![]() ![]() While the battery still requires lithium, it uses iron, which is abundant and cheap, instead of metals like cobalt and nickel. The lithium iron phosphate batteries Tesla has invested in differ in the battery chemistry required to create the positive end of the battery during discharge, called the cathode. Some automakers are making direct supply deals with miners because a shortage would devastate their business. Cobalt mining is sometimes performed by children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and lacks safeguards.ĭespite these factors, demand for battery metals nickel and cobalt is forecast to increase 60-70% in the next two decades. Nickel prices soared from $29,000 a ton to about $100,000 in March. ![]() Nickel batteries require an environmentally damaging mining process, and recently the nickel market has been extremely volatile. While lithium is a relatively plentiful metal, both cobalt and nickel are scarce, expensive and controversial. Most electric vehicles in the United States use a lithium-ion battery that requires cobalt and nickel to function. A battery is simply a device that stores chemical energy for later conversion to electrical energy, and the chemistry used in different battery types greatly impacts their cost, safety, power and longevity. Experts say the technology may give Tesla an edge over competitors who aren’t using it.īattery metals are becoming as critically essential to the auto industry as oil has long been. Tesla and other automakers like China’s BYD have turned to the LFP battery, which was developed in America in the ’90s but later mostly cast aside in U.S. “It’s really hard to see others capitalizing on what we saw all along,” Riley told CNN Business. Riley is left watching other companies profit on the potential he saw. Tamir Kalifa/The Boston Globe/Getty Images Tesla has changed its tune and said in April that nearly half of its vehicles sold in the first three months of the year do not include nickel or cobalt.īatteries like what Riley envisioned are gaining popularity as automakers are increasingly interested in avoiding nickel and cobalt, which are rare as well as difficult and fraught to extract from the earth.Īn A123 Systems employee solders a printed circuit board at the company manufacturing facility in Westborough, Massachusetts in 2012. While his company lost, the battery Riley bet on – lithium iron phosphate, called LFP – is increasingly winning.ĭemand for nickel and cobalt has surged in recent years and automakers are adopting strategies to hedge against the turbulent market. ![]() The bankruptcy drew the ire of then-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and was one of several failed renewable energy investments over which conservatives criticized Obama. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Ultimately, A123 Systems was never profitable. But GM went with LG batteries, which relied on nickel and cobalt. (Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.) A123 Systems tried to sell General Motors batteries for the Chevrolet Volt. The Massachusetts-based startup pitched Tesla on its batteries between 20, Riley recalled, but he said the automaker didn’t want them. They believed the battery technology offered several benefits for automakers in the then-nascent electric vehicle space. Twenty-one years ago, Bart Riley and co-founders bet their short-lived company, A123 Systems, on batteries free of nickel and cobalt. ![]()
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