It’s been clear to anyone who has been following the electric vehicle space for a while that the core matter for growth — whether for a company or the industry as a whole — is batteries. Batteries, batteries, batteries. And batteries some more. A couple of years ago, catching word of a potential battery mineral supply crunch in the second half of this decade, I started digging in more deeply to try to understand this topic as well as possible — or, at least, as well as needed to come to big-picture conclusions about EV sales growth.
One of the big takeaways was that there are not enough firm commitments for battery minerals to actually match EV sales targets and expected growth a few years from now, and there certainly aren’t enough firm commitments for sales targets and expected growth a handful of years from now. Automakers are making announcements, saying they plan to achieve much higher EV sales in the coming decade, and implying that they’ll be able to get all the batteries they want from battery producers. To repeat, though: there are not firm enough commitments for the battery minerals for everyone to hit their targets.
As much as I trust the battery experts I’ve talked to about all of this, there’s also always the question: is this really the story? I have to keep wondering: are legacy automakers really still not taking this EV transition seriously enough and not securing the battery supplies they should need? Can this really be true?
The interesting thing is that one of the people who would perhaps know what’s needed and what’s happening better than anyone else, Tesla co-founder and longtime former CTO JB Straubel, just said basically the same thing on a podcast. Talking with Jason Calacanis for his Esta semana em startups show, Straubel said:
“Tantos OEMs, países, fábricas e clientes diferentes estão entrando nos EVs. Você sabe, fazendo esses anúncios enormes, você sabe, dizendo que eles serão totalmente elétricos nesta década ou na próxima. Eles não - eu não acho que eles tenham feito as contas totalmente [sobre] o que isso implica na cadeia de suprimentos e rastreando todo o caminho de volta, literalmente, todo o caminho de volta às minas. Você precisa fazer isso, ou então, você sabe, você realmente não resolveu. Para mim, é como se fosse um vôo gigante com overbook.
“Todas essas pessoas gostam, 'Oh, isso é ótimo. Todos nós iremos para aquele novo lugar. Todos nós queremos ir para lá. Parece ótimo. Doce. Vamos todos entrar no avião e ir embora '. Então todo mundo está dizendo que todos queremos ir para lá ao mesmo tempo. Enquanto isso, temos que construir os aviões para chegar lá; temos que descobrir como sequenciar todos. A passarela figurativa é como a hora de fazer tudo isso, e tudo pode ser resolvido com o tempo. Mas, obviamente, estamos tentando fazer isso rápido como sociedade e como espécie. ”
So, yes, it seems that automakers are indeed not taking the battery supply matter seriously enough, not securing enough dedicated battery supply yet, and not running at full speed.
Watch Straubel’s full interview with Jason Calacanis’ Esta semana em startups in the YouTube video to hear more.
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