2,000% Increase in 11 Years, That’s Some Serious E-Nuts and Giga-Bolts

The world is at the cusp of an e-mobility revolution. The IEA projects that by the year 2030, under its sustainable development scenario, 45 million electric vehicles will be sold across the globe. To provide perspective, in 2019, there were just 2.1 million electric vehicles sold. That’s a projected 2000% increase in just eleven years.

With 15.5% of the world’s EV market, the United States and its transportation sector will play a pivotal role shaping in future EV trends. According to the most recent Synthesis Partners, LLC (SP) forecasts, in 2030 the US will have approximately 42 million EVs in stock and 6.5 million EV sales that year.



Why is this important? Because the US faces a phenomenal pathway to bolster its domestic electric automobile manufacturing industry, realign its supply chains, and double down on its technology development in this space. However, while there is tremendous promise, the reality of achieving these pursuits will require significant planning, intention and effort. The Infrastructure Bill and Inflation Reduction Act are a significant step in the right direction. Listen to my podcast episode with Will Hackman, Grant Samms and Tappan Parker, to understand what the Bill means for U.S. Energy: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6exmcoaN7y1nh2fbDziOMM. 
A company I consulted with has on-going VTO-support work [www.sp-supplychainresearch.com], which focuses on the critical materials and components needed to produce the Lithium-Ion battery packs (the electric brawn behind the EV) in North America. Companies need to contribute core technologies, materials and production processes for success in creating a leading EV market in the US. We break the EV supply chain focus areas into the following segments.


Below are some key points to consider given our current views on the overall level of vulnerability of US in the Lithium-Ion battery supply chain:1. The concentration of essential raw materials in a few countries poses supply security risks over the long term. Ex: 70% of Cobalt production is sourced from Congo, 86% of 2019 lithium production is sourced from Argentina, Chile and Australia, and more than 60% of manganese is mined in South Africa, China and Australia *Important Note: Most of our current work focuses on the middle and upstream segments.*2. 88% of the battery cell supplier market share is comprised by non-US companiesEx: Panasonic (51%), CATL (15%), LG Chem (12%), BYD (7%) and Envision (3%)3. The top 12 Global Li-ion Battery suppliers are all from East Asia (Korea, China, Japan)A more in-depth fact sheet will be provided in the next blog post.We’ll end with a link to just a few folks who are working hard to get this done – in future we will highlight others – send us your suggestions! · An excellent source for deep drill-downs on the cost of battery packs is the BatPac (Battery Performance and Cost) (https://www.anl.gov/cse/batpac-model-software, developed by the Argonne National Laboratory, which “allows the design of cells and battery packs for automotive applications, to meet performance requirements (power, energy, recharge time), and estimates the cost of manufacturing the designed batteries.” BatPac is a “calculation method based on Microsoft ® Office Excel spreadsheets that has been developed at Argonne for estimating the performance and manufacturing cost of lithium-ion batteries for electric-drive vehicles including hybrid-electrics (HEV), plug-in hybrids (PHEV) and pure electrics.”

· ReCell (https://recellcenter.org/) is the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Office’s (VTO) first advanced battery recycling R&D center, and “will help enable the United States to compete in a global recycling industry and also reduce our reliance on foreign sources of battery materials.” The VTO is seeking to “help accelerate the growth of a profitable recycling market for spent electric vehicle (EV), electronics, and stationary storage batteries (… through …) novel recycling technologies to make lithium-ion battery recycling cost-effective by using less energy-intensive processing methods and capturing more valuable forms of materials for direct reuse in batteries.”