EV Battery Minerals: The Critical Materials Powering Electric Vehicles

The electric vehicle revolution is fundamentally a materials revolution. While public attention focuses on vehicle design, charging infrastructure, and software, the physical backbone of every EV is its battery pack, a dense assembly of electrochemical cells that collectively weigh between 400 and 700 kilograms in a typical passenger vehicle. Those cells are built from refined minerals whose supply chains stretch across multiple continents and through processing bottlenecks that remain dangerously concentrated.

A single EV battery pack may contain 8 to 12 kilograms of lithium, 10 to 30 kilograms of cobalt, 30 to 60 kilograms of nickel, 20 to 40 kilograms of manganese, and 50 to 100 kilograms of graphite, along with significant quantities of copper, aluminum, and phosphorus depending on the cell chemistry. Multiply those figures by the tens of millions of EVs expected to be sold annually by 2030, and the mineral demand curves become staggering.

The International Energy Agency has projected that lithium demand from batteries alone could grow by over 40 times between 2020 and 2040 under a net-zero scenario. Nickel demand from batteries could increase eightfold, cobalt sixfold, and graphite 25-fold over the same period. These projections have made EV battery minerals the most closely watched segment of the global critical minerals landscape.

This section examines the minerals, chemistries, and supply chain dynamics that define the EV battery space. From the geological origins of key battery metals to the geopolitical risks that threaten their availability, the pages below provide a comprehensive foundation for understanding the mineral underpinnings of vehicle electrification.