We here a lot about LFP and it always seems to be a headline...

We here a lot about LFP and it always seems to be a headline about the death of nickel cobalt that goes with it.

Meanwhile companies like CATL a big LFP manufacturer who supplies Tesla are increasing their stakes in Indonesian nickel. There is so much info and opinions about batteries and what chemistry will be used in the future it’s hard to know what the future is.

LFP has come a long way and has its place but from my research (which is just that and I certainly would do your own ) the market wants range,power, longevity and recyclability. Several companies are working on next generation nickel based battery chemistry to provide smaller longer range and long lasting batteries it’s seems the common theme is further reducing or supplementing cobalt content.

EU in particular is demanding manufacturers provide no consumer cost for recycling of their batteries hence they need to factor this in as part of the overall production cost, an LFP battery would most likely be cost negative to recycle especially at current lithium prices where as nickel based could be sent to a recycling plant and the materials would cover costs with perhaps a return.

We constantly see headlines about how EV sales are down but then we see the actual figures and they are up, it turns out they are up but apparently not as up as was predicted which means they’re down haha.

It’s the same with nickel lots of headlines in particular for the last year Indonesia nickel surplus and how they were going to get a special IRA deal and LFP is the future. Turns out no deal, nickel surplus is being propped up by Phillipines imports and off the books illegal exports meanwhile nickel in EV’s is up both in volume and percentage so they are selling more batteries and the amount of nickel content is higher.