Due to changing market dynamics, businesses can reach this number with confidence. Automakers desperately need to lock in a supply of lithium batteries before making investment decisions on large-scale battery factories, but that supply doesn't exist today. The result: larger, longer-term supply agreements are increasingly common to incentivize producers to expand.

　　Case in point: Albemarle has secured purchase commitments for more than 140,000 tonnes of LCE production in 2025 – more than half of which is not even capped.

　　Current energy storage technology is good enough for automakers to start competing on high-end electric vehicles. Upcoming next-generation technologies could make electric transportation the default choice for all new passenger cars by 2030 (or earlier). Achieving this goal will require two things: advances in materials science that enable commercialized devices, and many times the supply of lithium. Albemarle is leveraging its customer and R&D insights to deliver both.

　　While the business is unlikely to be integrated into all national development lines and complex materials for lithium-ion batteries, such as cobalt or silicon nanowires, it is well positioned for the next generation of technology.

　　What if the next generation of lithium-ion batteries will require many times the number of lithium cells than today's products, but those products won't use many lithium cells at all? Battery manufacturers are increasingly turning to lithium hydroxide rather than lithium carbonate as their raw material of choice.

　　Albemarle expects to produce and sell up to 265,000 tonnes of LCE in the form of lithium hydroxide by 2025, which would account for 80% of the global market.

　　Albemarle recently laid out a roadmap for lithium-ion battery technology, which it expects will progress in two major steps over the next decade. Each new step will be through improvements to the various components that make up energy storage devices – changes that are expected to hit the market sooner than expected:

　　In addition to trying to capture a major share of the world's lithium hydroxide supply, Albemarle is also developing materials that could be used in next-generation batteries and even next-generation batteries. It holds patents for lithium-sulfur separators and lithium metal foils, both of which may find use in solid-state batteries.

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