THE new era of electric vehicles (EVs) is truly upon us.
For instance, the United States (US) motor vehicle giant, General Motors has announced that its aim is to stop selling petrol and diesel propelled vehicles by 2035.
For Audi, the Germany-based car manufacturer, the plans are to stop producing such vehicles by 2033.
Many other motor vehicle manufacturing vehicles have announced similar plans with 2035 as mainly the deadline.
On the usage side, the United Kingdom plans to ensure that half of all new cars sold in that country are fully electric by 2028.
Close-by, all the motor vehicle sold in the European Union (EU) as of 2035 should not produce carbon dioxide (CO2) emission.
The EU ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2035, according to the European Parliament, entails that if one buys a new car now, one can drive it until the end of its lifespan.
However, because the average lifespan of a car in the region is 15 years, the authorities have to start in 2035 to aim for all cars to be CO2-neutral by 2050.
The US government announced as early as 2021 that it plans to end purchases of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 in a move to lower emissions and promote electric cars under an executive order signed by President Joe Biden.
The government for that vast developed country owns more than 650,000 vehicles and purchases about 50,000 annually.
Obviously some readers would wonder as to what all these statistics are for Zambia as they mainly involve the already-developed countries.
Indeed, according to a June 2021 article by the Zambia Institute for
Policy Analysis and Research, the market for EVs is practically non-existent in Zambia at present.
In the article titled, ‘How Can Zambia Benefit from the Electric Vehicle Market?’ ZIPAR indicates that the global market for EVs is expected to grow tremendously over the next four decades as the world ramps up efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
Globally, ZIPAR notes, EVs now represent 10-15 per cent of new vehicle sales in pioneering regions such as North America UK, Europe and Asia and that the share is projected to grow to about 50 per cent of new vehicles sales in these regions by 2040.
In these developments, therefore, rests Zambia’s forte as a strong mining country, the second largest copper producer in Africa.
This forum will, therefore, dig into the issue and occasionally bring out the country’s potential to contribute to and tap into possible benefits of the EV value chain.
Using the voices of some expert individuals and institutions, this forum will probe the availability of the minerals required for the EV-related investments and other related concerns.
This is because Zambia is said to have huge potential in most of these minerals to be able to feed the emergent sector, thereby creating huge investment and job opportunities.
This is more so if Zambia’s mineral-producing potential and capacity are combined with that of the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Africa’s number one copper producer.
The two neighbouring countries are reportedly home to at least 80 per cent of minerals required for production of electric car batteries.
According to the US’ Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) the amounts required to manufacture the batteries for electric car vary depending on the battery type and model of the vehicle.
However, the ANL indicates that a single car lithium-ion battery pack (of a type known as NMC532) could contain around eight kilogramme (KG) of lithium, 35 kg of nickel, 20 kg of manganese and 14 kg of cobalt.
Fortunately, all these minerals as already alluded to are readily available in abundance in both Zambia and DRC.
In the coming decades, as again already indicated, hundreds of millions of electric vehicles especially in the developed countries will hit the roads, powered by these batteries inside them.
To address the issues of raw materials, some experts have been experimenting with low-cobalt or cobalt-free cathodes.
It is interesting to note that realising the massive potential Zambia and Congo have for various minerals required in the EV value chain, their respective governments decided to work together to exploit the joint potential.
They have already started actualising the electric vehicle battery value chain that the two countries agreed to embark on last year.
In April last year, Zambia and the DRC signed a historical cooperation agreement to facilitate the development of the value chain in the electric battery.
In December the same year, on the sidelines of the US-Africa summit in
Washington DC, they signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the same venture.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Africa
Import and Export Bank brought in their expertise in actualising the car battery project.
According to Commerce, Trade and Industry Minister Chipoka Mulenga the two multilateral institutions are playing a key role in feasibility studies.
Two production plants will be set up in Zambia where car batteries will be produced under the deal.
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