The Electric Flash Analysis: Amid the Nickel Crisis, EV Makers Inexplicably Ignored the Only Non-Nickel Battery Plant in the West

Last fall, Johnson Matthey, a U.K. chemical company, said it was selling its Canadian lithium-iron-phosphate cathode plant, the only one of its kind in the U.S. or Europe. The divestment seemed propitious: Tesla and several major Western electric vehicle makers had already announced a massive shift to cheap iron-based batteries (known as LFP), like the kind made at the Canadian plant, because the price of other EV battery metals—nickel, cobalt and manganese—were rising quickly.

Yet the EV and battery industries have shown shockingly little interest in buying Johnson Matthey’s LFP battery assets, which include patents. Despite the unprecedented quadrupling of nickel prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I could find no indication of a groundswell of new interest in the auction. As of this week, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter, there were just two leading bidders: Lithium Australia, a mining company based in Perth, Australia, and Nano One Technologies, a Vancouver battery metals company I wrote about last month. Johnson Matthey has been seeking to close the sale by the end of the month, one of the people said.