Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future

by Ed Conway

This dominance may not be especially obvious on the surface, given many of the cars powered by Chinese batteries still carry American or European badges, but the deeper you delve under the surface the harder it is to escape. For not only do Chinese companies control about 80 per cent of battery production, they also control about 80 per cent of the manufacture of the materials that go into these batteries. This next rung in the battery production chain might seem somewhat trivial, but do not be fooled; after all, the most valuable component of a battery is not the engineering or the casing but the raw materials pasted in slurry form on to those cathodes and anodes.3 Turning lithium and graphite into chemicals pure enough to play the role of cathodes and anodes – perfect matrices in which lithium ions can nest – is such a complicated business that it represents an entire economic sector of its own.