Will there be enough to build all the electric vehicles?
Global demand for cobalt and nickel, two of the essential elements in electric car batteries, has never been higher. But where do all those metals come from? And do we even have enough for our electrified future? The answers to those questions are getting increasingly complex.
Reuters and Bloomberg both have stories out today on the metals and, as Reuters reports, while demand for nickel keeps increasing, half the world's nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries.
All of which is going to have seismic effect on the world's suppliers. In short: There will be winners and losers, and the winners will be the ones with the highest-grade stuff—not unlike, I suppose, the illicit drugs market.
Do you feel fearful, uncertain, and doubtful about the future of electric cars?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:01AM (2 children)
Nickel is an element. Do we have a problem with radioactive nickel? I doubt it. Nickel is just nickel, no matter where it comes from.
You can purify it. There are electrochemical methods. You can make nickel carbonyl and then distill it. Heck, go nuts: run nickel carbonyl gas through a gas centrifuge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:53PM
Yeah, but purification takes money and we don't have time for that!
You know, until it makes a lot of sense to do that.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Friday November 03 2017, @08:33PM
Something tells me you aren't terribly well versed in chemistry...