Risky business: the hidden costs of EV battery raw materials

Over the next 20 years it is projected that there will be somewhere between 300 and 500 million electric vehicles (EVs) on the road. That total would constitute a staggering leap from the roughly five million new models sold in 2018. For passenger car powertrains, the long-promised future of clean transportation is now.

However, close scrutiny of the EV power unit supply chain, and particularly the raw materials used to build EV batteries, reveals unappreciated costs. These are costs that suggest this future might be neither as clean nor as reliable as has been suggested, and that it might even come with unprecedented human rights infringements. Issues also manifest in supply chain security risks—a layer of concern that is not being discussed, let alone addressed, in the EV context.

The hidden risks with these power sources begin at their upstream origins. The…