Management

Lithium Supply

In North America, the Ford Motor Company has also been very vocal about securing long term lithium supplies, especially as the domestic auto industry does not want to replace a dependency on foreign oil with one on foreign lithium. “The industry needs to know where the lithium is going to come from. Are these countries friendly to the Western World?” says Charles Wu, a spokesperson for Ford Research. Even President Obama has expressed serious concerns about future lithium supplies. In a speech last summer he declared: “Switching Middle Eastern oil for foreign batteries is not an option.”