Hacker News Reader

Comment by snake_doc | Hacker News Reader

The EV components’ raw materials (battery materials and rare earths) are largely controlled by China [1][2]. They may not control the chain end to end, but they have a strangle hold specifically on raw material processing/refinement.

Many of the EU/U.S. battery factories will import lithium chemicals from China, at least for this decade.

[1]IEA 2022 report, see page 5 on battery materials supply chain share by country: https://www.iea.org/reports/global-supply-chains-of-ev-batte...

[2]WSJ article on China’s monopoly on rare earths: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-set-to-create-new-state-o...

View on HN

The big rare earths mine at Mountain Pass, CA is back online.[1]

The MP Materials magnet plant in Texas is supposed to start delivering to GM in 2023.[2] Although Google Earth shows a vacant lot at the announced location. Groundbreaking was a few months ago.

Australia is the largest producer of lithium ore. Over 50% of world production. China is down around 6%.

Lithium Americas finally got approval this year to build an open-pit lithium mine in Thacker Pass, Nevada. Supposedly construction should be starting about now.[3]

Things are moving forward in this area.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine

[2] https://mpmaterials.com/articles/mp-materials-begins-constru...

[3] https://www.lithiumamericas.com/usa/thacker-pass/

My point wasn’t about the sourcing of natural resource.

It’s about the steps within supply chain, most of Australia’s lithium is refined/processed in China[1].

It will take roughly a decade for other countries to ramp and move back down the learning curve for refining/processing capacity at market cost. China’s control over this bottleneck step won’t change for this decade, as they continue to consolidate state investments.

Yes countries are catching up in sourcing natural resources, but the processing into chemicals and then components are still mostly done in China. For example, most battery cathode materials are made in East Asia, and battery factories import them.

[1] “Most Australian lithium is exported to China, accounting for over 85% of total value in each month of 2021 and over 94% in each month of 2022 (year to date). In June 2022, $1,128m worth of lithium was exported to China, accounting for 97% of the total lithium exports for that month (Figure 4).” https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/insights-australian-exports-...

Lithium refining technology suppliers:

- Metso:Outotech (Finland) - mostly does dry source minerals.

- SaltWorks (Canada) - mostly does wet source (brines) minerals. They claim a near closed-cycle process for water, rather than needing vast amounts of fresh water.

US Plants under construction or proposed.

- Silver Peak, NV [1]

- Proposed Tesla lithium plant in Texas.[2]

- Miner Piedmont plant in Tennessee,[3]

China currently has about 80% of world lithium refining capacity, but that's rapidly changing. China is a net lithium importer. The big mining countries are Australia and Chile. China is under 10% in lithium ores. New refining plants are being built in Australia, too. Pilbara Minerals in Australia claims to have the largest single lithium mine in the world. They are expanding into refining.[4] The Kermerton plant in Australia, which cut production in half in 2020 due to low lithium prices, is going back to full production and looking at expansion.[5]

The price of lithium has gone up about 8x in the last few years. So everybody in the industry is now expanding. Expect a capacity glut 3-4 years out.

[1] https://archive.ph/2DDdw/again?url=https://www.reuters.com/b...

[2] https://www.freightwaves.com/news/tesla-proposes-texas-lithi...

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/01/miner-piedmont-unveils-plans...

[4] https://www.miningmagazine.com/plant/news/1409915/lithium-re...

[5] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-16/lithium-expansion-aga...

[6] https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com