The following article was published on Medium in February 2022.

Thousands of cars sit idle outside of plants throughout the U.S. due to the microchip crisis engulfing America’s auto manufacturers. The supply chain crunch we face now though, will end up looking like a blip as the electric vehicle revolution takes off with consumers, manufacturers, and investors.

While microchips in our legacy cars and computers include trace amounts of precious metals, the batteries literally driving our electric vehicles are heavily dependent upon elements such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt. The auto industry’s goals of making 50 percent of all vehicles electric by 2030 will create international supply chain and national security pressures that will be exacerbated in the U.S. unless we prepare domestically.

We must manufacture the next generation of energy storage here in the U.S. and we must do it now.”

Key to this preparation will be battery innovations that reduce or eliminate some of the metals inside the batteries of every Tesla, electric Hummer or Ford F-150 lighting coming off the assembly line today. Instead of depending upon regimes in China, the Democratic Republic of Congo or even warlords in Afghanistan, we can manufacture batteries that eliminate the national security threat we currently face from supply chain chokeholds.

It is also imperative we reduce or eliminate these metals through innovations to make vehicles affordable for consumers, while also boosting sustainability. While the price of batteries continues to decline, many in the industry expect a price plateau without modernizing the raw materials we use to power our future.

The Biden Administration has set a path for us as a country with the National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries released by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Grandholm in June. This important national strategy sets five achievable goals and should serve as a map for galvanizing America against China’s technology advances making U.S. businesses and workers more competitive.

The innovators and manufacturers I work with everyday are focused on re-engineering the battery supply chain by eliminating cobalt first and setting our sights on making other components super localized.

We chose to focus on eliminating cobalt because it is the costliest metal in batteries today in both the expense to consumers and the human price those that work and live near the mines must pay. Cobalt has been called the “blood diamond” of batteries because of mining and environmental practices that risk the safety of workers including many children in central Africa.

Our advances, discovered with our R&D partners at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, reduce production time significantly, drive down the costs of lithium-ion batteries by nearly 40% and double the battery performance compared to Chinese alternatives. It also relieves our dependency on one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that produces nearly all the world’s cobalt that has contracts dominated by China.

The surge in consumer interest for electric vehicles is exciting for the American worker in the new low carbon economy. Yet America’s clean energy future will only reach its potential through exponentially scaling battery innovation rather than continuing to make incremental change. We must manufacture the next generation of energy storage here in the U.S. and we must do it now.