A battery supply chain that excludes China looks impossible
Green industrial policy and hawkish security policies are clashing
“I’d like to get all the gas emissions off the highways of the world,” said John Goodenough, one of the Nobel-prize winning scientists who developed the lithium-ion battery four decades ago, during an interview in 2018. Goodenough died on June 25th before his dream could become reality. But governments around the world are scrambling to make it so, with remarkable results. Global sales of electric cars quintupled between 2019 and 2022, surpassing 10m units last year.
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This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Asia’s battery battlefield”
From the July 22nd 2023 edition
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