Mining.com posted on 8 April 2021 an article titled "World's No. 2 Electric Carmaker Goes Nickel, Cobalt Free."
China's BYD is the world's second largest manufacturer of electric vehicles behind Tesla. China is trying to control the electric vehicle market. The batteries for electric vehicles rely heavily on cobalt, which China is also trying to control. Most of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
BYD has announced that it is scrapping nickel, cobalt, manganese technology for its batteries and switching to lithium-iron-phosphate batteries. If other electric car producers follow BYD's decision, this raises interesting questions for the future of cobalt and the importance that China will continue to attach to the DRC.
