EV minerals are becoming increasingly critical as electric vehicles (EVs) move from rarity to ubiquity. Today, there are 30 million EVs on roads worldwide—a number expected to increase tenfold by 2030. Unlike traditional ICE vehicles that rely mainly on steel and aluminum, EVs require large amounts of specialized minerals, including lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite, and certain rare-earth elements. These minerals, sourced from a dozen key ores, are essential to the batteries and motors that power EVs, and they reveal a fascinating story about where our energy comes from and why we need it.
How EV Minerals Power Lithium-Ion Batteries
Let’s look first at the core of an EV—its rechargeable lithium-ion battery. These batteries consist of an anode, a cathode, an electrolyte and a separator. Anodes are made of graphite, cathodes of a combination of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese oxides. Within the battery, anodes and cathodes are immersed in a lithium-based electrolyte and separated by a semipermeable plastic barrier.
When the battery is powering an EV, lithium ions flow from the anode to the cathode to generate an electrical potential (voltage). The input of electrical energy reverses the process to charge the battery.
Consisting of interconnected banks of individual cells, an EV lithium-ion battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. Measuring roughly six feet by four feet and eight inches deep, it fills the entire space beneath an EV’s floor and accounts for about a third of the vehicle’s weight and cost. EV minerals make up half the battery’s weight; the rest comes from aluminum and plastic castings, frames, and connectors.
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Lithium: Powering the Battery
The indispensable element in lithium-ion batteries is, as the name suggests, lithium, a soft, silvery-white, alkali metal. Lithium’s low density and high chemical reactivity give its oxide a very high energy density, which is a measure of its ability to store an electrical charge relative to unit weight. Because a typical EV lithium-ion battery contains 18 pounds of lithium oxide, increased lithium demand has driven the metal’s price to a record $40 per pound.
The most familiar lithium minerals, spodumene and the lepidolite-group members, occur in certain granite pegmatites. The lepidolites, complex hydrated fluorosilicates that crystallize in the monoclinic system, are collected for their sheet-like, micaceous structure and lilac-to-rose colors. Spodumene, a lithium aluminum silicate that also crystallizes in the monoclinic system, is best known for its two gem varieties, pale green hiddenite and lilac-pink kunzite.
Australia’s Greenbushes Mine extracts 60,000 tonnes (one tonne or metric ton equals 1.1 standard tons) of lithium annually—half the world’s production—from a massive, altered pegmatite. The sole commercial spodumene deposit in the United States is North Carolina’s Kings Mountain Mine, which, after 40 years of inactivity, will reopen in 2027 in response to higher lithium prices.
Lithium, in the form of lithium chloride, is recovered from evaporite deposits in the deserts of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and China, where brines are pumped to the surface and evaporated. A small lithium-brine operation at Silver Peak, Nevada, is currently the nation’s only operating domestic lithium source.
Smectite-group clay minerals are another potential lithium source. These complex hydrous silicates include hectorite, a particulate component of the huge smectite-clay deposit at Thacker Pass, Nevada. Development of an even larger clay deposit of illite minerals (altered smectites) at Nevada’s McDermitt Caldera may someday also become a major lithium source.
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Cobalt’s Role in EV Minerals
The first lithium-ion batteries of the 1970s were plagued by “thermal runaway,” a chemical instability that caused overheating and occasional combustion. These batteries were commercialized in the 1990s after chemists added cobalt oxide to the lithium-oxide cathodes to stabilize and extend the lives of the batteries.
A hard, silvery-gray metal, cobalt is as dense as iron but somewhat less common. Most is obtained as a by-product of copper-nickel mining. In the few primary cobalt deposits, ore minerals are cobaltite (cobalt arsenic sulfide), skutterudite (cobalt arsenide), and heterogenite (cobalt oxyhydroxide). The most familiar of cobalt’s minor ore minerals are carrollite (copper cobalt sulfide), which forms silvery, isometric crystals, and erythrite (hydrous cobalt arsenate), known for its bright, purplish-red prisms.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo annually recovers 180,000 tonnes of cobalt, or 80 percent of the world’s production, mostly as a by-product of its large copper-nickel mines. But nearly 20 percent of the Congo’s cobalt is extracted by some 200,000 artisanal miners, including many women and children, who manually dig heterogenite from open pits and shallow underground workings.
Each EV lithium-ion battery contains about 17 pounds of cobalt, which now sells for $35 per pound. The United States’ only primary cobalt mine, located in Idaho, remains closed due to high operating costs.
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Nickel and Manganese in Batteries
Nickel oxide added to lithium-ion battery cathodes increases energy density to extend EV driving range, a critical performance and marketing factor. A typical EV lithium-ion battery contains 90 pounds of nickel. EV demand has helped drive nickel’s price to a record $11 per pound.
Nickel ores include millerite (nickel sulfide), which is collected for its palebrass-colored, trigonal crystals, and pentlandite (iron-nickel sulfide), which forms bronze-colored, isometric crystals. Another source is garnierite (not a mineral), a bright-green, clay-like mix of nickel-bearing phyllosilicates.
Indonesia mines three million tonnes of nickel per year, half the world’s production. Michigan’s Eagle Mine, America’s only primary source, mines just 18,000 tonnes of nickel per year.
Manganese is an abundant, silvery-gray metal somewhat similar to iron. Like nickel, manganese increases battery energy density and, like cobalt, helps prevent thermal runaway; it also decreases battery charging time. Each EV battery utilizes about 45 pounds of manganese, which, at $2 per pound, is among the least costly of the EV minerals.
Pyrolusite (manganese dioxide), the primary ore of manganese, crystallizes in the tetragonal system and occurs as blackish, fibrous and botryoidal masses. Eighty percent of the world’s annual production of 20 million tonnes comes collectively from South Africa, Gabon, and Australia. The United States has no manganese mines.
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Graphite as an EV Mineral
Lithium-ion battery anodes are made of molded, powdered graphite, a form of carbon that crystallizes in the hexagonal system. Graphite consists of stacks of graphene, single atomic layers in an interconnected hexagonal lattice, a unique structure that can retain large quantities of lithium ions to maximize battery-charge capacity. And graphite’s low density minimizes anode weight. An EV battery typically contains 120 pounds of graphite, which may be natural or synthetic.
Natural graphite, a blackish alteration product of sedimentary carbon compounds, occurs in metamorphic rocks as granular and foliated masses. Mines in China, Madagascar and Mozambique account for 90 percent of the world’s annual 1.3-million-tonne supply. The United States has no domestic sources of natural graphite.
Natural graphite sells for one dollar per pound. Synthetic graphite for three dollars. The latter is more chemically compatible with lithium-ion batteries, but more costly because of its energy-intensive (and polluting) production process.
Rare Earth Elements Explained
The rare-earth elements (REEs) include yttrium, scandium, and the 15 lanthanide elements. Certain REEs are vital to the high-strength, permanent magnets in some EV electric-drive motors. These motors contain about four pounds of the lanthanide elements neodymium, lanthanum, dysprosium and terbium. REE prices vary greatly: Lanthanum sells for a few dollars per pound, while neodymium and dysprosium cost hundreds of dollars per pound.
Despite their name, the REEs are not rare in terms of crustal abundance, only in the number of mineable concentrations. China mines 60 percent of the world’s annual output of 250,000 tonnes. The U.S. accounts for 15 percent, thanks entirely to California’s Mountain Pass Mine.
The REE ore minerals most familiar to collectors are monazite-(Ce), a phosphate of cerium, lanthanum, and neodymium which occur in certain pegmatites as flat, reddish-brown crystals, along with bastnäsite-(Ce), a cerium lanthanum carbonate that forms yellowish-brown prisms.
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The Cost of Mining EV Minerals
When it comes to EVs and their overall environmental impact, the late singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett said it best in his hit song Carnival Ride: “There is no free ride.”
Providing the minerals needed for tens of millions of future EVs will mean developing new mines and expanding existing operations, which, by their nature, are environmentally disruptive. Also needed will be new milling, smelting, and refining plants, which are energy-intensive and polluting. And because the U.S. is notably deficient in all EV minerals, EV manufacturing will further contribute to an already unfavorable trade balance.
Minerals and mines are something of a paradox. We laud minerals for their enormous contributions to our standard of living, collect them, fashion gems from their crystals, celebrate them in museums, display them at gem-and-mineral shows, and adorn them with metaphysical significance.
Yet we do not celebrate the mines that produce these minerals. In the U.S. and other developed nations, mines must comply with strict, costly environmental mandates, while new-mine projects are vigorously opposed. And that shifts the focus of mining to undeveloped nations with low production costs and few environmental or humanitarian concerns.
EV Minerals: Final Thoughts
EVs are transforming how we drive, but the minerals that power them come at a cost. Developing new mines and expanding existing ones is environmentally disruptive, energy-intensive, and often shifted to countries with fewer regulations. The next time you admire a specimen of cobaltite, spodumene, or any other collectible mineral, remember that these same EV minerals are essential to the electric vehicles of today and tomorrow. Because when it comes to EVs, energy, and pollution, like Jimmy Buffett said, there is no free ride.
This story about EV minerals previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Steve Voynick.
