I think it is ironic that, against a backdrop of major...

I think it is ironic that, against a backdrop of major corporations trying to get into the battery materials sector, people who are already in the sector (namely holders of any of the junior cobalt players in the ASX) are sheeting themselves trying to get out. Wesfarmers buying out KDR speaks volumes of where they think all the action in the commodities market will be in the near future ... none other than battery materials; lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese. For them to make such a move, it must mean that they really think having battery materials exposure is a great place to be very soon.
Even that announcement by BMW about sourcing their cobalt from Australia or Morocco directly needs to be carefully interpreted. They did not say "we will make our battery supplier source cobalt from Australia or Morocco", they said they will. As in, BMW will. To me, it says something more than just BMW going out there to get cobalt. We didn't hear any of the Korean, Chinese, Japanese, etc. car-makers make any announcement about strategically trying to get cobalt. Those cut-price car makers, eg. Kia, Hyundai, Toyota, etc., probably leave all the sourcing and chemistries used in the batteries in their cars to the battery manufacturers. They want to make their cars as cheap as possible, so they go with the cheapest chemistry that the battery manufacturer can come up with. NCA, NMC 8-1-1, they will all go for those because it lets them make cheaper cars.
But this BMW announcement, is something else. I get the feeling that what has transpired before in the ICE automobile industry, is happening again in the EV auto industry. European car-makers are again showing the world what sets them apart from Asian car-makers. They emphasize more on the safety of their cars, and use that as a competitive edge. Their EV cars might be more expensive than Asian cars (or American, eg. Tesla), but surely safer than them!
If we try to imagine what will play out based on what BMW is doing and what Tesla is doing (completely opposite approaches, one is trying to get more Cobalt, the other is trying to get rid of it in their batteries), we can imagine ourselves buying an EV car in the future. Let us say, in the off-chance that the future-you may know a thing or two about the effects of taking Cobalt out of Lithium batteries (perhaps because of some recent news about spontaneous combustion of certain EV car batteries). If you were told that a Tesla would have batteries that had only 3% Cobalt content, and a BMW would have batteries that had 20% Cobalt content, with each car giving similar performance and range, which car would you choose?

Lower Cobalt content in the batteries only benefits the car manufacturers because they can spend less to make the car. There is no benefit to the consumer at all. I think it is only a matter of time before people start realizing this, and that's what I think BMW (and I hope all the other European car-makers as well) are playing at.