Self-driving cars will be electric Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of forecasting with LMC Automotive, said he does expect the push for autonomous vehicles to have an effect on EVs. He says it makes sense for driverless vehicles to be electric to manage computing power and refuel with little or no human intervention.
“That all means more demand for cobalt and the need to find additional sources of this rare chemical element,” Schuster wrote Automotive News in an email.
Lithium ion batteries will be the main driver behind increased cobalt demand, according to eCobalt, a producer of battery-grade cobalt salts. ECobalt expects a 68 percent increase in cobalt consumption between 2015 and 2025.
Schuster said additional sources of cobalt also may be valuable down the line because most of it is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has not been politically stable.