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Lithium is in very hot demand at present.\u00a0 Like a new frenetic modern-day gold rush, it seems that big companies wanting\u00a0lithium are frantically looking for this new sort of gold.<\/p>\n
Obviously, lithium is required in the production of lithium-ion battery cells that are used for powering EVs. \u00a0In order to make sure that they don\u2019t run short of lithium anytime soon, China, which has the largest EV market in the world, produces 80% of the world\u2019s usable lithium product all on their own.\u00a0 In a statement recently, Sung Choi, a metals analyst, stated that \u201cThe cost of lithium has risen because virtually all automakers have jumped onto producing EVs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently, over half of the world\u2019s lithium resources are in South America and Australia. \u00a0As prices for lithium are surging \u2013 and some metal analysts at BloombergNEF (BNEF) have witnessed an almost 500% increase in the past year \u2013 China seems to be leading the charge in the hunt for new lithium mining reserves.<\/p>\n
China is searching around the world for new lithium deposits that can supply their big need for the metal used in EV production.\u00a0 China has even looked at the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau as a source for the metal, as well as in Africa. \u00a0Sung Choi also said that \u201cAfrica has recently been in the spotlight with its ample resources in metals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the African lithium mining fields being looked at by China include the reserves found in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Zijin, a Chinese mining giant, is battling with Australia\u2019s AVZ minerals over controlling the DRC\u2019s Manono mine.\u00a0 Quite possibly, the Manono mine has the world\u2019s biggest lithium deposit.<\/p>\n
Last year, Congolese President F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi said that people living in areas with mines were \u201cstill languishing in misery,\u201d while it was the foreign multinationals running the mines who prospered. \u00a0The mines do provide locals with jobs, but many would say that the locals don\u2019t see enough trickle-down reward from the massive multimillion-dollar projects.<\/p>\n
Also, in Zimbabwe there are large untapped deposits of lithium, and China is rapidly buying up these resources. \u00a0Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, a Chinese-based company, has recently purchased Arcadia Lithium mine outside Harare. \u00a0The money (some $300 million) will be used to construct a mining plant with a processing capacity of 400,000 metric tons of lithium concentrate per year.\u00a0\u00a0The Zimbabwean government has welcomed this recent investment, looking forward to helping fill China’s and the EV\u2019s need for lithium-based batteries.<\/p>\n
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The current and potential growth of the EV industry, and therefore the rush for new lithium resources, has had companies like Tesla seriously considering getting into lithium mining and refining directly for themselves.\u00a0 Maybe it is Toyota who is taking the more manageable approach to the mass production of EVs. \u00a0Their pace toward an EV transfer seems to take a better-calculated methodology when compared with some other big automotive manufacturers who seem driven on producing a fleet of their own EVs as fast as possible.\u00a0 Toyota sees the value in hybrid technology building a bridge to solving any issues around climate change and the EV mindset.<\/p>\n
Lithium isn\u2019t just used in the production of EV battery packs.\u00a0 Lithium is also used in rechargeable batteries for mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras, and in warfare equipment. It is also used in some non-rechargeable batteries for things like heart pacemakers, clocks, and toys. \u00a0The future and the course of EV production and EV uptake does seem to depend on the amount of lithium being available and the costs involved for mining it.\u00a0 These costs will affect how much a new climate change-solving EV might eventually sell for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lithium is in very hot demand at present.\u00a0 Like a new frenetic modern-day gold rush, it seems that big companies wanting\u00a0lithium are frantically looking for this new sort of gold. Obviously, lithium is required in the production of lithium-ion battery cells that are used for powering EVs. \u00a0In order to make sure that they don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5120,86,4923,4471,59,7239,57,4014,3071],"tags":[7124,4856,7419,7422,3349,7423,4892,7118,7418,7421,6795,7127,7420],"class_list":["post-14132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-automotive-design","category-blog","category-electric-vehicles-evs","category-environment","category-fuel-2","category-hybrid-vehicles","category-manufacturer-news","category-sustainabilitygreen","category-technical","tag-batteries","tag-battery","tag-battery-technology","tag-costs-of-ev-production","tag-ev","tag-ev-production","tag-evs","tag-lithium","tag-lithium-battery","tag-lithium-resources","tag-lithium-ion","tag-mining","tag-new-lithium-mines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14132"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14136,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14132\/revisions\/14136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.privatefleet.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}