According to foreign media reports, Nissan plans to start using cobalt-free electric car batteries in the mid-1920s. The rare metal cobalt is in short supply and concerns about further price rises are growing as global demand for electric vehicles expands.
Nissan hopes to reduce the cost of electric vehicles without affecting the mileage of a single charge. Batteries account for 30% of electric vehicle manufacturing costs, about 20% of battery costs come from positive electrodes, and 20% of positive materials are made of cobalt, nickel and manganese.
Nissan said it planned to reduce the cobalt composition to about 10 per cent for the Aria electric car to be launched later this year. Nissan hopes to further increase the composition of nickel and improve the quality of negative electrodes when developing cobalt-free electric car batteries.
Nissan hopes to reduce the production cost of a single electric vehicle battery from the current $150 / kWh to $100 / kWh by 2030 and says the prospect of a cobalt-free battery by 2025 has been theoretically confirmed. In fact, cobalt-free batteries already exist, and the cathode material is replaced by lithium iron phosphate (LFP). However, these batteries do not provide long mileage and can only be used for short-range service.
Tesla and other carmakers are in a brutal race to develop emerging electric vehicle battery technology, and Nissan's competitors are trying to achieve the same goal. Tesla is working to reduce the composition of cobalt in the cathode to a few percentage, and finally achieve cobalt-free. Panasonic has reduced that ratio to less than 5 per cent and plans to produce cobalt-free positive electrodes in the coming years.
With the exception of Congo in Africa, cobalt is rarely found. But Congolese mines are at risk of political instability and have been condemned for the use of child labour.
As more countries introduce decarbonization policies, governments, manufacturers and consumers are expecting electric vehicles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is why the demand for cobalt has soared and the price of cobalt has soared. In 2020, a pound of cobalt is worth about $15. Earlier last month, the price of cobalt was about $25, up nearly 60 per cent from the start of the year.
In 2010, Nissan launched the world's first mass-produced electric car, the Leaf, which was once seen as a leader in the growing electric car market.
