[Auto] Lithium shortages threaten Europe’s electric car transition

[jayden™]

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at  https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/154c53aa-5a9a-4004-abf9-2e6e5396dca4 Europe’s transition to electric cars is under threat because of persisting shortages of lithium, the key battery component that will power the vehicles of the future. EU plans to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035 mean demand for lithium is set to surge fivefold by 2030 to 550,000 tonnes per year — more than double the 200,000 tonnes the region will be able to produce, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “The whole global market is still set to be in a deficit by the end of the decade,” said Daisy Jennings-Gray, analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “Europe will probably sit in a tight position in terms of availability and cannot afford any delays to domestic projects [to extract the metal].” The supply problem has been highlighted by the world’s largest lithium producer Albemarle, which has sidelined plans to extract lithium in Europe after failing to find a commercially viable site. “The resources we are aware of in Europe are not high quality and relatively small,” the group’s chief financial officer Scott Tozier told the Financial Times.

 

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at   https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/154c53aa-5a9a-4004-abf9-2e6e5396dca4 Opel-maker Stellantis last year became the first carmaker to invest in a lithium miner when it paid €50mn in return for equity in Vulcan. Renault and Volkswagen have, much like Stellantis, also made binding orders for Vulcan’s expected supply of lithium. Another risky project involves French mining group Imerys, which aims to extract lithium from rocks underneath a kaolin mine, opened by the country’s ceramics industry in the 19th century. Vulcan hopes to produce 24,000 tonnes annually two years after starting production in 2025 while Imerys is planning to start producing 34,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium chemicals a year from 2028. Combined, this is enough to supply roughly 1.2mn small electric vehicle batteries a year, according to the companies’ calculations. But this is a long way short of expected demand for electric cars, which is likely to match or exceed current sales volumes with 11.3mn new cars registered in Europe in 2022, according to German trade group VDA. This also assumes the success of the Vulcan and Imerys ventures. “The projects carry an inherent risk as we are daring production processes that nobody has done before,” admitted Alessandro Dazza, chief executive of Imerys, as he highlighted the need for government support. In addition, there is a danger the ventures will end up costing far more than rival projects. linkhttps://www.ft.com/content/154c53aa-5a9a-4004-abf9-2e6e5396dca4