Metals markets remain fundamentally in the "supercycle" identified in recent years despite the current global economic slowdown and fallback in prices, with demand for a wide range of metals to continue being driven by what is an "irreversible" global energy transition, according to Benedikt Sobotka, CEO of diversified miner Eurasian Resources Group…"The fundamental supercycle in metals is very much intact: renewables are metals-intensive," Sobotka told S&P Global Commodity Insights in an interview. "Particularly in Europe the current energy crisis is only going to accelerate the energy transition: billions of dollars are being invested in wind and solar, while nuclear is being revived in some areas. This means millions of tons of steel, aluminium, rare earths and battery metals: and copper is needed when we use the internet."…Electrification targets worldwide are often politically driven and do play a role in the mining industry's development, according to Sobotka. "But they haven't been discussed with us miners and will be very challenging because of the quantities of materials needed. In relative terms, mining is a small industry with small budgets – all mining companies together are worth less than Apple. To meet the demand for material the industry will need to grow incredibly fast, in increasingly complicated geographies with ESG and licensing regulations that are becoming more stringent."..Cobalt markets should be broadly in balance in 2023, after an expected surplus this year of between 6,000 and 7,000 mt following weak Chinese buying earlier in the year, and a deficit in 2021, said Sobotka. The total market for the product used increasingly in electric vehicle batteries is put at around 180,000 mt in 2022, with mechanized artisanal mining a swing supplier…"2022 has not been a good year for electronics," the ERG CEO said. "However, there's a lot of pent-up demand for EVs: we see about 25% growth for cobalt in EVs this year."…China's Strategic Reserves Board is meanwhile "rumored to be buying material: the Chinese market is preparing a very strong recovery in 2023," Sobotka said…ERG's Metalkol, which recycles copper and cobalt tailings left by previous mining operators in the DRC's Kolwezi region, supported by the company's Boss Mining processing plant, will produce some 25,000 mt of cobalt this year, based mainly on hydropower, and sold mostly to Chinese refineries. Another 3,500 mt/year production capacity will be added in a phase three development underway.

Volkswagen announced on Monday a $2.9 billion battery parts joint venture with Belgian materials firm Umicore, becoming the latest European automaker to bring battery supplies closer to home in the shift towards electric vehicles…While raw materials - among them lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese - will still be largely sourced from across the world, cathode production for batteries will take place in Europe under the joint venture, most likely at Umicore's Poland plant…The venture - between Umicore and Volkswagen's battery unit PowerCo - also plan to collaborate on recycling metals from battery materials, the firms said, without giving a timeframe…Europe's automakers are scrambling to secure stakes in the growing number of plants on the continent turning raw materials into batteries as political pressure grows to bring the supply chain, currently dominated by Asian players, closer to home…Under the 3 billion euro ($2.9 billion) joint venture, which the companies flagged in December, Umicore will produce enough battery precursor and cathode material for 160 gigawatt hours (GWh) of battery capacity - enough for 2.2 million vehicles…It will start with material for 40 GWh of capacity by 2026 at Volkswagen's first battery plant in Salzgitter, Germany. The carmaker plans to build six battery factories in Europe totalling 240 GWh of capacity by 2030…The companies also agreed that Umicore would refine cathode material for the first 60 GWh of capacity.

For those with their hearts set on buying an electric car, here’s the critical math: Somewhere around one quarter of US drivers want one, but just 4% of the vehicles coming out of American factories fit the bill…North American factories stamped out 7.4 million cars and trucks in the first half of this year, but only 323,000 of them were battery-powered, according to BloombergNEF and market forecaster LMC Automotive. That calculus is contributing to the dearth of affordable electric options, and means it will likely be years before everyone in the US with EV dreams is able to realize them…Car companies say they need to keep selling internal-combustion vehicles to fund the R&D necessary for the EV transition. Many are also rushing to simultaneously secure battery supplies, add EV assembly lines and hit ambitious deadlines for sunsetting their gas-powered machines…Some of the world’s largest car companies — including Honda, Stellantis and Toyota — have yet to produce an American EV, while Tesla accounted for more than three-quarters of the electric cars manufactured in North America in the first half of this year…With the advent of electric startups like Rivian, Gersch says the situation for auto incumbents is not unlike Blockbuster Video launching a movie-by-mail service only after Netflix had amassed more than 1 million subscribers…The electric cars are coming, though: LMC expects North America to nearly quadruple EV production by 2025. Ford is hustling to spin up three battery factories and two assembly plants in the Southeastern US, with the hope of being able to build 600,000 EVs annually sometime next year and 2 million a year by 2026. Stellantis is planning on half its US sales being electric by 2030. General Motors, meanwhile, just opened a critical battery plant this month in Ohio, and booked an order from Hertz for 175,000 battery-powered rigs. 

Ford Motor Co. has begun construction of its $5.6 billion electric-vehicle manufacturing complex in western Tennessee, the largest factory project in the automaker’s 119-year history…The site, known as BlueOval City, stretches across six square miles and is three times the size of the historic Rouge complex that Henry Ford built in Michigan a century ago to make Model Ts. By 2025, BlueOval City is expected to teem with 6,000 workers building electric pickup trucks and the batteries that power them in a joint venture with South Korean battery partner SK Innovation. The companies also are building two battery factories in Kentucky that will employ another 5,000 workers, advancing Ford Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley’s goal to build 2 million EVs annually by the end of 2026. The carmaker is spending $50 billion on EVs through 2026, and Farley expects more than half the company’s sales to be battery-powered vehicles by 2030. Last year, Ford sold 27,140 EVs in the US…So far, Ford offers only three EV models: the Mustang Mach-E crossover, F-150 Lightning pickup and E-Transit commercial van.

Carmaker Stellantis and Uber announced a partnership along with the company Free2Move to focus on the French electric vehicles market. The companies said in a joint presentation on Tuesday that Free2Move would help Uber in Uber's plans to convert 50% of its fleet of vehicles in France over to electric models.