“BMW will purchase cobalt and lithium itself and supply it to battery cell manufacturers”
BMW says it will purchase the cobalt and lithium for the batteries for its EVs from various mines. The company says it is doing so for reasons of transparency. The manufacturer will supply the metals to battery cell manufacturers with which it has recently concluded supply deals.
BMW says it will source raw cobalt for battery cell production directly from mines in Australia and Morocco and make it available to producers CATL and Samsung SDI. The German car company will do the same for lithium, including lithium from Australian mines. It is likely that BMW will also obtain some of the necessary lithium from the brine from salt lakes in the Andes Mountains, as that is also an important source of lithium.
Congo-Kinshasa is missing from the list of cobalt sources mentioned. BMW probably deliberately did not mention that country. This African country is by far the largest contributor to global cobalt production, but the Democratic Republic of Congo is not just about industrial mines. There are also quite a few unsupervised artisanal mines where the copper needed for the cobalt is extracted in a way that is not only dangerous for the miners, but also bad for the environment.
The BMW Group says it will switch to direct sourcing of cobalt and lithium in order to be completely transparent about where the raw materials for the batteries needed for its cars come from. The company says environmental standards and respect for human rights are top priorities. BMW states that the fifth generation of the electric powertrains for its electric cars will also be produced entirely without the use of rare earths from 2021.
BMW makes the report about the purchase of lithium and cobalt with its own hands in the context of deals that the company has concluded with the Chinese CATL and Samsung SDI. BMW has signed an agreement with CATL worth a total of €7.3 billion for the supply of battery cells, and a similar deal of €2.9 billion has been signed with Samsung SDI. In the longer term, this should ensure the availability of sufficient battery cells for its electric cars.