No cobalt

Three years ago I posted that Tesla was going to find a new source for the cobalt required in electric vehicle (EV) batteries. Most of the world's supply came from mines in the Congo, where children worked under dangerous conditions.

Now they've gone beyond re-sourcing the cobalt . . to eliminating cobalt altogether. And that is going to give Tesla another leg-up in the EV car business.

Big electric batteries put EV's out of the reach of many car buyers. They make EV's roughly 30% more expensive than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to purchase (though they're cheaper to run). Cobalt made the price so high, but no longer.

Tesla's new cobalt-free lithium iron phosphate battery is already being used, with the Chinese government's approval, at the new factory in Shanghai. Purchase price of a new Tesla is going to go down. 

Traditional cars are going to lose some of their advantage. Let's see what happens.

from Forbes

Elon's solution

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"As you can imagine, iPhones and Tesla cars—which source their cobalt from child slave labor—are a [potential] corporate scandal nightmare"

Tesla can't afford to be tarred by cobalt from mines in the Congo (yesterday's post), so here's their plan to avoid potential scandal:

Tesla says they now get their cobalt from a Japanese company operating in the Philippines. They also claim that the gigafactory (which will supply batteries for the half-million cars Tesla plans to make in 2018) is going to get all its materials from North America.

It turns out that the U.S. hasn't mined cobalt since 1971, but a Canadian company with a commitment to ethical operation plans to start doing that in Idaho - and they will supply cobalt to Tesla.

 

photo: entrepreneur.com

At mining.com, they say that buying cobalt from the Congo is "Elon Musk's worst nightmare." But Elon Musk didn't get where he is by failing to look ahead. So it seems like this is Tesla getting ahead of the problem.

Phone companies are under scrutiny too. Sony, Apple, and Samsung say that they enforce ethical standards on their suppliers.

Cobalt surge

Cobalt is not a household word in America, but it probably is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They produce 60% of the world's supply, and the mines are worked . . by children.

image: periodictable.com

The world needs cobalt more than ever before. There's more cobalt than lithium in
lithium-ion batteries--the essential component of those electric cars that all car companies are developing as fast as they can.

It's critical to electric car development but worldwide production is not keeping up. Severe shortages are getting worse. Its price jumped 150% last year.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Child labor

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

According to this website, roughly 135,000 electric vehicles will be sold this year. Tesla alone plans to sell about 500,000 in 2018. Cobalt will be needed for each one. Easy to see why there's a lot of attention on the cobalt industry, and why projected shortages are making people nervous.

Aside from the production shortfall, there's this other big problem. A year and a half ago, Amnesty International reported  "children as young as seven working in dangerous conditions" producing cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

"Children told Amnesty International they worked for up to 12 hours a day in the mines, carrying heavy loads to earn between $1 and $2 US a day. In 2014, approximately 40,000 children worked in mines across southern DRC, many of them mining cobalt, according to UNICEF.

“Anyone with a smartphone [or electric vehicle] would be appalled to think that children as young as seven carrying out back-breaking work for 12 hours a day could be involved at some point in the making of it.”

photo: lcnewsgroup.com

(cont'd tomorrow)

EV materials 1

As of 2023's third quarter, electric vehicles took 7.9% of the market, a new record. Tesla Motors still leads the field while other companies take an increasing share. EV's are exciting because of their benefits (like in traffic), but problems still exist. Some relate to the materials used in production.

Years ago Tesla set a goal to use less cobalt in its batteries. It's very expensive, the global supply may be declining, and children work the mines to get it in Africa. All good reasons to find an alternative. They've been working on solutions for at least six years.

photo

Cobalt contributes to the driving distance range of an EV battery (obviously important to the electric vehicle market) so results started in the standard-range models which use less.

As of a report on the first quarter of 2022, "nearly half of Tesla vehicles produced in Q1 were equipped with a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery containing no nickel or cobalt." It's progress.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Note: SpaceX has delayed the launch of USSF-52 to a date TBA

Tesla & Lutz

Monday-Wednesday this week, I posted about the predictions of Bob Lutz. His article has gone viral because it's a prediction of doom for the car industry - from a man who loves cars and spent decades as an industry exec. 

Last March Bob had more to say about the coming end of human-driven cars:

"As much as one side of me deplores it because I love to drive, when you look at the skills of the average driver, and the reaction times, and the incidence of alcohol and drug use as a factor in accidents, and the amount of national productive time that’s wasted in traffic jams, it is time to find a different solution."

About Tesla:

"[Musk] has no technology that’s not available to anybody else. It’s lithium-ion cobalt batteries. Every carmaker on the planet has electric vehicles in the works with a 200-300-mile range.

"Raising capital is not going to help, because fundamentally the business equation on electric cars is wrong. They cost more to build than what the public is willing to pay. That’s the bottom line.

"The one advantage [Musk] has is that the Model S is a gorgeous car. It’s one of the best-looking full-size sedans ever. . . They are unarguably a ton of fun to drive. The Tesla Model S? The one with ‘ridiculous mode’? Zero to 60 in like 2.2 seconds? That’s got to be like a shot off an aircraft carrier."

Regarding Tesla Model S, I agree with Bob Lutz that it's gorgeous. He's correct that it's a ton of fun. Its acceleration really is "like a shot off an aircraft carrier." 

Yes, I test drove a Model S this week.

Africa's resources

Africa has been called "one of the most resource-rich destinations on earth" but its people have not historically been among the among the most prosperous on earth.  Thanks to a period of relative peace and stability (see yesterday's post), however, African nations have seen good economic growth in the last decade.

Oil and gas have fueled economic boom on the east coast.  About three quarters of the world's rhodium and platinum come from Africa and are essential to the catalytic converter in our cars.  Cobalt is used in electronic devices and in batteries, and Africa provides 58% of the world's needs.

Africa has always been rich in natural resources.  But until they are developed, retrieved from the ground, refined into something people can use, the natural resources might as well not be there.   Businesses must be started or imported which can develop this abundance.

Space mining

No longer is activity in space limited to nations with big budgets. In the U.S., NASA changed their way of operating to a model of cooperation with private businesses (like SpaceX) who do all the building while working with NASA's expertise. 

Rocket launches, though, are not the only thing being done in space by private businesses. For example, harvesting solar power from outside our atmosphere is the goal of some. 

Another idea being considered is to mine asteroids for metals we need on earth. 

photo

Asteroid 16 Psyche is a large one between Mars and Jupiter, made mostly of metal (like a planet core) rather than the typical rock or ice. It's just right for mining, but far away and still years off. NASA plans a mission simply to orbit and document it by 2026.

Two smaller metal-rich asteroids are much closer and may be a better bet for mining. If it can be done, it could be a game changer for future technology on earth because one of them seems to contain more iron, nickel and cobalt than all earth's reserves.

from Forbes

Battery Day 1

Elon Musk gave his investors good news this week (on Sept.22, "Battery Day"). Some had been revealed earlier, some had not, but altogether this news will make Tesla even more attractive to car buyers.

Improvements in Tesla batteries are technical: cell design, streamlining of the factory making the cells, innovations in the anode materials, altering the cathode materials, and finally changing how the batteries would be integrated into the car. 

Also important, cobalt - a very expensive material not easily obtained - is being progressively phased out.

These innovations will result in a reduction of the cost of an EV (electric vehicle) battery . .  an amazing reduction of about 56%.

from Forbes

(cont'd tomorrow)