Country after country in Europe is racing to put more and more electric cars on the road as Europe strives to position itself as a world leader in electric vehicle innovation, digitization and decarbonization. If electric vehicles are going to feature so prominently in a connected and automated future, at its heart lies something critical - batteries. Batteries are not just the drivers of the power systems that push the wheels, they also power connectivity, automation, heating and cooling. Batteries are the power engines of the next industrial revolution.
Producing batteries at the scale needed for an electric car revolution is easier said than done. Efficient and fast-charging batteries require essential materials such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, germanium, rare earths and others. The current demand for these materials is relatively limited so only small amounts are produced. However, if production of electric vehicles grows as strongly as forecast these critical materials will be required in massive volumes. Sourcing them sustainably will be the new challenge. Europe has understood this, and early actions have been taken to source these essential materials in a sustainable manner.
Some of these materials are not easy to obtain and require complex purification before they can be used. Mining and transformation into the high quality required are intensive processes that need to be sustainable if the environmental gains anticipated with electric vehicles are to be confirmed.
