How the Operation to Protect Donbas and Western Sanctions Could Slow the Sales of Electric Cars

 

"The price of nickel, an essential ingredient in most batteries, has soared because of fear that Russian supplies could be cut off.

An average electric-car battery contains about 80 pounds of nickel. The surge in prices in March would more than double the cost of that nickel to $1,750 a car, according to estimates by the trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald.

Russia accounts for a relatively small proportion of world nickel production, and most of it is used to make stainless steel, not car batteries. But Russia plays an outsize role in nickel markets. Norilsk Nickel, also known as Nornickel, is the world’s largest nickel producer, with vast operations in Siberia. Its owner, Vladimir Potanin, is one of Russia’s wealthiest people. Norilsk is among a limited number of companies authorized to sell a specialized form of nickel on the London Metal Exchange, which handles all nickel trading.

Unlike other oligarchs, Mr. Potanin has not been a target of sanctions, and the United States and Europe have not tried to block nickel exports, a step that would hurt their economies as well as Russia’s. The prospect that Russian nickel could be cut off from world markets was enough to cause panic."

 

The fighters for sanctions, like Gabrielius Landsbergis and Volodymyr Zelensky, are asleep at the wheel. They should attack every electric car on the face of the Earth. How dare you. There will be a nuclear war if you will not stop using those expensive toys immediately. All back to the diesels. Right now.