Lithium News

Australian miner Pilbara Minerals said on Monday its board had exercised an option to manufacture battery-making materials with steel-maker Posco by setting up a lithium processing plant in South Korea.

Pilbara said in a statement that it will have up to 30 percent participation in the facility, which will have a capacity of up to 40,000 kilo tonnes per annum of lithium carbonate equivalent.

Pilbara said lithium hydroxide will be produced at the facility using Posco’s patented PosLX purification process. Lithium hydroxide is a key component in making batteries.

The miner has been vying to increase its output of battery chemicals due to growing demand for electric vehicles around the globe.

Earlier this year, Pilbara said it agreed to sell about 240,000 tonnes of lithium concentrate a year to Posco. Several Australian lithium miners, including Pilbara, also have supply agreements with Chinese auto and battery makers as China builds out its electric vehicle capacity faster than anywhere else in the world.

Pilbara and Posco intend to complete construction of the plant, which will be located in the Gwangyang Free Economic Zone, by late 2020.

For powering your smartphone or your Tesla Model 3, there’s currently nothing better than the lithium-ion battery. Since its introduction in 1991, the rechargeable lithium battery has been the standard for everyday tech devices and electric-vehicle power. Many of the world’s more than 3 million electric vehicles run on lithium-ion batteries. But as the world races toward an electric future, it needs something better than the lithium-ion battery in order to keep pace.

“Lithium is pretty much hitting a wall right now. If you really want to increase energy density, you have to go to a completely different paradigm,” said Yifei Mo, a materials science and engineering professor at the University of Maryland. More energy density means cheaper, lighter batteries that last longer on a single charge.

Fortunately, there are battery start-ups trying to build better batteries, ones with lower costs, improved energy densities and better performance for supercharged industrial products and consumer technology, as well as electric vehicles, which would charge more quickly and travel longer distances. Starting this year, several start-ups with batteries they believe are big improvements over current lithium-ion technology will introduce their cells to the commercial market.

“It’s taken us eight years and probably 35,000 iterations of our material synthesis just to have something that’s commercially ready,” said Gene Berdichevsky, CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies.

Sila is just one of several battery start-ups that recently received major funding to continue tweaking battery tech. Last year the Alameda, California-based company took on $70 million in Series D financing from several investors, including Siemens’ global venture firm, to build its first commercial production line for silicon anode batteries. That’s exactly one decade after being co-founded by Berdichevsky, a mechanical and energy engineer and the seventh employee at Elon Musk’s Tesla, who led the development of the battery system in the Tesla Roadster (the car that SpaceX, also founded by Musk, launched into orbit in 2018).

ROI soon to come

Emerging variations of the current lithium-ion battery have taken about 10 years of research. Only now are start-ups gearing up for the commercial spotlight, a rollout that will take at least a few years, and possibly even another full decade.

“The material required for one car is the equivalent of 10,000 smartphones or 1,000 smart watches,” said Berdichevsky. “We’ll be in consumer devices to start. Over the next five years, we’ll scale up with automotive partners.” One of Sila’s current auto partners is BMW.

Current lithium-ion batteries are limited in their material parts and physical energy density. New battery technology seeks to improve both the safety and energy efficiency of lithium-ion batteries where there is no risk of fire if the battery overheats or becomes damaged.

Each lithium-ion battery is composed of four essential parts: the anode and cathode — the electrodes that bookend each lithium-ion cell — a liquid electrolyte and a separator. Positive and negative currents are created as the electrolyte carries lithium ions through the separator to and from the anode and cathode. It’s this process that generates the charge that’s stored in the battery.

If the chemicals making up the anode and cathode — respectively, graphite and some type of metal oxide — heat up too intensely, it can break down the physical separator, which leaves the highly flammable electrolyte exposed. Recall Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones exploding and you can see, literally, the problem. And maximum lithium-ion energy density today is about 260 watt-hours per kilogram; by comparison, most current electric vehicles hold between 220 and 250 watt-hours per kilogram.

The next-generation boom

One new battery technology is solid-state, which replaces not only the graphite anode with one made up of lithium metal but also the liquid electrolyte and separator with one solid piece, usually ceramic, glass or flame-retardant polymer. Taking this approach is Solid Power, a Colorado-based manufacturer of solid-state batteries that received $20 million in Series A financing in 2018. According to company executives, the battery they’re developing leads to at least 50 percent more energy density.

Secretive Stanford University spinoff QuantumScape is also developing a solid-state battery, in partnership with Volkswagen. Last year Volkswagen increased its stake with a $100 million investment. PitchBook data shows the San Jose-based start-up has a valuation of $1.75 billion. According to a press release announcing the deal, QuantumScape’s battery would allow Volkswagen’s E-Golf to travel 466 miles — its current range is 186 miles — on a single charge, making it comparable to ranges achieved by conventional gas-powered vehicles. According to Volkswagen, QuantumScape’s battery should be faster-charging and much lighter than current lithium-ion batteries.

Yet solid-state batteries probably won’t be available en masse until sometime next decade, as one Nissan vice president said last year. Even QuantumScape’s press release states a commercial production target for 2025.

The longer timeline for solid-state technology is a symptom of how current battery factories are set up. They’re built to handle lithium-ion production with liquid electrolytes, and switching to solid materials is more than a matter of just replacing processes on a factory floor.

“It’s an emerging technology in the very, very early stages of commercialization,” said Dean Frankel, Solid Power’s head of business development. “It just takes time from a scale-up standpoint.”

While some start-ups work toward perfecting and scaling up the solid-state battery, others like Sila Nanotechnologies hope to take advantage of current lithium-ion manufacturing processes to bring batteries quickly to market. Instead of creating a solid-state battery, Sila just replaces the graphite anode with one composed of silicon, a material that absorbs lithium ions about four times faster than graphite.

What’s more, most lithium-ion batteries with graphite anodes have a charge-rate, or C rate, of less than 1 percent. Start-ups developing new cells with silicon anodes say the C rates of their batteries are much better, a key differentiator to enabling an electric-vehicle future, since most people don’t want to wait around more than an hour for a car to charge when pumping gas takes just minutes.

“We can sustain a charge rate 10 times as fast as a conventional graphite cell,” said Robert A. Rango, CEO of Enevate.

The Irvine, California-based company creating a next-generation lithium-ion batteries with silicon anodes is armed with $111 million in funding, which includes an investment made last year by South Korea battery company LG Chem. Rango said Enevate, whose batteries have been in the works for 10 years, is about a year and a half away from the first commercial deployments of its technology, most likely in electric bikes and scooters.

Still, silicon anode batteries have one potential drawback: Silicon material swells, which means every charge causes the battery to deteriorate. It’s a problem both Berdichevsky and Rango said their respective companies have solved.

“Silicon does expand, and that’s been one of the challenges of the industry,” Rango said. “In our cells, we’ve been able to contain the expansion. Our cells have specifications that meet electric-vehicle requirements.” Those requirements? That a battery is able to charge to 80 percent after it has been charged and discharged 1,000 times.

The long development timeline for these start-ups is a sign of how difficult pushing battery technology can be. And while improvements in the range of electric vehicles is certainly one of the major implications of a better battery, successors to the current lithium-ion battery will most likely be initially found in much smaller items.

“You’re talking about a generational technological shift that has to happen,” Berdichevsky said. “In 150 years of batteries existing, there have been four commercially relevant chemistries to come to market. And every time you go to these new chemistries, they get harder.”

It took five years to sell the first million electric cars. In 2018, it took only six months.

The Tesla Model 3 also passed a significant milestone in 2018, becoming the first electric vehicle (EV) to crack the 100,000 sales mark in a single year. The Nissan LEAF and BAIC EC-Series are both likely to surpass the 100,000 this year as well.

Although the electric vehicle market didn’t grow as fast as some experts initially projected, it appears that EV sales are finally hitting their stride around the world. Below are the countries where electric vehicles are a biggest part of the sales mix.

The EV Capital of the World

Norway, after amassing a fortune through oil and gas extraction, made the conscious decision to create incentives for its citizens to purchase electric vehicles. As a result, the country is the undisputed leader in EV adoption.

In 2018, a one-third of all passenger vehicles were fully electric, and that percentage is only expected to increase in the near future. The Norwegian government has even set the ambitious target of requiring all new cars to be zero-emission by 2025.

That enthusiasm for EVs is spilling over to other countries in the region, which are also seeing a high percentage of EV sales. However, the five countries in which EVs are the most popular – Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Netherlands, and Finland – only account for 0.5% of the world’s population. For EV adoption to make any real impact on global emissions, drivers in high-growth/high–population countries will need to opt for electric powered vehicles. (Of course power grids will need to get greener as well, but that’s another topic.)

China’s Supercharged Impact

One large economy that is embracing plug-in vehicles is China.

The country leads the world in electric vehicle sales, with over a million new vehicles hitting the roads in 2018. Last year, more EVs were sold in Shenzhen and Shanghai than any country in the world, with the exception of the United States.

China also leads the world in another important metric – charging stations. Not only does China have the highest volume of chargers, many of them allow drivers to charge up faster.

Accelerating from the Slow Lane

In the United States, electric vehicle sales are rising, but they still tend to be highly concentrated in specific areas. In around half of states, EVs account for fewer than 1% of vehicle sales. On the other hand, California is approaching the 10% mark, a significant milestone for the most populous state.

Nationally, EV sales increased throughout 2018, with December registering nearly double the sales volume of the same month in 2017. Part of this surge in sales is driven by the Tesla’s Model 3, which led the market in the last quarter of 2018.

North of the border, in Canada, the situation is similar. EV sales are increasing, but not fast enough to meet targets set by the government. Canada aimed to have half a million EVs on the road by 2018, but missed that target by around 400,000 vehicles.

The big question now is whether the recent surge in sales is a temporary trend driven by government subsidies and showmanship of Elon Musk, or whether EVs are now becoming a mainstream option for drivers around the world.

But the news from Wolfsburg is that there may be an “MEB entry family” with prices starting as low as €20,000. Now, these won’t be Tesla fighters. They won’t be long range tourers meant for coast to coast journeys on the Super Slab. What they will be is vehicles intended to meet the needs of urban drivers.

According to a report in Ward’s Auto, they will be offered with a number of battery choices depending on needs and budget. The entry level cars are expected to have a range of around 200 km or roughly 125 miles. In other words, a little less than the current Nissan LEAF equipped with a 40 kWh battery but priced about 40% less.

Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess has suggested his company is preparing a number of “small city cars” as part of its electric car strategy that he thinks will see sales of up to 22 million Volkswagen EVs by the year 2028. Now doubt many of them will be sold under the Skoda or SEAT brands that are part of the Volkswagen Group.

At the Geneva auto show last week, Micheal Jost, VW’s head of strategy, told Ward’s the company expects it will be able to build its least expensive I.D. electric vehicles in just 10 hours. He confirmed they will be built in Germany. “Electric cars can be built faster than ICE models at much less man-hours. But you have greater material costs. That means labor costs are not such a critical component in the overall production cost as they are today,” he said.

Despite plans to offer a full range of EVs, Jost said Volkswagen will continue with a business model that sees it introduce new models every seven years. “We don’t see any need to change what we are doing now, but with the introduction of over-the-air upgrades the cars will remain fresher throughout their life cycle.”

He added he expects cars with internal combustion engines will not be available in key markets such as Europe, China and the U.S. after 2040. “Electric is not a bridge technology, it’s a target technology,” he said. “The goal must be a CO2-neutral society.”

But to get there, electric cars will need to be able to compete on price with the Hyundai Accents and Nissan Versas of the world. Not everyone needs to travel long distances or have every digital convenience imaginable. They just have to be able to get back and forth to work in a reliable car they can afford. When that happens, the EV revolution will truly be complete.

Churning out an astounding 1,900 horsepower, Ferrari’s Pininfarina Battista is one of the most powerful automobiles ever produced. It also happens to be all electric, one of a score of battery-based vehicles debuting at this week’s Geneva Motor Show, which runs through Sunday.

While “electrification,” whether hybrid, plug-in or all-electric, has yet to make a serious dent in the global automotive market from a sales standpoint, carmakers are moving to adopt the technology at a rapid rate. Nowhere has that been more apparent than at this year’s Swiss car show, the biggest of the season for Europe and a harbinger of products that will be rolling out globally in the coming year.

“It seems like Geneva is bringing out a lot of new electrified vehicles,” said Stephanie Brinley, principle auto analyst with IHS Markit. “If you look at the plans various automakers have outlined for the next couple years, that’s no surprise.”

Almost every brand, large or small, is getting into the battery game, and a number of them have made plans to go 100 percent electric. For some, like BMW and Volvo, that means they will offer battery-based powertrain options for all their vehicles by early in the coming decade. Others, like General Motors, contend they are on a path that will lead them to eventually offer only fully electric products, eliminating internal combustion engines entirely.

This year’s Geneva Motor Show illustrates the breadth at which electrification is taking hold. A tour of the Palexpo convention center finds battery-based products of every form, down to the two e- scooters, the Streetmate and Cityskater rolled out by Volkswagen.

Mazda weighed in during the show’s Tuesday media preview with the new CX30 crossover. Facing ever more stringent mileage and emissions standards, automakers are exploring their options. The little Japanese maker is the first to commercialize a breakthrough powertrain technology known as homogeneous charge compression ignition, or HCCI. Think of it as a diesel running on gasoline. But to make the new Skyactiv-X engine in the CX30 even more efficient, the crossover has also adopted “mild hybrid” technology, with a small electric motor paired to a 24-volt lithium-ion battery.

Honda, meanwhile, is taking aim at the European market with the Honda e, a prototype version of the pint-sized city car. The three-door hatchback, with an all-electric range of 125 miles, is expected to go on sale on the continent later this year.

Kia also rolled out a concept vehicle, the Imagine. While there are no production plans, the sleek, five-door CUV is expected to influence the design of the next generation of pure battery-electric vehicles, or BEVs, the Korean carmaker is developing, with its underlying platform to be shared with sibling brand Hyundai.

“Today’s drivers understandably have many questions about electric cars,” said Gregory Guillaume, Kia’s vice president of design. Car buyers are worried about how far electric cars can drive on a single charge, the availability of recharging stations and whether they are just as fun to drive as gas-powered engines. “We knew that the best way to answer those questions and address those concerns was by approaching electrification purely from an emotional point of view.”

Nissan’s new IMQ concept is serving much the same purpose at the Geneva Motor Show, and picking up on the design and technology cues of the IMs prototype the automaker revealed two months ago at the North American International Auto Show.

Nissan was the first automaker to launch production of a mainstream battery electric vehicle, or BEV. The Leaf debuted in 2011 and this month became the first all-electric model to generate global sales of more than 400,000. A new version, the Leaf Plus, is just going into production and offers an extended range update that will allow motorists to travel up to 226 miles per charge. The automaker plans to have “eight models electrified or fully electric” available by 2020, North American CEO Denis LeVot told CNBC in January.

The Geneva show highlights the varying forms of battery propulsion that manufacturers are turning to:

• Mild hybrids, like the new Mazda CX30 use extremely small and low-voltage battery packs that do things like letting the vehicle shut off its gas engine, rather than idling, and giving a quick boost when it starts to accelerate.
• Conventional hybrids, like the Toyota Prius and the new Aston Martin AM-RB 003, use slightly larger, higher-voltage batteries that can start the car rolling without the help of the gas engine, while also boosting performance at higher speeds. Some allow all-electric driving for up to a mile or two. They recharge by recapturing energy normally lost during braking or coasting.
• Plug-in hybrids, such as the Alfa Romeo Tonale debuting in Geneva, can operate in all-electric mode at highway speeds and for distances that may range up to 50 miles. Then, their gasoline engines kick in, allowing the vehicles to keep going. Like conventional hybrids, plug-in hybrid EVs have regenerative brakes to boost range, but they normally plug in to recharge their batteries;
• Battery electric vehicles, or BEVs, rely solely on their onboard batteries. The first wave offered marginal range of around 100 miles, but 200 miles is the new norm and some, like the Audi e-tron Q4 debuting in Geneva, are pushing to 300 miles or more. Even as range is growing, pricing has begun coming down on mainstream models.

While there are more and more “affordable” long-range BEVs pushing down towards $30,000, most of these all-electric products are still outside of mainstream territory. Many automakers are focusing on luxury segments where price is less of a factor for potential buyers, according to Scott Keogh, the CEO of the Volkswagen Group of America.

VW plans to have at least 50 BEVs in its line-up by 2025, including mainstream models like the Seat el-Born, a concept version shown in Geneva by its Spanish-based economy brand. But the automaker will put a premium on high-line offerings. Its Audi brand has already launched its first all-electric model, the e-tron crossover, and it revealed a sports car version, the e-tron GT at the Los Angeles Auto Show last November.

Audi’s third BEV, the Q4 crossover, will hit the road in 2021 and will share an all-new, underlying platform with VW’s Porsche brand — which is bringing its own battery-electric sports car, the Taycan, to market this year. Porsche plans to have three BEVs by 2021 and already offers several hybrids and PHEVs.

Dubbed the premium platform electric, or PPE, the all-new platform Audi and Porsche are developing follows a formula first brought to market by Tesla. Looking a bit like a skateboard, it mounts the battery pack and motors under the load floor. That approach frees up space normally devoted to an internal combustion engine to passengers and cargo. It also lowers the center of gravity, improving handling.

Now, add the fact that electric motors develop maximum torque the moment they start spinning – rather than having to rev up like a gas or diesel engine – and you have a performance formula that many high-line buyers are finding irresistible.

“You can give Tesla a lot of credibility for changing the mindset when they introduced their ‘ludicrous mode,’” said analyst Brinley. The Tesla Model S with ludicrous mode can hit 60 in just 2.3 seconds, or faster than a Porsche 911.

On your walk around the Geneva Motor Show you’d be hard-pressed to avoid all the luxury and high-performance models using some form of electrification. The list includes several topping 1,000 horsepower, such as the gas-electric McLaren Speedtail and Aston Martin AM-RB 003. The latter “hypercar” borrows its hybrid system from the technology developed for its Formula One race car.

The new Alfa Romeo Tonale will offer a variety of conventional and electrified powertrains when it comes to market. Significantly, Alfa sees plug-in hybrids as the top of its performance ladder, according to brand boss Tim Kuniskis.

On the all-electric side, there’s not just the Pininfarina Battista but the 1,005 horsepower Carmen, a retro-futuristic sports car that marks the revival of one of the classic “golden era” brands, Hispano Suiza. And, while not delivering quite the horsepower numbers of its hypercar, Aston Martin will go all-electric with another entry debuting in Geneva. Though officially dubbed a “concept,” its all-terrain show car teases the crossover that will be offered next year through its alternative Lagonda brand. That marque hasn’t been used on a new model in decades and, going forward, Lagonda will produce only BEVs.

As for Ferrari, the F8 Tributo model it is launching in Geneva uses a conventional twin-turbo V-8 for power. But company officials have confirmed they are developing their own new platform for future hybrid products.

As many battery-based models as there are on display at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, the count will only grow going forward, industry observers anticipate.

Erik Buell’s name was once a staple in the motorcycle world. His racing pedigree and penchant for building rad V-Twin-powered sportbikes made him known the world over. However, in the last decade, his name has been all but stricken from the public’s collective consciousness. Partially due to Harley-Davidson’s fall from grace and profitability, and partly because of some ill-timed ventures, Buell’s been out of the motorcycle game for some time. Now, he’d like to make a comeback with an all-electric motorcycle company called Fuell. Get it?

Buell is making this phoenix-like rise from the ashes based on two forthcoming electric motorcycles developed in-house by himself, mobility expert Francois-Xavier Terny, and Fred Vasseur, who is currently the team principal of the Sauber Alfa Romeo F1 team. The two motorcycles are actually classified as mobility solutions, but one looks to be a street-going motorcycle to compete against bikes like Zeros and Harley-Davidson’s forthcoming LiveWire, while the second is tailored to the urban riding public.

Let’s start with the second. Called the Fluid, the mountain bike-esque electric cycle features a 980wH battery pack capable of giving it a range of about 125 miles per charge. Torque is capped at about 77 lb-ft which will give the vehicle a healthy dose of oomph when you twist the electric throttle. Pricing is said to come in at around $3,295, which isn’t out of line with other electric motorcycles having similar specs. But given the racing history and technical know-how of both Vasseur and Buell, the electric motorcycle may be the more interesting proposition.

Dubbed the Flow, the electric motorcycle looks to have similar attributes as a modern upright cruiser, though with a style that’s definitely future-forward. Centered around either a 10kW or 35kW battery pack, the Flow has a theoretical range of 125 miles per charge, similar to the Fluid, but it can use a fast charger for a full range return in just 30 minutes. According to the company’s website, the Flow will set customers back around $10,995, which again, isn’t unreasonable. In fact, compared to its Harley-Davidson counterpart which is priced at $30,000 and doesn’t offer much more in terms of range or usability, Fuell’s Flow is a bargain.

Full technical specs haven’t been released yet, but according to the company, those details should be dropping soon. What we do know is that Fuell is aiming at a release for the Fluid by the end of this year, while the road-going Flow aimed at delivery for early 2021. If the motorcycle is as good as Buell’s previous offerings, we’re in for an electric revolution. We can’t wait.