Troubling workplace and environmental practices at nickel mines in Indonesia are undoubtedly worth investigating.
But it's a great shame Channel 7 recently did so by incorrectly linking these practices to electric vehicle (EV) sales in Australia.
Australia's top-selling electric vehicles do not use nickel-based batteries. Your phone and laptop batteries probably contain more nickel than the best-selling EV batteries. That's because the most popular battery chemistry used by BYD and Tesla in Australian electric vehicles is Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP).
LFP batteries do not contain nickel or cobalt, distinguishing them from battery chemistries such as nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) or nickel cobalt aluminium (NCA). While nickel is crucial for high-energy-density batteries in performance EVs, LFP batteries are safer and cheaper, increasing their popularity. The program never explained this, presumably because it unravels their entire 'story'.
Furthermore, the program failed to explicitly identify any EV maker that sources nickel from these mines in Indonesia. While supply chains are often opaque, this low-quality nickel is much more likely to be used in other materials like stainless steel. Stainless steel production is responsible for the majority of global nickel demand.
Liam Bartlett and Channel 7's failure to cover these crucial details in the nearly hour-long story is sloppy journalism at best.
These were Australia's top five best-selling EVs last year and their battery chemistry:
- Tesla Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive - LFP (no nickel)
- Tesla Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive - LFP (no nickel)
- MG 4 Excite 51 - LFP (no nickel)
- BYD Seal - LFP (no nickel)
- BYD Atto 3 - LFP (no nickel)
Tesla's much lower-selling All-Wheel Drive Long Range and Performance trims do use NMC or NCA batteries. Similarly, the higher-cost variants of the MG4, such as the Excite 64, use NMC chemistry.
