The planned switch to the electric car could be more difficult than anticipated in the coming years.

Because the demand for some important raw materials for batteries and electric motors will possibly exceed the available quantities in the coming years.

This is the result of internal calculations by the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (BMDV), which are available to the FAZ.

The ministry has addressed the question of what quantities of strategic raw materials are needed to produce the 15 million battery electric cars (BEV) that the Berlin governing coalition plans to drive on German roads by 2030.

So far, the number of battery-electric cars on German roads by the end of 2022 is only estimated at 1 million.

Corinna Budras

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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Tobias Piller

Editor in Business.

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In its calculations, the Ministry assumes that for an average electric car with a battery of 60 kWh and an electric motor with an output of 150 kW (204 hp) - the values ​​​​for the entry-level versions of the Volkswagen models ID3 and ID4 - 6 kilograms of lithium per vehicle and 8 kilograms of cobalt are required.

A requirement of 90,000 tons of lithium and 120,000 tons of cobalt is calculated for 15 million battery electric cars.

At first glance, these amounts seem manageable, with an annual international production volume of 105,000 tons of lithium and 165,000 tons of cobalt.

Combustion engine ban for EU from 2035

But the demand for e-cars and therefore also for raw materials is far greater than a glance at the needs of the German vehicle fleet would suggest.

The forecasts were raised sharply within just two years: The International Energy Agency IEA wrote in 2021 that if politics remained the same by 2030, around 130 million battery electric cars would be on the world's roads.

Meanwhile, the growth curve for the spread of BEVs in the world is becoming much steeper.

The analysts of Standard & Poor's Global Mobility, who are recognized in the automotive industry, now expect that after the international production of around 21 million battery-electric passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in the years 2010 to 2022, around 220 million of these BEVs will now be built in the next eight years to 2030 .

There have been many accelerators in the past two years for the international dynamic towards electric cars, says Henner Lehne from S&P Global Mobility: The EU has presented its program to reduce CO2 "Fit for 55" and decided to ban combustion engines from 2035.

The United States offered huge amounts of grants for the purchase of battery electric cars or the construction of battery factories.

After all, the car manufacturers have recently tried to outdo each other with announcements about the switch to electric cars.

Extraction of raw materials concentrated in a few countries

On the other hand, if the production of battery electric cars picks up speed, raw materials such as lithium and cobalt will become scarce.

If in 2022 46 percent of lithium production and 39 percent of world production of cobalt (each based on the production data for 2021) were still needed for the construction of 8 million BEVs, the current world production of these two raw materials would not even be sufficient in the next eight years, to cover the demand only for their e-cars.

Based on the current technology, the demand for the next eight years for the construction of battery-electric passenger cars and light commercial vehicles is 157 percent of the lithium world production in 2021, and that for cobalt is 133 percent of the world production in 2021.

"The strategic problem for long-term planning, however, is that there are many unknown factors in all calculations," says Henner Lehne from S&P Mobility.

The composition of the batteries could change, manufacturers could decide to put smaller batteries in their cars.

Recycling could also play a more important role.

On the other hand, it is not enough to talk about global raw material production.

The extraction of raw materials is concentrated in a few countries.

In the case of lithium, for example, 60 percent of the world market production is currently being refined in China, according to documents from the Ministry of Transport.

Around 73 percent of the world's cobalt production in 2021 was in the Congo, but only half of the mines there were certified with "at least basic occupational safety".