Lithium and nickel supply to bottleneck EV battery production

London-based battery supply chain analysis firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence has a stark projection that lithium and nickel manufacturing will be unable to meet demand from battery producers, resulting in a bottlenecking of the industry’s growth.

According to Benchmark’s analysis, demand for lithium-ion batteries is expected to rise from 1TWh in 2023 to 3.7TWh by 2030, with the majority of this growth being “driven by an ever-increasing demand for EVs”. However, in order to achieve this scale, an additional $201bn is required to ramp up battery manufacturing efforts. The expansion of the global lithium industry needs $51bn alone to meet demand.