T&E has developed three scenarios for the demand of battery raw materials between today and 2050 considering different approaches to the size and number of private cars, as well as battery chemistry they use. The analysis reveals that having smaller batteries, driving less private car km and going for innovative chemistries (such as sodium-ion) would reduce by over a third the amount of battery metals needed in the central (or “Accelerated”) scenario compared to business as usual. In the most aggressive scenario this drops by half. Smaller batteries represent the single factor bringing the largest impact, or up to a quarter reduction in raw materials across the scenarios.

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