US Automotive Market Battery Material Supply Disruptions
The US vehicle market simulations summarized below are from “Electric Vehicle Battery Materials Supply Disruptions And Mitigations With Chemistry Changes And Recycling” (under revision at Nature Communications), Jason O’Connor, Karan Bhuwalka, Jeremy Michalek, Elsa Olivetti, Abigail Randall, Richard Roth, and Kate S. Whitefoot. The simulation outcomes are based on the specified battery materials disruption as modeled by our integrated materials market model, battery production cost model (Argonne National Laboratory’s BatPaC), and partial equilibrium model of the US vehicle market. All prices are in 2024 USD.
Please cite as:
O'Connor, J., Bhuwalka, K., Michalek, J.J., Olivetti, E., Randall, A., Roth, R., and Whitefoot, K.S. Electric Vehicle Battery Materials Supply Disruptions and Mitigations with Chemistry Changes and Recycling. under revision Nat Commun (2026).
More details on the construction of the set of baseline vehicles and scenarios will be available here soon after publication.
Disruption Scenario Definition
Disruption Scenario Parameters
0 KT
0 KT
0 KT
0 KT
0 KT
Global supply loss: 450 KT lithium
Export Restriction Size
Affected Mines
0 KT
Lithium shock set by restriction size above
Cobalt: 48.35 $/kg(baseline: 48.35 $/kg)
Lithium: 98.94 $/kg(baseline: 98.94 $/kg)
Change in NMC811 Cathode Active Material Cost*: $0.0 /kWh
*example CAM, specific costs differ for NCA and other NMC variants