The number of people using electricity vehicles has increased over the past few years leading to increased need for the industry players to ensure the supply chain is managed appropriately. The sales are high demanding great efforts from the manufacturers to reduce the strains in the supply chain. Electric vehicles require different materials from the traditional vehicles which use the gasoline. The supplies needed for electrical cars include new batteries and chargers. The materials needed for the batteries such as lithium, nickel and cobalt demand efforts for the global mining industry to extract the materials. The popular suppliers of lithium are Australia, China, Argentina and Chile. China controls mining in democratic republic of Congo where there is high concentration of cobalt mineral. United States is the third largest manufacturer of electric vehicles after China and Europe. However, there a few suppliers of needed materials in the United States hence forcing companies such as Tesla to depend on supplies from China.
The electric vehicle industry was mainly introduced as a solution to climatic change as the traditional models require use of gasoline which is linked to environmental pollution. Numerous technological advancements have made electric vehicles to outperform the conventional models due to ability to ensure low carbon emission, ease of use, reduced engine noise and convenience of charging at home. The booming aspirations of Tesla to accelerate the sustainability of supply chain in electric vehicle industry is encourages establishment of more factories to supply materials to the car manufacturers. Companies in the electric vehicle industry including suppliers and manufacturers need to review their supplier options and ensure they can sustain the demand and transition which is already ongoing. Many companies are now targeting to produce more electric vehicles to take advantage of the promising market trend for products. However, this draws some concerning of the how the companies and suppliers will influence future Operations Supply Chain Management of the electric vehicle production.
The changes in technological advances and the need to ensure there is reduction on global emission of green house gases. The electric vehicle industry is expanding with increase in companies that are willing to manufacture vehicles that are environmentally friendly. For the industry to succeed and continue satisfying existing demand, there needs to be stable supply of batteries which are essential for the making of electric cars. While there are several manufacturer and supplier dealing with combustion engines, there is no large number of suppliers of electrical batteries for such manufacturers. Currently, major suppliers of electrical batteries include China, Japan, Korea and United States. With the support of European Union which promotes the manufacturing of electric cars, there is a significant progress related to production of electric car batteries in Europe. Northvolt is recognized as one of the chief battery manufacturers in Europe with a major competitor from the Asian market, Automotive cell Company. Contemporary Amperex Technology, a chinese company, is known as one of the top 5 producers of lithium-ion electric vehicle batteries. China is ahead of other countries as a manufacturer of massive electric vehicle batteries. It controls approximately 30 percent of the raw materials used to make the batteries including lithium, nickel and cobalt.