This is why I am long on Nouveau Monde Graphite GM going full electric by 2035.
GM produces over 2 million vehicles a year just for North America. The amount of graphite use today in a typical EV car is something like 75 kg.
That means just for GM production they would need something like 2 million X (75 kg) = 150 million kg which is about 166,000 tons (150,000 metric tonnes) of purified spherical graphite a year just for GM’s needs.
Very likely Ford will do the same, Tesla also selling 300-400 thousand vehicles a year and growing. The demand for purified spherical graphite will be way more than whatever today’s needs are.
“Apart from lithium, there is one material that is currently a fundamental part of all lithium-ion batteries, regardless of cathode chemistry: graphite. Graphite is a strangely unnoticed piece of the lithium-ion battery; it is the weightiest constituent of most installations. (See linked article below)
The Tesla Model S contains up to 85 kg of graphite, while grid storage solutions need much more.”
“Demand (for graphite) is expected to grow from 165,000 tonnes in 2018 to almost 1 million tonnes by 2030.” (See linked article below)
“Many natural graphite producers are looking to move downstream to produce higher-purity products like coated spherical graphite, which could rival synthetic’s energy densities and can compete on performance in the battery anode materials sector. (NOU is doing this and will be preferred source as NOU will be a carbon neutral producer)
The trend of natural graphite miners’ integrating value-adding processes into their business model may reduce the reliance on synthetic in the battery sector.” (See linked article below)
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/graphite-the-biggest-threat-to-batteries-green-reputation#:~:text=Graphite%20is%20a%20strangely%20unnoticed,storage%20solutions%20need%20much%20more.