This Is The Challenge Of Securing The Battery Supply Chain
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2022
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With oil prices surging, there's a sense of greater urgency about moving more towards electric vehicles. But of course the metals that go into EVs are also expensive. And that goes for the core technology -- lithium ion batteries. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with James Frith, a lithium battery expert and investor at the VC firm Volta Energy Technologies. We discuss the state of the art of battery technology, as well as the ongoing need for commodities.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Odlots is brought to you by Apollo. When it comes to building and financing stronger businesses, |
| 0:05.1 | Apollo does the heavy lifting by providing customized capital solutions. Apollo, investing in |
| 0:10.2 | tomorrow, today, learn more at Apollo.com. The world needs solutions. On October 24th at the |
| 0:16.5 | London edition of the Bloomberg Technology Summit, join leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs |
| 0:21.0 | to discuss technologies that are poised to solve our most pressing global challenges. |
| 0:26.3 | From reducing CO2 emissions and making cities more livable to affordable health care and |
| 0:31.2 | combating food insecurity, executives from Deliveroo, Siemens, Graphcore, and more will examine |
| 0:36.8 | where tech innovation can take us. Learn more at BloombergLive.com slash tech summit 2023. |
| 0:43.0 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odlots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal. And I'm Tracy |
| 1:00.2 | Allaway. Tracy, the surging price of oil and other fossil fuels has certainly got a lot of people |
| 1:10.0 | talking more about the energy transition, EVs, electric cars, renewable energy on the grid, |
| 1:17.2 | solar panels, wind, etc. But it also seems clear that all that is going to be very expensive as well. |
| 1:24.4 | Yeah, this is the ultimate irony. Just as oil prices are spiking and everyone's going, |
| 1:29.1 | oh, we need to, you know, quicken the transition away from fossil fuels. It seems like all of the |
| 1:35.9 | commodities that you actually need for that transition for decarbonization, those are spiking too. |
| 1:42.3 | Yeah, not only are we seeing a surge in price, and if you look at all these crucial metals, whether |
| 1:47.4 | it's nickel or cobalt or the price of lithium, all these crucial ingredients, not only are the |
| 1:54.1 | charts mostly up into the right, there aren't that many of them. It's not just that they're costly. |
| 1:58.8 | It seems like these markets, again, kind of like oil are extremely tight. There's not just a bunch |
| 2:04.2 | of it to be easily procured from what I can tell. Well, so this is something that I'm really |
| 2:09.1 | curious about. What exactly is the supply of these essential metals for batteries? Because I'm sure |
| 2:16.0 | you remember the rare earths, like, I don't want to call it a bubble because clearly there was |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.