Tesla Is Winning the EV Race. Better Batteries Will Help Ford and GM Close the Gap.
There’s nothing standing in the way of the world’s auto makers and an electric-vehicle future except the batteries to power tens of millions of cars. The auto industry is betting that’s a problem money can solve.
Consider Ford Motor (ticker: F), which recently announced the largest single investment plan in its century-plus history. Ford and its partners are planning to spend $11.4 billion to build manufacturing facilities in coming years that will do for Kentucky and Tennessee what Henry Ford did for Dearborn, Mich., in 1917, when he developed his Rouge Plant on the banks of the Rouge River near Detroit. BlueOval City, a sprawling megacampus planned for Stanton, Tenn., and the nearby BlueOval SK Battery Park in Kentucky, will handle everything from housing suppliers to assembling vehicles to building batteries for EVs.
The projects will cost $11.4 billion. Ford will spend $7 billion; the rest will be contributed by its Korean battery partner, SK Innovation (096770.Korea). About 7,500 workers will be hired to build batteries at the facilities, more than the combined workforce of Ford’s Livonia, Mich., transmission facility and Chihuahua, Mexico, engine plant. Ford expects to make enough batteries to power at least one million electric vehicles a year by 2025. “The scale of this is historic for Ford,” said Greg Christensen, Ford’s electric-vehicle-footprint director for North America. “Without it, we won’t win.”
Ford isn’t the only company with big plans to win the battle for battery supremacy. General Motors (GM) plans to spend $35 billion on vehicle electrification by 2025, up from prior spending guidance of $27 billion, while Volkswagen (VOW3.Germany), the world’s largest auto maker by volume, plans to build six battery facilities in Europe by 2030.
Tesla (TSLA), with a big lead over the legacy auto makers, is still investing in battery capacity and technology. Overall, auto makers controlling about 50% of the global vehicle market have earmarked about $75 billion for battery development and manufacturing through the end of the decade.
Auto manufacturers know that the industry has to grow battery capacity fourfold by the middle of the 2020s to meet companies’ announced EV goals. Battery manufacturing also has to get much more efficient to bring down the costs. That is an enormous challenge, given far-flung supply chains and competitive pressures. Right now, the global battery supply chain meanders for more than 25,000 miles before a battery winds up in a car.
But failure isn’t an option, and the opportunities for smart spenders, savvy suppliers, and their investors could be immense.
“EV adoption is soaring much more quickly than we thought,” says Gary Black, a manager of the Future Fund Active exchange-traded fund (FFND), whose top holding is Tesla. “In five years, there aren’t going to be as many traditional cars to sell.”
Electric cars and trucks use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which differ from the lead-acid car batteries that go dead in cold weather, or the rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries that might have powered an old digital camera. Lithium-ion cells pack a bigger punch: A kilogram of lithium-ion batteries can carry roughly 200 watt hours of energy, about four times the energy density of the other battery types.
Much of the recent attention on battery costs and supply-chain issues has focused on the raw materials used in battery manufacturing, and the places they’re mined. This is a major issue. Cobalt, for example, is used in the cathode—the positive side of a terminal through which ions flow into a lithium-ion battery. About 70% of the world’s annual cobalt output is mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country with a terrible human-rights record, whose mining practices aren’t close to industry best practices.
Best Bets on Batteries
Legacy automakers, lithium producer Albemarle, and Korean chemicals giant LG Chem could be among the big winners in the race toward vehicle electrification.
EV makers such as Tesla have been pivoting to nickel as a substitute for cobalt. It not only is more plentiful—about 2.5 million metric tons of nickel are mined globally each year, compared with less than 200,000 tons of cobalt—but can also improve performance. “Our long-range vehicles use a nickel-based cathode, and people think it’s a cobalt-based cathode,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk at his company’s annual shareholder meeting in October.
GM, too, says it has removed 70% of the cobalt it uses in its latest generation of EV batteries.
Graphite, used in battery anodes, or the negative battery side, has also been in focus because it is mined largely in China. Auto makers, including GM, have been focusing on graphite alternatives, such as lithium metal and silicon anodes, but not because of geopolitical concerns. Those alternatives offer better performance and can be cheaper.
In contrast, lithium, the heart of lithium-ion batteries, is fairly plentiful. Roughly half of total global lithium output goes into cars today, and production is expected to more than triple by mid-decade, from about 300,000 tons of lithium-carbonate equivalent in 2020 to more than 1.1 million tons. Output is expected to more than double again between 2025 and 2030.
Lithium expansion is primarily an issue of know-how; there are limits to how fast the industry can expand because of engineering talent, not material availability. “It is a capability limitation, as opposed to either material or capital,” says Kent Masters, CEO of Albemarle, one of the world’s largest lithium miners.
Albemarle plans to triple its capacity between by the end of the decade, starting with an incremental annual investment of $1 billion. “We can execute at that level,” says Masters.
It’s the rest of the battery supply chain that stands in the way of successfully ramping up production of electric cars, trucks, buses, and vans.
The ingredients of an EV battery might come from a lithium brine in Chile, a nickel mine in Indonesia, or a cobalt mine in the DRC. Those raw materials are then shipped to China, where most battery cathodes are made. The cathode and anode materials stay in Northeast Asia, while battery-cell makers in Japan, South Korea, and China turn them into devices that look a little like household AA batteries, but larger.
Once a battery cell is charged and ready to use, it might be shipped to Tesla’s Fremont, Calif., plant, or Ford’s plant in Cuautitlán, Mexico, where the Mustang Mach E is assembled. By that point, the battery and its materials have traveled tens of thousands of miles—a journey too far and too costly. That is one of the reasons why legacy auto makers haven’t been able to produce enough EVs to expand their reach.
“None of these car companies has been able to scale,” says Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. “They haven’t been able to get their cost per vehicle to a competitive rate.
Today, batteries used in an electric vehicle can cost roughly $140 to $150 per kilowatt-hour. A kilowatt-hour of battery juice will get drivers three to five miles of driving range, depending on factors such as vehicle size. An electric sedan with enough per-charge range to eliminate range anxiety will have a battery pack with, say, 80 kilowatt-hours of stored electrical energy. The batteries in that sedan cost about $12,000, or roughly 25% of the total price of an extended-range Tesla Model 3.
The industry wants to get battery costs down to as low as $60 a kilowatt-hour by the end of the decade. Doing that requires improving every part of the battery and its manufacturing process, including the supply chain. Building local battery capacity, and integrating it into assembly operations, could save tens of dollars per kilowatt-hour, or up to $3,000 off that $12,000 tab for the batteries in a sedan. Using less cobalt has already cut about $400 off General Motors’ electric-car sticker price.
“We want to have the lowest-cost batteries,” says Tim Grewe, GM’s director of electrification strategy and cell engineering, who notes that the company is looking at factory locations, manufacturing practices, and battery materials to drive down costs. “At this point, everything matters.”
That starts with localizing production. Today, China accounts for roughly 75% of all lithium-ion battery capacity, largely because it was among the first countries to broadly adopt electric vehicles. By mid-decade, China’s share of capacity should be down to 40%. The U.S. and Europe, on a combined basis, should account for as much as 60% of world battery production.
By 2025, the supply chain will still be far-reaching. The materials will still be mined where they are found. Cathode materials will still be produced in Northeast Asia. But auto makers won’t be shipping batteries all over the world. That will cut down on some logistics costs. More important, this change will give auto makers control over the pace of battery innovation, and the kinds of batteries that they embrace, says GM’s Grewe.
To meet battery capacity goals, legacy car makers are partnering with big battery makers, including SK Innovation, Samsung SDI (006400.Korea), and LG Chem (051910.Korea), which are sharing costs with them, helping to secure supply, and reducing operational risk.
Not all the billions planned will be well spent, and there will be plenty of hitches along the way. The hiccups will manifest themselves in quality— think GM’s 2020-21 recalls of more than 140,000 Chevy Bolts over faulty LG Chemical batteries—boom-and-bust prices for lithium and other materials, and uneven sales growth.
The rapid reorienting of the battery supply chain also includes Japan’s big auto makers. Toyota Motor (TM) has announced plans to spend almost $14 billion on batteries by 2030; that will power the eight million hybrid and all-electric vehicles that the company thinks it will be selling annually by that year. Honda Motor ’s (HMC) and Nissan Motor ’s (NSANY) goals are a little less specific. Nissan plans for 40% of U.S. sales to be electric by 2030, and wants to be carbon-neutral by 2050. Honda says it wants two-thirds of annual sales to be “electrified” by 2030. That includes plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell electric vehicles.
The industry’s transformation poses more risks for smaller EV makers. Legacy auto makers, such as Ford and Volkswagen, might trail Tesla in EV innovation, but now they are bringing their scale to bear. Smaller EV companies run the risk of having higher-cost batteries. If they can’t make or obtain cheap ones, it would be like trying to sell a car with a four-cylinder engine that only gets 15 miles a gallon.
GM and Ford could choose to slow vehicle electrification or rely solely on suppliers for their batteries. But that doesn’t look like a recipe for earnings or volume growth. The shares of both companies typically trade for single-digit price/earnings ratios, while the S&P 500 fetches roughly 20 times estimated 2022 earnings. A big reason Detroit’s car companies don’t get market-like P/E ratios is that they don’t grow. Ford sales totaled $160 billion in 2018—exactly what they’re projected to be in 2022.
EVs can change that. They are more profitable than traditional cars. Tesla’s automotive gross profit margin in the third quarter topped 30%, better than those of General Motors, Toyota, BMW (BMWYY), and Volkswagen. As battery costs fall, EVs will get more attractive. The return on investment Ford can expect from its BlueOval megacampus should exceed the returns generated by its legacy business.
“If Ford did [EVs] right, it would trade [for] at least 20 times earnings,” says Kawasaki’s Gerber. That would put Ford’s stock at $37 by 2022, up more than 100% from a recent $17.
Still, the best bets for investors might be the companies that benefit from revamped supply chains, regardless of which auto maker dominates the EV market. In commodities, mining giant Glencore (GLEN.UK) sells nickel and cobalt, but not in sufficient quantities to move the needle on the stock. Albemarle (ALB), on the other hand, supplies about one-third of the world’s lithium. At a recent $246, its shares aren’t cheap, trading at about 45 times estimated 2022 earnings of $5.41 a share, well above their five-year average of 21 times.
Albemarle isn’t a stock for 2022, however. It’s a stock for 2025. At current lithium prices, Albemarle could be earning $11 or $12 a share by then, putting the stock at about 21 times potential 2025 earnings, with more growth to come.
“As EV production growth continues to accelerate, we believe [Albemarle] will continue to benefit, given its unique low-cost position and global scale,” RBC analyst Arun Viswanathan wrote in a recent research report. He rates the shares Outperform, with a $280 price target, about 14% above recent levels.
U.S. battery-cell makers don’t seem to be a good bet now, either. The group includes QuantumScape (QS); SES Holdings, which is planning to merge with Ivanhoe Capital Acquisition (IVAN), a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC; and Solid Power, also planning a SPAC merger, with Decarbonization Plus Acquisition Corporation III (DCRC). All three battery-cell makers have partnerships with traditional auto makers, but limited sales. Picking the right one might be like picking a lottery ticket.
The better option is LG Chem, Korea’s leading chemicals company. Its profits are expected to grow by about 15% a year between 2022 and 2025. And the shares, at about 19 times estimated 2022 earnings, are less expensive than their peers. About 40% of LG sales are tied to batteries.
LG shareholders have approved a spinout of LG Energy Solutions, the battery division, a move that would unlock value. But, since the Chevy Bolt recalls, investors haven’t seemed too excited about the spinoff. A battery defect was responsible, and LG agreed to reimburse GM about $2 billion for its costs. LG Chem shares have been flat over the past three months. When the deal is finally done, however, that might provide a boost for the shares, while also offering investors the prospect of a pure-play battery company.
Electric vehicles are projected to account for more than 11% of global light-vehicle sales in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to EV Volumes. A year ago, that number was about 5%. In 2019, before Covid, the number was 2.5%. “Right now, there appears to just be quite a profound awakening of the desirability for electric vehicles,” said Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn on the company’s Oct. 20 third-quarter-earnings conference call. “To be totally frank, it’s caught us a little bit off guard. But folks want to buy an electric car.”
It caught the rest of the industry off guard, as well, but the future seems clear, and companies have committed billions to chase it. The auto makers that spend the money effectively will gain EV share—and happy shareholders.
