1/2/2024 0 Comments Used batteriesAnd reserves are a malleable concept, because they represent the amount of a resource that can be economically extracted at current prices and given current technology and regulatory requirements. A June report by BNEF 2 estimated that the current reserves of the metal - 21 million tonnes, according to the US Geological Survey - are enough to carry the conversion to EVs through to the mid-century. (By some estimates, electric cars are already cheaper than petrol vehicles over their lifetimes, thanks to being less expensive to power and maintain.) As a result, electric cars - which are still more expensive than conventional ones - should reach price parity by the mid-2020s. BNEF projects that the cost of a lithium-ion EV battery pack will fall below US$100 per kilowatt-hour by 2023, or roughly 20% lower than today (see ‘Plummeting costs of batteries’). They are now 30 times cheaper than when they first entered the market as small, portable batteries in the early 1990s, even as their performance has improved. Amounts vary depending on the battery type and model of vehicle, but a single car lithium-ion battery pack (of a type known as NMC532) could contain around 8 kg of lithium, 35 kg of nickel, 20 kg of manganese and 14 kg of cobalt, according to figures from Argonne National Laboratory.Īnalysts don’t anticipate a move away from lithium-ion batteries any time soon: their cost has plummeted so dramatically that they are likely to be the dominant technology for the foreseeable future. The first challenge for researchers is to reduce the amounts of metals that need to be mined for EV batteries. “The biggest talker is money,” says Jeffrey Spangenberger, a chemical engineer at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, who manages a US federally funded lithium-ion battery-recycling initiative, called ReCell. Because it is still less expensive, in most instances, to mine metals than to recycle them, a key goal is to develop processes to recover valuable metals cheaply enough to compete with freshly mined ones. National research funders have also founded centres to study better ways to make and recycle batteries. “Recycling will play a key role in the mix,” says Kwasi Ampofo, a mining engineer who is the lead analyst on metals and mining at BNEF.īattery- and carmakers are already spending billions of dollars on reducing the costs of manufacturing and recycling electric-vehicle (EV) batteries - spurred in part by government incentives and the expectation of forthcoming regulations. Another is to improve battery recycling, so that the valuable metals in spent car batteries can be efficiently reused. One is how to cut down on the metals in batteries that are scarce, expensive, or problematic because their mining carries harsh environmental and social costs. And each of those batteries will contain tens of kilograms of materials that have yet to be mined.Īnticipating a world dominated by electric vehicles, materials scientists are working on two big challenges. In the coming decades, hundreds of millions of vehicles will hit the roads, carrying massive batteries inside them (see ‘Going electric’). This massive industrial conversion marks a “shift from a fuel-intensive to a material-intensive energy system”, declared the International Energy Agency (IEA) in May 1. But even without new policies or regulations, half of global passenger-vehicle sales in 2035 will be electric, according to the BloombergNEF (BNEF) consultancy in London. In many countries, government mandates will accelerate change. The electrification of personal mobility is picking up speed in a way that even its most ardent proponents might not have dreamt of just a few years ago. Suddenly, major carmakers’ foot-dragging on electrifying their fleets is turning into a rush for the exit. Many other automotive multinationals have issued similar road maps. Audi, based in Germany, plans to stop producing such vehicles by 2033. Earlier this year, the US automobile giant General Motors announced that it aims to stop selling petrol-powered and diesel models by 2035.
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