The Ukrainian crisis shows that the fake news about « rare metals » was only a set-up created to blind the neophytes. Indeed, in this crisis of economic warfare through sanctions, all metals are becoming strategic, and fears of shortage are focused on the « big metals » (Aluminum, Nickel, Copper, …) and not on the « small metals » that cannot be found.
In Geopoweb 21/06/2021
In this very stimulating article, Didier Julienne (1) uses multiple examples to deconstruct the infox on « rare metals and rare earths ». This infox, while developing a war mythology, prohibits the construction and renewal of a natural resources doctrine for consumer and producer countries. In the geopolitical and environmental context that we know, Economic Intelligence is essential, not only to reveal the logic of power, but also and above all to promote transitions towards an electric model, by going beyond purely populist readings of the issues. Appealing to the « natural laws » of scarcity has led to the abandonment of sovereignty in our mining doctrines. This is an urgent necessity to go beyond the simple discourse on the European energy transition.
After long periods immersed in industry and metal trading, I wrote in 2009 that offensive economic intelligence was created by commodity trading. I thought so and still think so, as it is consubstantial with the production and trading of natural resources. We need only refer to the Roman speculators on Egyptian wheat, to the Venetian importers of Asian spices, to the Dutch of the East India Company, to the Japanese rice growers of the Tokougawa era and its first world futures market, to the French merchants, to the English merchants… All of them practiced economic intelligence, because the exploitation of privileged information was not a crime when they decided to sow land with such and such seeds, to search for and produce such and such metals or to take a position on palladium, wheat or oil.
Copied from the Athenian clerestories, the states of the XVII to XX centuries developed their economies with the help of the raw materials of their colonies. In the XXI century each one is independent and our modern states are obliged to include their natural resources Doctrines in a new Great Game.
STRATEGIES OF POWER AND INFLUENCE
In this Great Game, the national Natural Resources Doctrines of the producer or consumer States were elaborated and then collaborated or confronted. Nowadays, each of them has a very long term trajectory and has sometimes become an intergenerational Strategic Solidarity, which the governments and administrations that succeed one another at the head of the countries rarely touch, because they shape the particular relationship between the population and its concept of nation.
Here, the producer countries exercise a power strategy over their soils or subsoils, and this resource nationalism can be favorable or unfavorable to the consumer countries. Here, depending on whether they are granted or denied privileged access to these raw materials, the latter exercise strategies of influence to obtain supplies from the producing countries, while also engaging in circular economy logics via recycling and more resource-efficient consumption.
The geopolitical balance of power between these countries rarely unilaterally favors the Doctrines of consumers or producers. On the contrary, the former gain privileged geopolitical access to resources and the latter benefit from the influence of consumer countries, in particular to develop their infrastructures or industries. This influence takes the form of transfers of knowledge and skills, the structuring of industrial sectors and production capacities, and job creation.
These strategies of power and influence are all the more essential to many States and industrial sectors post COP21 and post Covid-19 as the shift in the energy transition moves us from a dependence on hydrocarbons to a dependence on the metals needed to generate, transport, store and consume electricity in generators, connectors, battery chargers, accumulators and finally motors.
WHAT ARE THESE METALS?
The tools of a national doctrine of natural resources have been amply used for the production and consumption of an abundant metal: it has been sought and discovered by a dynamic industrial fabric and an inventive diplomacy. Then a range of technologies proved opportune to extract it from the ground, to refine it, and thanks to eco-design, to consume it in decreasing unit quantities and increasing uses; finally it is recycled.
But this abundant material can become sensitive if one of the previous steps fails.
A material will be critical if there is a high risk of a deficit without a scientific breakthrough opening the way to substitutions. But it will be critical in one industry but not in another, in one country but not in another, and this changes over time depending on the market fundamentals of that metal. The prudent consumer with a long memory will regularly question these metals and the balance between real supply and industrial demand; otherwise the danger is to freeze the critical or abundant character without giving it a temporal dynamic.
Moreover, if this metal is a by-product of a major metal, it is essential to observe the balance of the latter.
Finally, a strategic material is not based on geological or market criteria. It is a resource that is essential to the regalian missions of the State, to national defense or to the essential political ambitions of a consumer or producer country.
This classification of metals and minerals does not include the infox of « rare metals ». They do not exist.
COMPETITIVE CONSUMPTION
If these last two notions, critical and strategic, merge, some minds imagine that wars will be waged over the tensions created around these metals that have become unobtainable; they look for insights in past models of the Great Energy Game, in particular the one we have known for oil and/or natural gas for a century. The latter has most often adopted paradigms such as the Cold War, sometimes leading to real conflicts. However, this paradigm does not apply in metals or in modern agriculture. Modern history indicates that our metal world is not so warlike that a modern state invades its neighbor with its army and starts a high-intensity war such as the first Gulf War.
Moreover, when this fusion between critical and strategic metal occurs, it leads to competitive consumption, i.e. a competition between different critical consumptions of this metal. The producer will favor the user closest to its own strategic objectives: in the first place, its national industry. However, this situation can only be ephemeral: such a metal may not have been sufficiently sought after in the earth’s crust, or it may be ecologically over-consumed, or even evolving from the stage of a marginal metal to that of a mature metal; these situations will generally be those of narrow metal markets, temporarily poorly managed, and which will quickly fall back into line.
Let us illustrate this reading grid by a country that has not yet reached the 50% urban population rate and that has decided as a strategic objective to increase it to 70-80%. Let’s put ourselves in his shoes for a moment when he has to manage 8-10% annual growth. He decides to build vertical cities and suburbs rather than horizontal ones, otherwise how can he feed his population in a sustainable way if he encroaches on the cultivable land near the cities? Then he looks at the materials he has at home; he evaluates what his neighbors will agree to sell him or exchange, while building up strategic stocks when the price of materials collapses, as in 2008.
Then it finds out about the state of the markets and quickly realizes that feeding its population will remain a problem; that it is competing to become the leading consumer of industrial and construction metals; that it is already almost the leading consumer of fossil fuels, self-sufficient in one highly polluting source, but not in the others; that it will come up against the COP negotiations, including the one in Paris, and that it will therefore be very tempted by electric mobility, uranium, renewable energy and hydrogen; that it wants to be able to freely import lithium, nickel, soya, pork, wheat, cobalt, gas, lanthanides, iron ore… and continue to export its production of goods and services. Ultimately, the stability of the country must be preserved at all costs during this great change, because it risks implosion without its single political party, and the latter’s main enemy is inflation.
The problem is that it is not alone in this race, other countries have shared the same need for raw materials, the same strategic vision and the analysis of some fundamentals:
– The national natural resources of subsistence allow self-sufficiency, we consider them secondary, but other countries envy them, because in their country they are insufficient, are we safe? Moreover, our intensive agricultural model is challenged by bio and biotech, which will be essential to increase agricultural production while decarbonizing it. Suddenly, while an important agricultural producing country is in disarray, our neighbors appoint national raw material coordinators without warning us and they rent agricultural land in Africa.
– Our fisheries resources are not yet surveyed and foreign ships are already depleting them.
– The energy transition transforms our dependence on hydrocarbons into a dependence on metals
– For state reasons, producing countries protect the access to their iron, nickel and copper mines and mineral traders are suddenly imprisoned. On the other hand, other countries are inviting consumer countries to invest at the foot of the mines in consumer industries such as steel and batteries.
– A partner turns into a hostile country. We are dependent on its exports of materials for our defense economy.
– Geologists inform us that the discoveries of large mineral deposits near us are over, the richest and easiest ones are already known, exploited, or even exhausted, and everywhere mining production costs have soared because the next deposits the materials will be geographically distant from the large consumption centers and geologically poorer. Conversely, consumer countries have deposits of raw materials that are essential to the energy transition, but ESG standards prohibit their exploitation.
– Our strategic stocks of raw materials are high, but price inflation is driving them onto the market. When and how will we be able to replenish them?
– Fake news about raw materials, especially « rare metals », has taken over the minds of politicians and is leading countries into a dead end.
Everyone will recognize that China has recently surpassed the known processes of offensive economic intelligence of raw materials. It has developed its economy through its own resources, coal, mining and agriculture. The whole process has taken the form of centralization of supplies, industrial consolidation and the fight against smuggling. Faced with its immense needs, insufficient domestic resources and the adoption of stricter environmental regulations, China’s Natural Resources Doctrine evolved towards more imports of raw materials; not by exercising a bellicose and misanthropic strategy of resource warfare against other countries, but by the exercise of its influence. This doctrinaire flexibility was facilitated by the training of Chinese leaders. It is easier to achieve the national goal when one understands the path. Of the last six presidents and prime ministers, with the exception of the current prime minister, Li Keqiang, a lawyer, all have been trained as engineers. From 1993-2003, President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji were electricians, then from 2003-2012 Hu Jintao was a hydro-electrician while his Premier Wen Jiabao was a geologist, from 2012 to the present, Xi Jinping is a process chemist and knows agriculture well.
This thematic chronology of Chinese leaders corresponds to that of the stages of the country’s development: power plants and coal, hydroelectricity and materials, geology and mining production, which coincide, among other things, with China’s mining and energy geopolitical advances in Africa, process chemistry and agribusiness investment. It is undeniable that one of the objectives of this epic has been the development of electric mobility.
METALS, POLITICS and INFOX
Because it encompasses the policies of states and companies, the paradigm combining critical and strategic metals and competitive consumption becomes geopolitical. It therefore carries the risk of being the target of infoxes. In this area, the world of hydrocarbons is far ahead of that of metals. Everyone will remember the thundering infomercials that accompanied the second Gulf War, particularly at the UN. For metals, the « palladium crisis » cost the automobile industry dearly, with Ford losing $1 billion in 2001-2002; the « uranium crisis » of 2007 led to the Uramin affair, which turned out to be a $2.5 billion financial disaster for Areva and led to its disappearance. However, in both cases, the market was the victim of unfortunate manipulations whose victims were companies, not states.
More recently, in 2011-2012, the « lanthanide crisis » began as a production crisis, but it left its mark on the valuation of stocks of Japanese processors who had bought against the tide, and then, on the side of investors, despite an initial warning, a manipulation concluded with a warning from the AMF and a judicial investigation. However, with surprising vivacity, it was in 2017-2019 that infoxes aimed at the political world emerged in a new chapter: « rare metals ».
The infox phenomenon works in cascades, one misinformation provoking the next. The first usually takes the form of a fascination: the « rare or unobtainable metal » that we could call « inobtenium ». It focuses the attention of the politician of the producing country because he imagines that it is a geopolitical element of his power strategy, while it hypnotizes the politician of the consuming country because he thinks that it is a key to his influence strategy. It is simply a myth, an oxymoron, a danger, an illusion that can have damaging consequences on the making of such and such decisions because it will commit the politician to a dead end lined with misleading choices between such and such an industrial policy, such and such an energy policy or such and such a national security option.
There are safeguards to avoid such mistakes and to enlighten the politician: data collection and analysis, and the writing of reports. But these will lag behind the spread of the infox, and then the actions taken. If a hoax comes from a partial, obscure, disparate, incriminating or exculpatory sweep, it is quick, it has the coherence and the attractions of purity, it is initially stronger than a complex and constraining truth which requires verifications and patience because it is longer and more difficult to establish than an infox. The politician is generally in a hurry and will be, except exception, a neophyte whose difficulty will be to reason true on a virtuality from false elements. These misinformations intended to produce over-interpretations, then emotions cause errors. Victims of these « fashionable subjects », the strategies of power and influence will remove the actions of States or companies from the realities of the markets. It is in this sense that the « rare metals » policy is populist, because it leads to errors and dead ends.
This first « rare metals » hoax will generate a second infox, that of the guilty party who initiated the scarcity. This is not new. In the « palladium crisis » of 2000, Russia was accused of delaying palladium deliveries in order to cause a price hike, but this deflated just after the source of the tension, TOCOM – the Japanese futures market, applied restrictions to its palladium contract. The « rare metals » infox has its culprit, China. The forms of this guilt are diverse: domination in certain metals, advances in « red battery » metals for « green electric vehicles » (cobalt, lithium, lanthanides) and the verticalization of industrial sectors.
First, there is the « politically correct » guilt of domination in certain metals. By dumping its own mining production, Beijing would have secured a monopoly of certain unobtainable hallmark metals, and then it would have stifled their markets in order to suffocate mines outside China. Then he would have them bought out by his own companies at low prices. This message has the appeal of sensationalism fueled by caricature: China is the culprit. But which mines would have closed as a result of a real and proven Chinese misanthropic will? What is the evidence for this?
Reality is different. If the world’s leading copper producer is Chile, it is not the result of a bellicose geopolitical strategy towards competing producer countries, but because its subsoil is rich in copper; if Indonesia, the Philippines, Russia, New Caledonia and Canada share the first places in nickel, it is also for a reason of mineralogy and not because they would be in a nickel war; thanks to its petrography, South Africa is first in platinum and rhodium while Russia is first in palladium, and yet these two countries have imbricated relations; if the iron ore market is dominated by the Australia-Brazil pair, it is because the pedology is favourable, the two countries do not fight wars; if Guinea supplies so much bauxite, it is not because it has destroyed other producers, but because it has resources; If China is first in lanthanides or tungsten, it is not for a strangely misanthropic geopolitical reason, but again and again for a geological reason, it has rich deposits and it exploits them.
Other countries have equally large or smaller, richer or poorer deposits, but they do not exploit them. The example of the tungsten mine of Salau in Ariège is emblematic, it is undoubtedly world class, but it remains unexplored and untapped. Why is this so? It is certainly not because of Beijing!
Another case, cobalt. China imports a large part of the cobalt production of the DRC, the world’s largest producer. But how did the Chinese company China Molybdenum come to own the largest cobalt mine in the DRC? Did it wage war, did it ask its army to intervene? Did they colonize or invade this territory? Did it use underground networks to infiltrate the entire decision-making chain? No, it simply bought two giant mines from an American mining company.
The situation was the same when, in the midst of a trade war between China and the United States in late 2018, the world’s largest lithium producer, Chile’s SQM, saw 24% of its shares held by Canada’s Potash Corp bought by China’s Tianqi for more than $4 billion. Tianqi thus became the world’s leading producer thanks to investments in other producers in China and Australia. Why didn’t Washington or Europe intervene? Again, the facts indicate not a lithium war, but a peaceful private sale between two companies.
Another false truth is the lanthanide war. China produces about 58% of the world’s ore, a figure that is steadily falling, and refines it in its refineries. Of the remaining 42%, only about 5-10% is refined outside China, the rest is exported to Beijing and processed in Chinese plants. If there were a rare earth war, what kind of confrontation would leave one of the belligerents with 95% of the world’s materials, while with a « war effort » investment of less than one billion the West would find industrial independence, if only with the French plant in La Rochelle or the new American-Australian Blue Line plant in Texas?
In conclusion, neither China nor any other country has waged economic warfare with the aim of lowering the prices of the metals it produces and consequently making the mines of other countries disappear. This first idea of a misanthropic Chinese domination is an infox, but no one says so.
Following domination in certain metals, the subsequent infox is Chinese verticalization and hegemony over an industry. It is however based on the industrial reality of the sector. If it has the means to do so, whoever controls access to metal production dominates the downstream industrial sector. For the past thirty years, China’s immense leap forward has required large quantities of metals. China, like other powers before it and for centuries, has exploited its territory. Then it imported by taking industrial and commercial positions in metallurgy and mining in foreign countries, taking the risk of clashing with local economic policies. This verticalization, far from clashing with the nationalism of the resources of the producing countries, has influenced their power strategies to reach compromises.
The infox blames this verticalization strategy on China. But it is not new! Arcelor-Mittal operates in this way, from iron or coal mines to steel marketing; the Korean Posco also by securing the nickel ore of New Caledonia; the Finnish Outokumpu by exploiting its own chrome mines for its steels; the Norwegian Norsk-Hydro operates in the same way with its bauxite for its aluminum; Michelin cultivates its rubber plantations for its tires; Bonduelle buys farmland for its vegetables; Russia’s Rostec groups together the metallurgy of armaments and exploits its own copper, gold, niobium and lanthanide mines; Nestlé secures the loyalty of coffee producers for its capsules; German electricians consume their lignite production in their power stations, and Engie does the same with its natural gas. For their part, Chinese car manufacturers are doing nothing different by controlling the chain, from the mining company exploring for nickel, lithium or cobalt, to the marketing of electric cars.
In 2009, Indonesia passed a law prohibiting the export of its mineral resources without processing, particularly to China, from 2014. China has not gone to war with Jakarta. On the contrary, it has turned the crisis into an opportunity: at the foot of the Indonesian mines, it has verticalized its overseas logistics from the extraction of ores to the marketing of manufactured products by setting up competitive Chinese steel mills and gigafactories. The reality of verticalization contradicts the infox of Beijing’s innovative hegemony, especially in electric vehicles. Here again, China fills the gap left by the absence of our mining doctrines and can lower the country’s overall production costs
THE ORIGIN OF THE « RARE METALS » INFOX IS TRIVIAL
Although curiously the infoxes point to a single culprit, the analysis shows that China did not initiate a metals war, that it instead gained peaceful and commercial access to mines because of the vacuity of our own mining doctrines; but the obvious question is: why have these infoxes, which played on ignorance, emotion, and are celebrated among neophytes eager for information that only reinforces their established beliefs, coalesced into a « rare metals » myth? Whatever the causes, this legend reinforcing the belief of a conflict has settled in the brains as in the nests of absent birds.
The Ukrainian crisis shows that the fake news about « rare metals » was only a set-up created to blind the neophytes. Indeed, in this crisis of economic warfare through sanctions, all metals are becoming strategic, and fears of shortage are focused on the « big metals » (Aluminum, Nickel, Copper, …) and not on the « small metals » that cannot be found.
The first hypothesis is the decidedly anti-China myth, which is a small facet of the huge trade war with China. The danger is that it calls for a bellicose response. Fortunately, no war has been declared over lithium or cobalt, and it is salutary that with respect to lanthanides, the Chinese president’s statements in 2019 about embargoing its « strategically important resources » in the wake of U.S. sanctions against Huawei, have remained only statements. The best we can hope for is a reversal of the infox, so that the beneficial effect of this return to reality will curb belligerent feelings and appease a youth trapped in the feeling that nothing more would be possible to save the planet in the field of natural resources since China would be an enemy that would have already won the game. The other advantage of the return of the truth would be a mitigation of anti-democratic sentiments. Indeed, the models of the European Green Deal or the American Democratic Party are of such magnitude that they would be inapplicable in a climate of real or virtual war for natural resources. However, the great danger that ideologies and the political promises that support them, such as the ecological transition, face is that they become excluded from real life, that they no longer understand their impacts on populations, and that they lose the link with the industrial world that produces these resources and with the world that transforms them. If it becomes impossible to keep these promises because they would have led to conflicts built on a myth such as the « metal war », it is democracy in the broadest sense that suffers.
Words have a meaning, using the word war without ever having experienced it is deplorable; we do not need an infox on a « war of metals, whether they are abundant, critical, strategic, rare or unobtainable » to save the planet, but on the contrary a truth on the « peace of metals » to negotiate without emotion. Only the filling of our strategic vacuum, or even an inclusive cooperation of Beijing, Moscow and other producers of technology and natural resources, as Indonesia and China have done, will allow us to keep the promise of a European energy transition that will no longer confuse its speeches with its reforms.
The second hypothesis on the origin of the infox is contiguous to the first. It is a dangerous myth, because it has had an anesthetic effect. Each state has remained immobile, because each believes that China’s mining doctrine is being fought by another, since the infox indicates that a war would exist between China and that someone else. But this war is nowhere, this other does not exist; no battle, even economic, has taken place specifically in recent times for copper, nickel, iron, platinum, rhenium, beryllium, cobalt, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, niobium, lithium, lanthanides. No one has opposed its influence and its mining advances. This metallic war is a delusion, it never happened. And while everyone thinks that someone else is fighting China, Beijing has advanced unchecked. No one has opposed its influence and mining advances. To accuse China of « metal wars » is to facilitate its advances, for by condemning a symptom, the disease continues to thrive, while the cause of the evil remains hidden: the bandon of sovereignty in our mining doctrines.
To this argument are often opposed lists of strategic or critical metals built by the States. Unfortunately, they do not answer the question of a fight or a negotiation. They are neither proof of a war, nor weapons, nor offensives, but on the contrary a kind of declaration that must remain secret, an intellectual capitulation imbued with a virtual « war of metals » for lack of combatants.
But while everyone thinks that someone else is fighting China, Beijing has advanced unchecked. No one has opposed its influence and mining advances.
To remove the anaesthesia of a virtual war, virtually fought by others, is to assert that China has gained positions because other consumer countries have deserted mining and industry. Less visionary, they have not re-evaluated their sovereignties and their metallurgical and mining Strategic Solidarities and they have abandoned their strategy of influence.
So we need to build these mining doctrines while protecting ourselves by interrogating future metals-related infoxes.
Beyond these two assumptions, the real origin of the « rare metals » infox was arrowed by electric vehicle sales. They doubled in 2019, then again in 2020, and are booming in 2021. The electric vehicle craze is a major global industrial event, as the transportation sector builds structural ramifications in the metals markets and for many years to come in all industries, especially the oil industry. In 2020, 3 million electric vehicles were sold, about 4% of the market, but the penetration rate will be 30% in 2025 and 70% before 2040. These are the kind of consumers that worry pro-oil producers, especially in the United States, who have not yet begun their transition to electricity. Moreover, the accumulation of advantages of the electric car powered by metals and with non-carbon energy produced, for example, with the help of the circular economy of nuclear power, was likely to clash with the interests of anti-nuclear power. Logically enough, this confluence of interests between the pro-oil and anti-nuclear currents produced a result that crystallized in the form of the anti-electric car movement armed with the fake news of « rare metals ».
The detractors constructed the hoax by deliberately mixing the erroneous notions of « rare metals » and « rare earths ». Without examination, without study of the contradictory, without looking at the facts, without questioning by the media, they have widely expressed and shared their credo through pseudo-scientific studies, distorting documentaries or oriented books favoring sensationalism, deleterious emotion, the caricature of the anti-electric car. This facility has been blindly adopted by the political world, echoing Victor Hugo: « Ignorance is a reality on which one feeds; science is a reality on which one fasts. To be learned and to be healthy; to graze, and to be an ass everywhere ».
Built to discredit factories and the technical progress of electric mobility in favor of oil, this hoax of « rare metals » attracted the appetite of investors who saw in it a weakness to be exploited in the energy transition, it made companies flee, the industrialist passes for a rogue and science for a curse.
The whole is summarized in this note: But where exactly does the anti-electric car infox come from?
ECONOMIC INTELLIGENCE MUST BE USED TO DECONSTRUCT THE ANTI-ELECTRICITY INFOX
This situation raised the eyebrows of experts on metals and the geopolitics of natural resources. The media offensive of anti-electricity fake-news, common to both pro-oil and anti-electricity, was deconstructed by economic intelligence and facts: on cobalt and labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo; the world’s energy shift from oil to metals is real; the majority of lithium produced in the world comes from Australia and not South America, recycling of lithium batteries is already working; « rare metals » do not exist, it is a hoax saved by no geology or science; « rare earths » are not rare and electric vehicles have none in their batteries, conversely thermal vehicles have some in their catalytic converters.
Another analysis by EnerGeek magazine testified to the necessary debunking of the infox. Then in 2020, a documentary, « À Contresens: Electric Vehicle, the Great Intoxication » also participated in this crusade by recalling the similarity of arguments between some French anti-electric car communicators eager to gain notoriety and the Koch brothers, Texas oil billionaires, activists and financial supporters of Donald Trump. They have invested 10 million dollars a year in documentaries against electric cars, using arguments such as :
– the CO2 footprint of electric vehicles is worse than that of gasoline and diesel models,
– that « rare metals » and « rare earths » are used in the batteries of electric cars and that these mineral resources will be exhausted,
– that electric cars depend on child labor,
– that lithium mining in South America is dangerous for flamingos, etc.
However, electric car batteries do not contain any « rare earths ». Nickel provides energy density, cobalt provides power, and manganese stabilizes temperature. The recent evolution of the nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) package is moving towards less cobalt and more nickel because changes in the price of the metals are a threat to the cost of electric cars. Their prices need to come down to match those of conventional cars. The answer to sustainability and cost is lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, without nickel and cobalt.
Battery chemistry is therefore multiple and heterogeneous. Less expensive, more durable and safer, LFP batteries will probably account for more than 50% of global consumption, compared with 25% today. In addition, the other electrode of the battery, the anode, is also making progress, extending autonomy by partially replacing synthetic graphite with silicon, thus further strengthening the least expensive solution and ensuring sustainable development. Finally, the evolution of the shape of battery cells – cylindrical, prismatic or pocket-shaped – also contributes to making them lighter, reducing their heat or storing more power.
The hoax of « rare metals » is unmasked, there is no argument left to kill the electric car, because whatever the origin of the electricity, thanks to its energy efficiency, the electric motor, from its construction to its recycling, pollutes less than the thermal engine. Moreover, as its cost continues to fall, it will be on a par with the combustion engine by the end of 2021 or 2022. Finally, in Europe, the collection channels for these batteries, which come from Asia and are used in European vehicles, are now in place.
This infox of pro-oil « rare metals » that wanted to kill the electric car, will remain from its beginning to its end undoubtedly an interesting case study of information manipulation and questions on the integrity of the media, and it will probably be taught in journalism and infowar schools.