- Presiden Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that 20 companies in 12 states will be receiving a total of $2.8B in grants to develop domestic (US) lithium, graphite, and nickel production.
- Some of the highest costs, as well as bottlenecks in the domestic production of materials are the regulatory issues. However, Biden didn’t say anything about improving that process, nor dropping some of the red tape around domsestic mining projects.
- Right now, over half of some of the metals needed for battery production come from China.
- Some of the companies receiving grants, according to Reuters, are:
- Albermale Corp. (ALB.N)
- Piedmont Lithium (PLL.TO)
- Talon Metals (TLO.TO)
- Ascend Elements (private)
- Lilac Solutions (private)
- Cirba Solutions (private)
- Syrah Technologies (private, but subsidiary of Syrah Resource (SYR))
- Biden stands behind his target to have 50% of all new vehicles sold by 2030 being electric. He also wants 500K new charging stations.
- This is just a drop in the bucket of the, in total, $135B that has gone towards the innovation, development, and increasing of manufacturing capacity for electric vehicles, and electric vehicles batteries.
- Biden also announced the creation of the “American Battery Manufacturing Initiative”, which is meant to support innovation and investments in the field.
“This is critically important because the future of vehicles is electric, but the battery is a key part of that electric vehicle and right now 75% of that battery manufacturing is done in China.”
President Joe Biden