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As the auto industry scrambles to produce more affordable electric vehicles<\/a>, whose most expensive components are the batteries, lithium iron phosphate is gaining traction as the EV battery material of choice.<\/p>\n The popularity of the chemical compound known as LFP is due partly to environmental and geopolitical concerns. But technological advances have also reduced the performance gap with more widely used materials such as nickel and cobalt.<\/p>\n LFP, embraced by EV industry leader Tesla<\/a> two years ago, has sparked new interest especially in the US, where a clutch of domestic and overseas manufacturers has pledged more than $11 billion (nearly Rs. 90,200 crore) in new production facilities.<\/p>\n Overseas, two of the world’s largest automakers, Toyota Motor<\/a> and Hyundai Motor<\/a>, have both announced plans in the past week to equip their future vehicles with LFP batteries, but have not disclosed plans for the US.<\/p>\n \u201cLFP is less expensive than cobalt and nickel, and all the minerals can be obtained here in North America (which means) much lower transportation costs and a more secure supply chain,\u201d said Stanley Whittingham, professor at Binghamton University in New York and a 2019 Nobel laureate for his work on lithium ion batteries.<\/p>\n The addition of manganese, a staple ingredient in rival nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) battery cells, has enabled lithium iron phosphate cells to hold more energy than previously, providing EVs with more range \u2014 up to 450 miles (724 km) on a single charge, Toyota said recently.<\/p>\n Michigan-based Our Next Energy, which is building a $1.6 billion (nearly Rs. 13,100 crore) battery manufacturing complex in Van Buren Township, is a proponent of LFP, according to founder and chief executive Mujeeb Ijaz, because \u201cthe materials are more abundant and sustainable, with far less risk\u201d of fire.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve also demonstrated that you can match the range of cobalt cells with no compromise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Tesla is among the automakers leading the quest in markets outside of China to provide lower-priced EVs \u2014 in Tesla’s case, targeting a base price of around $25,000 (nearly Rs. 20 lakh). The use of LFP batteries should help Tesla and rivals to achieve that goal, experts say.<\/p>\n Ford Motor<\/a> aims to open a $3.5 billion (nearly Rs. 28,700 crore) LFP cell manufacturing plant in western Michigan, leveraging technology licensed from China’s CATL, the world’s largest EV battery maker. The goal, Ford CEO Jim Farley said in February, is to lower the automaker’s cell costs to less than $70 (nearly Rs. 5,800 crore) a kilowatt-hour, from more than $100 (nearly Rs. 8,000)\/kWh for current NCM cells.<\/p>\n More than 90 percent of LFP materials and components still come from China, said battery expert Shirley Meng, a University of Chicago professor and head of Argonne National Laboratory’s Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science.<\/p>\n The rapidly increasing adoption of LFP by EV manufacturers including Tesla and Hyundai suggests those companies \u201care not ready to decouple from China,” Meng said.\u00a0<\/p>\n ‘Attractive proposition’<\/strong><\/p>\n Battery expert Lukasz Bednarski, author of\u00a0the 2021 book \u201cLithium: The Global Race for Battery Dominance and the New Energy Revolution,\u201d believes automakers’ interest in building lower-priced EVs could be one of the drivers behind LFP’s rising popularity.<\/p>\n \u201cLFP provides good enough performance at a lower cost, which makes it an attractive proposition for EVs for the middle class,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Bednarski added that the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides incentives \u201cfor the development of the whole battery chain (with no) preference for LFP chemistry.\u201d<\/p>\n Rising investment in LFP manufacturing facilities in the United States is coming not just from domestic companies like Ford and ONE.<\/p>\n Battery makers from Norway, Israel, South Korea and even China have committed to building US facilities to produce LFP materials, components and batteries, some of which will be used not in vehicles, but in large energy storage systems.<\/p>\n \u201cLFP was invented in the US and first commercialised here,\u201d said Whittingham. He said this happened before Chinese companies such as BYD and CATL \u201cmoved fast\u201d to improve and deploy the technology, mainly in EVs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, given its continued cost advantage over NCM, he added, LFP \u201cshould be used in all grid storage systems and lower-cost cars.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2023<\/em><\/p>\nApple unveiled its first mixed reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro, at its annual developer conference, along with new Mac models and upcoming software updates. We discuss all the most important announcements made by the company at WWDC 2023 on Orbital<\/a>, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify<\/a>, Gaana<\/a>, JioSaavn<\/a>, Google Podcasts<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Amazon Music<\/a> and wherever you get your podcasts.<\/em>