Rivian CEO Believes Battery Supply Chain Will Be the Next Disaster

April 25, 2022

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by Jonathon Ramsey (AutoBlog) Will make the chip shortage look like 'a small appetizer' -- ... Rivian CEO R.J. Scaringe has the worst news yet. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, the EV honcho said "Semiconductors are a small appetizer to what we are about to feel on battery cells over the next two decades."

Scaringe believes the compacted timeline for switching millions of personal vehicle sales from ICE to battery-electric is going to expose the lack of preparedness along the entire battery supply chain, from mining to producing the final packs. Right now, "90% to 95% of the supply chain does not exist" to furnish the targets governments and OEMs have set for a decade from now. In the U.S. last year, 5% of overall vehicle sales were hybrids, 3% were EVs, both record numbers. To reach those percentages, lithium-ion battery demand has risen an average of 37% every year since 2015, the Journal saying this year will see a 50% jump.

No part of the battery industry can sustain that, and we're not sure the Earth can, either. Lithium is earning its nickname as "white gold," the quest for it pushing developments that could become for minerals what fracking is to oil, causing controversy among climate groups, and leading to statements like, "A lot of us understand blowing up a mountain for coal mining is wrong; I think blowing up a mountain for lithium mining is just as wrong." READ MORE; includes VIDEO

Rivian CEO Warns of Looming Electric-Vehicle Battery Shortage: Much of the battery supply chain isn’t built, challenging an industry aiming to sell tens of millions of EVs in coming years, RJ Scaringe (Wall Street Journal)

The US has more clean energy projects planned than the grid can handle: Without major policy reforms and grid upgrades, much of the 1.4-terawatt queue of solar, wind and battery projects may never get built, two new reports find. (Canary Media)

Citing ‘clean energy,’ progressives mount mining law overhaul: “Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act” (E&E News)

Mining lithium and other metals needed for clean energy proves to be a hard sell politically (Houston Chronicle)

Why electric cars are getting pricier even as batteries get cheaper (Quartz)

Rising Lithium Prices Could Stop The EV Revolution – Or Could They? (Forbes)

Lithium Deficit Threatens EV Sales and Energy Transition (GreenBiz)

LITHIUM OVERSUPPLY? NOT LIKELY – FIVE MAIN REASONS WHY (Benchmark Mineral Intelligence)

Excerpt from Canary Media: The proposed wind, solar and battery projects seeking interconnection to U.S. transmission grids today are enough to bring the country to 80 percent carbon-free electricity by 2030. But based on historical trends, less than a quarter of those planned projects are likely to be built.

And even the best-positioned projects that already have the land rights, construction financing and power-purchase contracts necessary to move forward are likely to face years of delay and potentially millions of dollars of grid upgrade costs before being able to connect to the grid. These barriers could prevent many planned projects from reaching completion — and block the country from decarbonizing fast enough to prevent the most devastating effects of global warming. READ MORE