Chinese carmaker BYD wants to buy lithium mines in Africa
Even in the electric car giant BYD, in which Warren Buffett has invested, he is trying to secure the direct sources of the scarce and precious lithium. Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD is in talks to purchase six lithium mines in Africa , Reuters reported Tuesday. The news agency said it could not directly verify the news, which comes from The Paper newspaper, supported by the Chinese government.
Investment expert Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway owns a large stake in BYD, one of the not many investments in the sector made by the elderly billionaire
The news, although not yet confirmed, would make perfect sense given that BYD not only produces cars, but also batteries that use lithium, with current technology, whose prices on the international market have been extremely variable.
The scarcity of lithium supply relative to demand has caused the price of the metal to rise, resulting in higher production costs for electric vehicle manufacturers, who purchase batteries from suppliers or produce them in-house.
Electric vehicle and lithium-ion battery manufacturers fear that a lithium shortage will limit their long-term production plans, many of which are ambitious. If the basic element of the batteries is not found, all their development plans are useless. This brings us back to a policy of vertical integration, directly from the production mines which, in many ways, is reminiscent of Ford's tactics of the early decades of the twentieth century, when materials were scarce and development also meant integrating mines, as it did at the time. the Ford. Then when raw materials were less scarce and competitive factors began to diversify, then the vertically integrated structure became a burden and not an advantage and was demolished.
Now in the electric car we are in a phase equivalent to the early twentieth century for the internal combustion engine.
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The article The Chinese car manufacturer BYD wants to buy lithium mines in Africa comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-casa-dauto-cinese-byd-vuole-comprare-le-miniere-di-litio-in-africa/ on Sun, 05 Jun 2022 06:00:28 +0000.