US faces hurdles in push to build electric vehicle supply chain

The United States faces stiff challenges as it moves to create its own electric vehicle supply chain, industry analysts say, with the extent of the country’s metal reserves largely unknown and only a few facilities to process minerals and produce batteries.

Legislation making its way through the US Congress aims to help offset those gaps, but China remains the global EV sector leader, a dominance seen by some as difficult to supplant.

“China has a huge head start,” said Gavin Montgomery, a battery and mining analyst at the Wood Mackenzie consultancy. “They’ve just been at this a lot longer than the rest of the world.”

US Senator Lisa Murkowski, chair of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, earlier this month introduced the American Mineral Security Act to help streamline regulation and permitting requirements for the development of mines for lithium, graphite and other EV minerals.

The bipartisan legislation, which seeks in part to codify a late 2017 executive order on US mineral development by President Donald Trump, gets its first hearing before Murkowski’s committee on Tuesday.

“We have an opportunity here to move ourselves from this position of vulnerability in terms of reliance on others for our minerals, our EV supply chain,” said Murkowski, an Alaska Republican.

But just how much cobalt and other minerals used to make EVs are actually in the United States is anyone’s guess, as the nation has conducted little by way of a national survey.

Current estimates from the US Geological Survey rely on corporate annual reports, historical data from the US Bureau of Mines and other sources, according to USGS spokesman Alex Demas.

Finding out the mineral composition of a particular region requires sending staff into the field to take rock samples, a timely and expensive endeavor. Murkowski’s legislation would require a nationwide reserve analysis for all minerals used to make EVs.