The switch to electric cars might be helping wean us off our addiction to gasoline, but it’s replacing it with other ones that are in their way equally disastrous for the planet. EV batteries are built using minerals like cobalt and lithium, and the rapid growth in the EV market is putting a big strain on the supply of those minerals, which are not environmentally friendly to extract.
Now automakers, who have been scrambling to secure their own supplies of lithium, have been dealt a potential blow with the news that Chile is to nationalize its lithium industry. The South American country is the world’s second-largest producer of lithium and plans to transfer control of the industry from two existing firms, SQM and Albemarle, to a separate company owned by the state.
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