Trade News

U.S. automakers are setting out to greatly expand battery manufacturing on their home turf as they accelerate electric vehicle production in the coming decades. Over less than two years, they have announced plans to build at least 10 battery cell plants in North America through 2026.

Today, the metals for EV battery cells are largely sourced in other parts of the world. As battery production continues to expand in North America, so too will the sourcing and processing of key metals. Automakers and battery manufacturers are beginning to establish sites in North America to extract these materials. Local sites are essential to reducing the carbon footprint of EV manufacturing and avoiding geopolitical risk, experts say.

"There must be nearby sources," said Manish Chawla, IBM's global general manager for the industrial sector. "The pandemic has clarified everybody's mindset that you don't go for the cheapest source of raw material or of a component. You look at th…

Today’s lithium ion batteries use electrolytes that are either liquid or pastelike. That makes the batteries less efficient than they otherwise could be because lithium ions do not travel as freely as they do in a solid material. Automakers and battery companies are spending billions to change one part of the battery, the separator, from a liquid to a solid.

The goal is to create a lighter, safer, cooler and more energy-dense battery.

An EV battery pack contains thousands of cells, which look like normal flashlight batteries, connected together.

4 parts of a lithium ion battery

Positive electrode: This is the cathode, and it determines the capacity and voltage of the battery cell. Negative electrode: This is the anode, and it stores and releases lithium ions into the cathode, allowing current to flow through an external circuit. Electrolyte: The liquid that enables lithium ions to move between the anode and the cathode. Separator: A physical barrie…

The shift to electric vehicles will mean less drilling for oil, but EVs still depend heavily on precious resources that come from deep within the Earth.

Making enough batteries to fulfill automakers' ambitious electrification goals requires copious amounts of lithium, cobalt and other metals that aren't readily flowing through the existing supply chain. Locating and safely extracting them are complex tasks starkly different from traditional automotive operations, and mastering those tasks will be crucial to succeeding in the EV era.

President Joe Biden is aiming for EVs to represent half of U.S. new-vehicle sales by 2030. That compares with 1.9 percent last year, according to Edmunds. Automakers have laid out their own goals, with Volvo planning to fully electrify its lineup by 2030. General Motors aspires to have a zero-emission light- vehicle portfolio by 2035, and Volkswagen has said nearly all of its vehicles will be emission-free by 2040.

Building …

DETROIT — Mining company executives. Non-automotive suppliers. Engineers. Battery supply chain and purchasing experts. They've all found a seat at General Motors' table as the automaker reinvents the supply chain for electric vehicles.

"When we define what our value chain will be, it will look nothing like the value chain that exists today," said Shilpan Amin, GM's vice president of global purchasing and supply chain.

GM brought in outside experts, along with cross-functional internal teams, to inform its battery development plan and ensure that battery materials, such as lithium and cobalt, are sourced responsibly and economically.

None of the experts alone is a silver bullet for GM's strategy, Amin told Automotive News. GM needed an array of perspectives to assemble its plan. Once the automaker developed a consortium to learn from, "all of a sudden the pieces started to fall together," Amin said.

The auto industry's move toward electrification,…

Digging into EV's core

Over the past two years, automakers have competed in a spending race on electric vehicle investments. When one announces a multi-billion-dollar commitment, another tops it. Automakers and battery manufacturers have touted battery-chemistry advancements to improve range and efficiency and reduce cost, and they've outlined plans to establish battery cell plants throughout the U.S.

Much of the conversation has been centered on the end products—the battery cell or the EV itself. The conversation is beginning to expand, addressing more details on how the automakers and their suppliers will secure the materials to make the batteries—vital metals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite and manganese.

Without significant investment in broader sourcing of these metals, the industry could face a shortage, similar to the semiconductor crisis it has faced this year.

Industry leaders are working to avoid that now.

In Monday’…

The senior manager of research and market intelligence discusses Cox's latest EV study; how dealers play a vital role in EV buying decisions, despite feeling ill-prepared; the growing importance of styling, and why going electric isn't as expensive as people think.

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HOUSTON -- A prominent forensic psychiatrist testified that billionaire Robert Brockman is feigning dementia as a “magic bullet” to avoid trial on charges of evading taxes on $2 billion in income.

Brockman, 80, is in cognitive decline but he’s exaggerating his impairment and his mind remains sharp enough to understand the charges against him, Park Dietz told U.S. District Judge George C. Hanks Jr. on Friday in Houston.

Hanks conducted a weeklong hearing to determine if Brockman is competent to stand trial.

Dietz, a California-based psychiatrist, said he was on a team of government medical experts who interviewed Brockman, including in May 2021, before making his assessment. Brockman talked in detail then about tax matters, the charges against him and how easy it would be to fabricate emails, Dietz said.

“I did not think it was even a close call whether he was competent to stand trial at that time,” Dietz said.

Brockman “has extreme motivat…

Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk said on Friday that the company's mobile application was coming back online after an app server outage earlier prevented many owners from connecting to their cars.

Musk was responding to a Tesla owner's tweet, who said that he was experiencing a "500 server error" to connect his Model 3 through the iOS app in Seoul, South Korea.

"Should be coming back online now. Looks like we may have accidentally increased verbosity of network traffic," Musk said.

The outage was first reported by Electrek.

About 500 users reported they faced an error at around 4:40 p.m. EST, according to outage monitoring website Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform. There were just over 60 reports at around 9:20 p.m. EST.

"Apologies, we will take measures to ensure this doesn't happen again," Musk tweeted.

From June 2018 through September 2019, four major hailstorms pelted the inventory at Stapp Interstate Toyota north of Denver.

Although insurance covered the damages, its Toyota Financial Services-preferred provider chose to walk away after Stapp's policy expired, citing the high risk in an area prone to such severe weather. When the store in Frederick, Colo., moved to another insurer, its deductibles and premiums soared.

Faced with rising costs — and the ever-present prospect of more damaging storms — Dealer Principal Brion Stapp decided to take a seven-figure gamble in the form of a 53,000-square-foot hail canopy that includes 720 solar panels.

Stapp reasoned that insurance costs would fall once providers saw the reduced risk to his inventory. Aside from that, he thought, the dealership could recoup some money by generating its own electricity.

An Obama administration-era solar tax credit, as well as a Trump administration depreciation opportuni…

A private investment firm connected to longtime automaker executive Mark LaNeve aims to spend around $400 million over the next three years buying minority stakes in auto dealerships.

New York-based Franchise Equity Partners launched this month. It was co-founded by Michael Esposito and Scott Romanoff, who are the firm's managing partners. LaNeve, a former Ford Motor Co. and General Motors sales and marketing executive, and Don Reese, former CEO of used-car retailer DriveTime, are part of the firm's leadership team.

Franchise Equity Partners is backed by New York investment firm HPS Investment Partners, which has $75 billion in capital, Esposito said. HPS has allocated $1 billion to fund Franchise Equity Partners, which will invest in five areas: auto dealerships, restaurants, heavy-equipment dealerships, beverage distributors and consumer services such as health and beauty.

Esposito noted that while he and Romanoff have invested some of their own mone…