A Looming New Supply Shortage Threatens the EV Industry’s Hopes for the 2020s

Chile's Atacama Desert, the source of a third of the world's lithium supply. Photo: Cristobal Olivares/Bloomberg

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A reminder to RSVP for the next Live Chat—Winning the EV Wars: The Establishment vs. The Upstarts. In the first subscriber-only event, I am delighted to present a conversation with Ford Motor's Darren Palmer. Palmer is general manager of Ford's electric vehicle program and a founding member of the company’s “Team Edison,” the internal brain trust that wrote the playbook for how it would win in the electric age. Oct. 19 at 1 p.m. ET. There will be time for you to pose questions of Darren. RSVP here.

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A New Supply Shortage That Threatens the EV Industry’s Hopes for the 2020s

Automakers are rapidly escalating plans for a mid-decade rollout of mainstream-priced electric vehicles. But a substantial oversight threatens to sharply curtail their EV sales just as the new models reach the market.

While the companies have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to erect gigafactories in which they will build millions of batteries for their new EVs, none has said where they will obtain the scarce refined metals that will actually make their batteries work. They seem to be stumped.