A Canadian company called Snow Lake Lithium has divulged plans to set up a new lithium hydroxide plant in southern Manitoba, which will supply enough processed material to power around 5 million EV batteries between 2025 and 2035.
Snow Lake Lithium’s proposed lithium processing plant will be located within CentrePort Canada, a trimodal inland port and Foreign Trade Zone that will eventually have a large train rail park connected to the Arctic Gateway railway. The company plans to establish a joint venture with an automotive OEM or an existing battery manufacturer to set up the facility, which will process raw lithium mined from the c company’s 55,000-acre mining site in the province.
“Over the coming months, Snow Lake Lithium will continue its engineering evaluation and drilling programme across its site, with the expectation that mining operations, will transition to commercial production targeted for 2025,” the company said in a prepared statement.
Canada is rich in resources needed to produce EV batteries, including lithium, nickel and cobalt, among more. As such, new companies are beginning to appear to help extract these resources as automakers scramble to set up their EV battery supply chains. For example, private mining company Pallinghurst Group has purchased the Whabouchi mine in Quebec, and recently received funding from the provincial government to get the site up and running. The company, which counts GM battery material supplier Livent among its investors, also plans to operate a lithium processing plant in Quebec.
In addition, GM recently entered a partnership with Korean chemicals company Posco to set up a new Cathode Active Material (CAM) processing plant in Quebec. GM is in talks with various raw materials suppliers to provide raw CAM for the facility.
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Comments
I don’t want to downplay this, but 5 million EV batteries over 10 years is only 500,000 EVs per year. That *might* cover most of Canada’s sales, but will that be large enough to scale up and keep costs low?
Answer to you question: no
Not even close, but the bigger constraint will be Nickel since they only plan on using NMC batteries from LG Chem. Even if current mines could increase production by 50% over the next 10 years, there still wont be enough nickel for all of the upcoming EVs. LFP is the future for batteries and GM is betting on the wrong horse with NMC.
Mining 55,000 acres doesn’t sound GREEN. Is this a mine shaft or strip mining? All the clear cutting of trees? Using diesel powered equipment? Transporting by diesel truck? What a joke.
5 Million Batteries or Five Million Packs?
A battery and a pack are the same. Both hold a group of chemical cells. Each cells generates a voltage according to its chemistry. So a battery is a group of cells (Ben Franklin coined that definition, as it resembled a battery of cannons) or a pack of cells that are mostly in series and parallel. The only true common household battery is the square 9 V size. The 1.5 V cylinders and 3 V coins are cells.
I understand what your saying. Are these batteries 5 million units that will be installed in 5 million vehicles or are they 5 million battery cells that make up a battery unit? The larger battery in the Tesla consists of thousands of battery cells.
Like many on here, I too have questions about the mining of the materials for the EV batteries and the overall effect it will have on the earth. I truly hope they are doing this the right way, with the climate in mind from the start to the end product. I just read a similar article on Ford Authority about some materials that Ford will be using in their batteries. It will be getting most of it from a mine in Canada. Of course, the few comments that were left about the article were crying about how these EV’s will kill the planet and we should just keep building, buying and driving ICE vehicles. No, we really can’t continue like we are because the earth can’t handle it. But that doesn’t mean that we just transfer the issues we have from ICE to EV’s.
This all must be done correctly and I just hope in 30 years we aren’t reading about the terrible effects this has all had on the earth. Let’s do this the right way, but sticking with burning fossil fuels isn’t the answer.
Nothing to worry about, the politicians are in charge.
I can see it now in about in about 25 years. GM ev’s on constraint: no ( fill in rare earth mineral here) for battery production.
GM will also change to the LFP chemistry, as will Ford and Tesla. It is safer, cheaper, and puncture resistant. It will not burn, and can be charged to 100% and discharged to 0% for thousands of cycles with no damage, so it lasts much more without swapping.
LFP chemistry also has less range..
Looks like the EV question has not been answered yet…. all comments here spark more questions.
If 500,000 batteries per year, then how GM will go all EV?
If the US and many other countries go EV mandated by 2035, how will a scenario of 500,000 batteries (Li ingredient only) would be enough to supply the US vehicle demand? Or the plan now is to have your purchased EV for 15 years and then wait in line for another 5 until there is one available.
We think this chip shortage thing is bad? wait for the EV Battery material shortage….
An yes, fossil fuels are not the answer to the future either. There has to be a transition cost as Dan B correctly says, but it has to be kept to a very minimum whether is EV, Hydrogen, Trolley driven vehicles, or else
A much better option than China or the Middle East. However, I am staying with ICE.
How much control with China have over all this. The Chinese Communists seem to be trying to control everything going into electric vehicles. GM should get out of China and build in North America.
So I take it that the picture of that beautiful, pristine lake and wooded area is Snow Lake. What a contradiction the whacked enviromentalist pro-electric enthusiasts pose here, for in order to get the raw materials for these battery materials and the plant that will build the cells & transport the finished product out means the destruction of everything we see in that remote, lovely picture.
This is not denying progress. We already have the combustion engine that is engineered to a degree of perfection never seen before. And our car companies in concert with our corrupted governments want to throw it all away. And let us not talk about how woefully unprepared North America is, in providing the electricity to charge these battery powered vehicles. It’s complete insanity.
And what has not been mentioned about batteries, they have to be charged with electricity to function. That means more powerplants to generate the needed power to charge the new battery powered vehicles. Windmills only generate power when the wind blows. Solar panels only generate power during the day. There will be the increased need for more power generation from fossil fuels.
And with more demand, the price for electricity will double or triple. Just look at California with high rates, and also forced to limit electricity on a frequent basis to the grid at night during the summer, telling people not to charge their battery powered cars.
Nuclear power is another option that does not pollute the air or cause global warming, but the greenies need to warm up to that.
Don’t sell to GM. They don’t deliver cars to Canada. Scattered few here and there. 3 to 5 months to order in the states. 25 months for same vehicle in Canada.