Apologies for the lengthy post, but I read this today on the WSJ. Here's a few highlights - had to cut it right down as the article is very long. There's also a fair bit in their about disruption to other industries i.e. crude oil, gas which I've cut out. Always exciting to see Li hitting the headlines!

The Battery Is Ready to Power the World

After a decade of rapidly falling costs, the rechargeable lithium-ion battery is poised to disrupt industries

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries were first commercially used in hand-held camcorders in 1991. Laptops soon followed. A decade later, batteries enabled the rise of tech titans such as Apple Inc. by powering smartphones and wearable devices, then made their way into electric vehicles. The basic technology throughout remained pretty much the same: Lithium ions move through a liquid from the cathode to the anode, and back again. This, however, was just the beginning. After a decade of rapidly falling costs, the battery has reached a tipping point. No longer just for consumer products, it is poised to transform the way the world uses power. In the energy sector, affordable batteries are making it possible for companies to store electricity and harvest renewable power. In the auto industry, they are set to challenge the gas-powered engine’s centurylong domination. Costs have come down so far and so fast that most car makers expect that electric vehicles, which are currently more expensive than their gas-powered counterparts, will cost the same amount to build within the next five years. The gains are likely to continue. Electric vehicles are currently the main source of demand for battery cells. As demand grows and costs fall further, batteries will become even more disruptive across industries. Batteries recently scored a win at General Motors Co., which said it hoped to phase out gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles from its showrooms world-wide by 2035.

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The rise of rechargeable batteries is now a matter of national security and industrial policy. Control of the minerals and manufacturing processes needed to make lithium-ion batteries is the 21st-century version of oil security. The flow of batteries is currently dominated by Asian countries and companies. Nearly 65% of lithium-ion batteries come from China. By comparison, no single country produces more than 20% of global crude oil output.

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The same batteries are being deployed on the power grid in growing numbers. Construction began in January on a battery in Florida that will use 2.5 million lithium-ion cells—similar in chemistry to Tesla cells, only larger. Florida Power & Light, part of NextEra Energy Inc., said the battery will be capable of powering Disney World for seven hours.

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To meet expected demand, global output of lithium, a silvery metal also used to make nuclear bombs and treat bipolar disorder, has nearly tripled in the past decade, according to Benchmark. Lithium is mostly mined in Australia and Chile, where it is found in underground brine deposits, although efforts to increase U.S. output from mines in Nevada and North Carolina are gaining attention from investors.

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Globally, battery-powered electric cars made up around 4% of all new cars sold last year in the world’s largest markets—the U.S., Europe and China—up from around 1% in 2017, according to data from Deutsche Bank. In 2025, the bank expects that share of the market to be 22%.In the energy sector, power grids have been built around just-in-time electricity generation for more than a century. Every second of the day, the supply of electrons needed to match demand to keep the lights from going out, because there was no way to store energy for use at another time.

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Another challenge: Though battery safety has improved, lithium-ion cells have a history of catching fire, which has already resulted in recalls for companies including GM, Hyundai Motor Co. and BMW AG. A shortage of charging stations could discourage EV customers. San Francisco estimates it could need more than 5,100 EV charging outlets by 2030, up from 834 in 2019. Filling up those batteries may also require 7% more electricity than the city currently consumes, according to an analysis co-written by two city officials. Still, car experts believe battery-powered models—which are mechanically much simpler than those with gasoline engines, with fewer moving parts—will ultimately prevail. The internal combustion engine, or ICE, has been engineered to near-perfection over a century, said Sandy Munro, an auto-industry consultant who takes apart about two dozen cars a year, stripping them to their parts to study the materials, technology and assembly. The innovation of the battery-powered EV, by contrast, has barely begun.“ Right now, we’re basically scratching the surface,” he said. “The ICE age is coming to an end.”