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LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries can't go as far on a single charge as the nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries used by the majority of EVs, but they are less likely to catch fire, can handle more charge cycles without degrading, cost less to make, and (perhaps most importantly) are made with more commonly available materials and have a significantly lower environmental footprint.
The lower costs and reduced fire risk will also hopefully reduce barriers to EV adoption.
Tesla, plus French and German companies, all linked to massive nickel mining plans
A unique uncontacted tribe could be wiped out by a massive Indonesian project to produce nickel for electric car batteries.
A vast mining scheme on the island of Halmahera is part of Indonesia’s plan to become a major producer of electric car batteries – a plan into which Tesla and other companies are pouring billions of dollars.
But nickel mining is set to destroy vast areas of the forested interior of Halmahera. These forests are inhabited by 300-500 uncontacted members of the Hongana Manyawa tribe. If mining goes ahead as planned, they will not survive the destruction.
The Hongana Manyawa – which means ‘People of the Forest’ in their own language - are one of the last nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes in Indonesia.
They now face the threat of seeing their land, and everything they need to survive, destroyed by corporations rushing to provide a supposedly ‘sustainable’ lifestyle to people thousands of miles away.
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Why Can’t the U.S. Build 5-Minute E.V. Chargers? (New York Times)
Excerpt from this New York Times story:
China is dominating the electric vehicle market globally, accounting for more than 70 percent of global manufacturing in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency. Its E.V. makers have pulled ahead of U.S. car companies on both price and technology.
Case in point: the five-minute charger.
This past spring, two major Chinese companies announced breakthroughs in battery technology that will enable electric vehicles to drive hundreds of miles on a five-minute charge. After traveling to China to test drive new fast-charging cars sold by BYD, Patrick George, the editor in chief of InsideEVs, said Chinese models were “pretty much a generation or two ahead of the rest of the world.”
It’s easy to imagine how five-minute charging might transform U.S. drivers’ attitudes toward electric vehicles. Widely available power sources and a charge time roughly the same length as a stop to fill up a gas tank would go a long way to alleviate the range anxiety many cite as a hurdle to going electric.
But car buyers in the U.S. aren’t likely to get access to five-minute charging any time soon, analysts say. Here’s why.
BYD’s fast-charging system depends on two things: a vehicle capable of charging quickly, and a charger that can deliver power from the grid to match.
BYD, which is now the world’s largest producer of electric vehicles, has developed a battery that has a peak charging capacity of 1,000 kilowatts, also known as a megawatt. This peak rate can add enough charge in five minutes to drive for about 250 miles. Most E.V.s on the market in the U.S. can charge at peak rates of 400 kilowatts or less.
“This was a big leap, almost a tripling of others in the industry,” said Ryan Fisher, head of charging infrastructure at BloombergNEF, a research firm.
Fisher said that the car’s price point in China of around $37,000 was also far lower than those of new fast-charging cars marketed elsewhere. A Tesla Cybertruck sold in the U.S. starts at around $70,000.
While other automakers may eventually figure out how to build megawatt charging systems, it won’t happen overnight, Fisher said.
As we reported last week, Chinese companies have leaped ahead of the rest of the world in high-quality patents for many clean energy technologies, including batteries.
(Read more from our series on how China is beating the U.S. in the race to develop the energy of the future.)
Right now, very few Chinese-branded cars are sold in the U.S. because of prohibitively high tariffs that both President Trump and his predecessor have put on Chinese E.V.s and other products.
Good News From Israel
Israel's Good News Newsletter to 26th May 24
In the 26th May 24 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:
Israeli technology helps Irish doctors early-diagnose potentially fatal diseases.
Another female designer of Israeli missile defense systems.
200 Israeli hi-tech engineers donate their time to develop life-saving solutions.
An Israeli startup removes a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO2.
The first Israeli auto-industry company to set up a factory in India.
A world record is broken during an Israeli soccer match.
2000-year-old Jewish emblems discovered in a Palestinian-Arab village.
Read More: Good News From Israel
One of the traditional International ways to show respect to someone is to remove your hat on greeting them. So the expression "Hats off to Israel" is very appropriate for those who appreciate what Israel has contributed to the world.
In this week's Positive newsletter are reminders to the President of Ireland that Israeli technology is saving many lives in a Dublin hospital. The President of Brazil should note that an Israeli blood testing machine is early diagnosing fatal diseases in his country. And the President of Syria need only ask his Israeli neighbor to treat his wife with one of Israel's many remedies for Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
Meanwhile the UN, ICJ and ICC should bare their heads in shame, knowing that Israeli companies last week announced new treatments for liver cancer, electronic patches to kill bacteria infections, electromagnetic brain rehabilitation after strokes, implants to repair the spine, and remote medical diagnostics in thousands of schools.
Then there are the Israeli innovations for ultra-fast charging of electric vehicles, real-time CCTV security systems, lab alternatives to overfishing, and the removal of a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide.
The photo (TY Sharon) shows the respect to Israel given by the many International military officers who attended the Diplomatic reception at the Jerusalem residence of the President of Israel on Israel's Independence Day. Their message was certainly "Hats Off" to Israel!
What exactly is cobalt, and what are the health risks for those who work in the Democratic Republic of Congo's cobalt mining industry?
Children still mining cobalt for gadget batteries in Congo
A CBS News investigation of child labor in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo has revealed that tens of thousands of children are growing up without a childhood today – two years after a damning Amnesty report about human rights abuses in the cobalt trade was published. The Amnesty report first revealed that cobalt mined by children was ending up in products from prominent tech companies including Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Samsung.
There's such sensitivity around cobalt mining in the DRC that a CBS News team traveling there recently was stopped every few hundred feet while moving along dirt roads and seeing children digging for cobalt. From as young as 4 years old, children can pick cobalt out of a pile, and even those too young to work spend much of the day breathing in toxic fumes.
What's life like for kids mining cobalt for our gadgets?
So, what exactly is cobalt, and what are the health risks for those who work in the DRC's cobalt mining industry?
What is cobalt?
Cobalt – a naturally occurring element – is a critical component in lithium-ion, rechargeable batteries. In recent years, the growing global market for portable electronic devices and rechargeable batteries has fueled demand for its extraction, Amnesty said in its 2016 report. In fact, many top electronic and electric vehicle companies need cobalt to help power their products.
The element is found in other products as well.
"Cobalt-containing products include corrosion and heat-resistant alloys, hard metal (cobalt-tungsten-carbide alloy), magnets, grinding and cutting tools, pigments, paints, colored glass, surgical implants, catalysts, batteries, and cobalt-coated metal (from electroplating)," says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than half of the world's supply of cobalt comes from the DRC, and 20 percent of that is mined by hand, according to Darton Commodities Ltd., a London-based research company that specializes in cobalt.
Health risks of chronic exposure
According to the CDC, "chronic exposure to cobalt-containing hard metal (dust or fume) can result in a serious lung disease called 'hard metal lung disease'" – a kind of pneumoconiosis, meaning a lung disease caused by inhaling dust particles. Inhalation of cobalt particles can cause respiratory sensitization, asthma, decreased pulmonary function and shortness of breath, the CDC says.
The health agency says skin contact is also a significant health concern "because dermal exposures to hard metal and cobalt salts can result in significant systemic uptake."
"Sustained exposures can cause skin sensitization, which may result in eruptions of contact dermatitis," a red, itchy skin rash, the CDC says.
Despite the health risks, researchers with Amnesty International found that most cobalt miners in Congo lack basic protective equipment like face masks, work clothing and gloves. Many of the miners the organization spoke with for its 2016 report – 90 people in total who work, or worked, in the mines – complained of frequent coughing or lung problems. Cobalt mining's dangerous impact on workers and the environment
Some women complained about the physical nature of the work, with one describing hauling 110-pound sacks of cobalt ore. "We all have problems with our lungs, and pain all over our bodies," the woman said, according to Amnesty.
Moreover, miners said unsupported mining tunnels frequently give way, and that accidents are common.
Miners know their work is dangerous, Todd C. Frankel wrote late last month in The Washington Post.
"But what's less understood are the environmental health risks posed by the extensive mining," he reported. "Southern Congo holds not only vast deposits of cobalt and copper but also uranium. Scientists have recorded alarming radioactivity levels in some mining regions. Mining waste often pollutes rivers and drinking water. The dust from the pulverized rock is known to cause breathing problems. The mining industry's toxic fallout is only now being studied by researchers, mostly in Lubumbashi, the country's mining capital."
"These job are really desired"
Despite the dangers and risks of working as miners in the cobalt industry, at least of the some miners in the Congo "love their jobs," according to Frankel.
"When I talked to the miners there, none of them want to lose their jobs or give up their jobs. They love their jobs," Frankel said Tuesday, speaking on CBSN. "In a country like Congo, mining is one of the few decently paying jobs to be had there, and so they want to hold onto these jobs."
They also want fair treatment, decent pay, and some safety, "and they would love for their kids to not work in the mines," he said.
"It's a poverty problem," Frankel said. "These parents I talked to – they don't want their kids working in these mines. The problem is that their school fees – schools cost money, and you know, food costs money, and they sort of need their kids to work in there."
Poverty also drives children into the mines instead of school – an estimated 40,000 of them work in brutal conditions starting at very young ages.
The thousands of miners who work in tunnels searching for cobalt in the country "do it because they live in one of the poorest countries in the world, and cobalt is valuable," Frankel wrote in the Washington Post article.
"Not doing enough"
CBS News spoke with some of the companies that use cobalt in their lithium-ion batteries. All of the companies acknowledged problems with the supply chain, but said they require suppliers to follow responsible sourcing guidelines. Apple, an industry leader in the fight for responsible sourcing, said walking away from the DRC "would do nothing to improve conditions for the people or the environment."
Read company responses here
Amnesty said in November, however, that "major electronics and electric vehicle companies are still not doing enough to stop human rights abuses entering their cobalt supply chains."
"As demand for rechargeable batteries grows, companies have a responsibility to prove that they are not profiting from the misery of miners working in terrible conditions in the DRC," the organization said. "The energy solutions of the future must not be built on human rights abuses."
An estimated two-thirds of children in the region of the DRC that CBS News visited recently are not in school. They're working in mines instead.
CBS News' Debora Patta spoke with an 11-year-old boy, Ziki Swaze, who has no idea how to read or write but is an expert in washing cobalt. Every evening, he returns home with a dollar or two to provide for his family.
"I have to go and work there," he told Patta, "because my grandma has a bad leg and she can't."
He said he dreams of going to school, but has always had to work instead.
"I feel very bad because I can see my friends going to school, and I am struggling," he said.
Amnesty says "it is widely recognized internationally that the involvement of children in mining constitutes one of the worst forms of child labour, which governments are required to prohibit and eliminate."
"We’re at a point where we really can scale this.”
About 30 pounds of cobalt go into each EV battery to boost performance and energy storage, which are key to luring consumers from dirtier gas cars. But today 70% of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where an estimated 40,000 children as young as 6 work in dangerous mines. The mines also bring deforestation, habitat fragmentation and high carbon emissions from mining and refinery processes that rely heavily on fossil fuels to produce electricity and drive heavy machinery. Some sources say cobalt mining’s CO2 emissions could double by 2030.
Tim Lyndon, ‘The EV Revolution Brings Environmental Uncertainty at Every Turn’, EcoWatch
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