Gregor Gregerson - There's an Electric Vehicle in Your Future #3944

Gregor is bullish on electric vehicles and especially nickel. While Lithium gets all the glory, nickel is extremely important. Here's what Gregor says about batteries. 

Nickel manganese cobalt (NMC). Nickel provides the performance, cobalt keeps the battery safe and manganese allows for high current discharge without heating up excessively. The more nickel is used, the more powerful and inexpensive the battery becomes but it must be more carefully fine-tuned to maintain safety. This chemistry has high energy density and a long life span. There are three reference NMC generations: NMC111 containing 33% Nickel and 33% Cobalt is the simplest NMC622 contains 60% Nickel and 20% Cobalt, greatly improving the power/cost ratio NMC811 contains 80% Nickel and 10% Cobalt, the highest theoretical performance vs. cost Lithium nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA).

A power/costs improvement over NMC 111 because it increased the percentage of nickel while reducing expensive cobalt. Tesla uses this extensively but will likely switch to the 3rd generation NMC811 chemistry once mature. NCA has relatively lower energy density but a long-life span. Lithium cobalt oxide (LCO). Used extensively in the portable electronics industry, e.g. in iPhones, this chemistry has good performance but, due to its very high cobalt usage (around 55%), is expensive. LCO has a high energy density but a short life span. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP). Intrinsically safer than other chemistries but not nearly as powerful as NMC811. 

https://www.silverbullion.com.sg/ElectricVehicleMetals