Co-operation between the two firms will focus on battery cathode active materials (CAM) and battery recycling. The partnership is aimed at supporting both sides to achieve carbon neutrality and accelerating CATL's localisation strategy in Europe, CATL said…CATL is building its first European production facility for lithium-ion batteries in Erfurt in the German state of Thuringia, which is part of its plan to build up a local supply chain for European consumers. The plant is expected to launch production in 2021 with 14GWh of capacity, market participants said…CATL aims to develop a local battery recycling network and a secure raw material supply chain to enhance its customer service capabilities in Europe through the partnership with BASF, which has a product portfolio including high-nickel, manganese-rich and cobalt-free cathode active materials with advanced technology, secure local raw material supply chain and shorter, more efficient logistics, CATL said…European electric vehicle (EV) demand is expected to rise sharply in the coming years, with EV sales of 800,000 in the first half of 2021 in the continent accounting for 15pc of the region's automotive market, up by over 100pc from a year earlier. European EV sales are expected to hit 7.7mn units by 2030 from less than 500,000 in 2019. In relation, the region's battery production capacity is anticipated to reach 331 GWh/yr by 2025, up from 54GWh this year, according to consultancy P3 Automotive…CATL in August unveiled plans to build 137 GWh/yr of lithium-ion battery capacity by raising 58.2bn yuan from the stock market for five projects in Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangsu. These sites are expected to be completed in the next three years to meet rapidly growing demand from the EV and lithium battery sectors…BASF has also established a joint venture, BASF Shanshan Battery Materials, with major Chinese producer of lithium battery materials Ningbo Shanshan to focus on the fast-growing EV industry. Its facilities are located in central China's Hunan province and northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, with combined capacity of 60,000 t/yr for cathode materials. It is on track to expand capacity to 90,000 t/yr in 2022.

EV start-up Rivian is the first automaker to bring an electric pickup to the consumer market, beating Tesla, General Motors and others in what’s expected to be a hotly contested segment in the years ahead…Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe on Tuesday tweeted that the company’s first R1T pickup for a customer drove off the assembly line in the morning at its plant in Normal, Illinois…The beginning of production, which has been delayed several times, comes weeks after the Amazon- and Ford Motor-backed company filed a confidential draft registration form for an IPO...Rivian is expected to be the first of a handful of automakers to produce an electric pickup by next year. GM is projected to be next this fall with the GMC Hummer EV pickup, followed potentially next year by EV start-up Lordstown Motors, Ford and then Tesla, which recently pushed back deliveries of its Cybertruck from this year to late 2022.

Taiwanese electric scooter maker Gogoro, which is partly backed by Singapore state investor Temasek, said on Thursday that it will go public through a merger with a blank-check company in a deal that sets its enterprise value at $2.35 billion…The Taipei-based company, which is known for its battery distribution network for riders, has in recent years launched scooter-sharing services in Europe and battery sharing infrastructure in Japan…It also unveiled plans this year to enter the Indian and Chinese markets via tie-ups with Hero MotoCorp, Dachangjiang Group, and Yadea Group Holdings…In June, Gogoro formed a strategic partnership with Taiwan’s Foxconn, a major Apple supplier, to work together in areas from battery to manufacturing.

At Tesla Inc.’s ballyhooed Battery Day event last year, CEO Elon Musk set himself an ambitious target: to produce a $25,000 electric vehicle by 2023. Hitting that sticker price -- about $15,000 cheaper than the company’s least expensive model today -- is seen as critical to deliver a true, mass-market product. Getting there means finding new savings on technology -- most critically the batteries that can make up a third of an EV’s cost -- without compromising safety. Alongside Musk, traditional automaking giants including Toyota Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG are pouring tens of billions of dollars into the race…The priciest component in each battery cell is the cathode, one of the two electrodes that store and release electricity. The materials needed in cathodes to pack in more energy are often expensive: metals like cobalt, nickel, lithium and manganese. They need to be mined, processed and converted into high-purity chemical compounds…At current rates and pack sizes, the average battery cost for a typical EV works out to about $6,300…But the industry average price of $137 per kilowatt hour (from about $1,191 in 2010) is still above the $100 threshold at which the cost should match a car with an internal-combustion engine. Costs aren’t expected to keep falling as quickly, and rising raw materials prices haven’t helped. Still, lithium-ion packs are on track to drop to $92 per kWh by 2024, according to BNEF forecasts, and $58 per kwh by 2030…One option is to substitute the metal with nickel, which is cheaper and holds more energy. Doing so requires safety adjustments, however, as cobalt’s advantage is that it doesn’t overheat or catch fire easily…Lithium-ion batteries, whether used in grid-sized storage facilities, cars or devices like smartphones, can catch fire if they’ve been manufactured poorly, damaged in an accident, or the software that runs them hasn’t been designed properly. Incidents remain rare, but garner huge scrutiny in what remains a developing sector…Asia dominates manufacturing of lithium-ion cells, accounting for more than 80% of existing capacity…Grid-storage systems or vehicles traveling short distances can use cheaper and less powerful cathode chemistry that combines lithium, iron and phosphate. For higher-performance vehicles, automakers favor more energy-dense materials, such as lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide or lithium-nickel-cobalt-aluminum oxide…China is responsible for about 80% of the chemical refining that converts lithium, cobalt and other raw materials into battery ingredients, though the metals themselves are largely mined in Australia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chile. China also dominates processing capacity across four key battery components (cathodes, anodes, electrolyte solutions and separators), with more than half of the world’s commissioned capacity for each, BNEF data shows.