2011, but have fallen on harder times due to fears of climate-related demand weakness and a plateau in steel production. Even copper faces surpluses through to 2020, according to Bloomberg Intelligence’s supply model, which would tend to weigh on prices.

Thank goodness, then, for Saint Elon Musk. Demand for battery materials to feed the nascent electric-vehicle and electricity-storage industries has made a group of hitherto obscure minerals — principally cobalt, lithium and graphite — the next big thing in the mining industry.

Russia’s Nornickel in talks to supply materials for BASF’s battery plans (Reuters U.S. – June 27, 2017)

June 28, 2017

https://www.reuters.com/

Russia’s mining giant Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel) (GMKN.MM) is in talks with German chemicals firm BASF (BASFn.DE) to supply raw materials needed in the process for making lithium-ion batteries in Europe in the future, they said on Tuesday.

The talks between BASF and Nornickel, the world’s second largest nickel producer and a major cobalt producer, highlight the burgeoning market for metals needed for lithium-ion batteries production as the car industry’s push towards electric vehicles gathers pace.

Nornickel and BASF said in a joint statement the talks covered “cooperation to set the foundation to supply battery cell producers for electric vehicles in Europe with regionally produced cathode materials.”

Demand, not supply, is the great unknown for lithium and cobalt – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – June 15, 2017)

June 15, 2017

http://www.reuters.com/

The number of electric vehicles on roads worldwide rose to a record high of 2 million last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). That represented a doubling from the 2015 tally but electric cars still only accounted for 0.2 percent of the global count.

How many will there be in five years’ time? Or in 10 years’ time? The answer to that question will determine the fortunes of multiple metals over the coming years.

Battery materials such as lithium and cobalt are already bubbling as supply chains which have historically evolved to meet niche applications adapt to the much bigger demands of the green technology revolution.