And even the prospect of sourcing cobalt as a by-product of copper and nickel refinement does little to alleviate the concerns around its cost. Some OEMs are intending to remove cobalt ‘as soon as possible’, not just because of ethical concerns surrounding the mining of the material, but because of the volatile prices.
This is commonly named LNMO (Lithium-nickel-manganese-oxide), or ‘high voltage spinel cathode’, and is seldom talked about, despite being planned for series production in at least two applications at the end of this year. It also has the potential to democratise and diversify the raw material supply chain to a point where extraction is more sustainable, both environmentally and ethically. There are silicon anodes, tabless cell designs, structural efficiencies, such as Cell-to-Pack, universal cell formats, and many other advances being made, but a new manganese-rich cathode chemistry offers a means of doing away with cobalt, by far the most expensive battery material, while avoiding the hit to energy density that is associated with LFP. Further technical breakthroughs are needed in the meantime, however incremental, to keep the momentum going.
The lithium-ion battery cost curve is, as expected, reaching a point of diminishing returns. It seems that all the hype recently has been focused on solid state batteries and, while we do expect it to eventually become the default technology, the prevailing opinion is that it will become widespread in automotive applications no earlier than the end of the decade.