Good News & Bad News, page-5949

A lithium shortage is coming, and automakers might be unprepared. "The great EV raw material disconnect" could be temporary, but it will pose an obstacle for automakers' electric embrace.......A good way to understand it is that it takes at least five to seven years to build a lithium mine. With all the money in the world, you can build one in five years. But it takes 24 months to build a gigafactory, so that's the disconnect. And still the automakers are announcing all these battery plants. At the same time, they should be announcing new lithium mines-or new lithium-refining capacity, at least, if they didn't want to get into mining-because they go hand in hand. But that's not happening yet. And as a result, any of the EV goals between 2026 and 2030-it's a red alert. Most of these guys won't even meet a fraction of their EV targets because of that.