Spain begins to build its first factories of lithium battery cells and from 2022 it will start the extraction of lithium. This will reduce dependencies on the Asian market and gradually reduce the costs of cars with lithium batteries.
The electric car not only raises the problem of autonomy –that every time is smaller- and the challenge of infrastructure of high-speed chargers. Also that of high price of BEV vehicles. That not only has to do with the high costs of lithium-ion batteries, but also with the strong investment in new technologies, starting with the modular platforms on which these new vehicles are based.
Regarding the lithium-ion batteries themselves, which are the ones used by electric cars –and also most hybrids and plug-in hybrids-, although Spain is a key player in the automotive industry in Europe, European manufacturers have a worrying dependence on Asia. This is where the bulk of the lithium mining market is, as well as the bulk of the lithium mining market. cell manufacturing for electric car batteries. Although here they are assembled some of the batteries.
Spain should be a manufacturer of electric car batteries for the good of Europe
On Spain They have factories of cars Renault, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Ford, the Volkswagen Group and the PSA Group. Spain is a major exporter of vehicles for the entire European market and there are more and more electric cars that are manufactured in our country. However, our industry continues to have a worrying dependence from Asia to supply the battery cells used by these new vehicles.
If the lithium extraction and its use for the manufacture of cells it’s already expensive, obviously the final price of batteries, and the final price of this type of car, are also affected by the transport costs. And now that we are in the middle of the so-called ‘semiconductor crisis’ It has become more apparent than ever that the concept of globalization is fine, but mismatches exist and reducing dependencies would not hurt.
It is a whole context that shows that Spain should manufacture batteries for electric cars. Not only in the interest of the entire automotive market at European level, for being an important vehicle production point for the entire Old Continent. Also because this could reduce dependencies, reduce costs and help accelerate the roll-out of the electric car in Europe.
Good news: Spain will extract lithium and manufacture batteries for electric cars
Over the past few years there have been many proposals around the extraction of lithium in Spain, but these projects have not managed to come to fruition for various reasons. At year 2018, the company Lithium Iberia began to investigate in Extremadura about the possibility of extract lithium. Indeed, there is a vein of interest there, according to their studies, and since then they have been submitting documentation to have an exploitation concession.
Lithium Iberia expects to have this exploitation concession available throughout the next year 2022 and that, in this way, since 2023 operations can begin in Spain. This would mean that in less than two years Spain will already be exploiting a lithium mine that will serve to supply its own factory of batteries for electric cars.
In parallel, the company Phi4Tech has also projected in the logistics platform of Badajoz a lithium battery cell factory for which it expects to receive the corresponding license around the first quarter of the year 2022. If the project progresses as expected, as of June 2022, the works would begin so that since 2023 the first cells begin to emerge from there.
With these two projects, Spain would finally have a lithium extraction center and a lithium battery cell production plant. In the different car production plants, which we mentioned earlier and which are spread throughout the Spanish geography, car brands have already installed battery assembly centers for electric cars. So this is the missing link to make the automotive industry in Spain stronger at the European level.