Seed grant spotlight: Increasing U.S. transportation resilience

The automotive industry in the U.S. is shifting away from gas-powered vehicles toward electric vehicles, introducing the need for a strong supply chain for common battery materials like lithium and cobalt. To adequately support electrification of the U.S. transportation sector, which claims the greatest energy use and greenhouse (GHG) gas emissions in the country, it’s important to make the supply chain resilient and adaptable to changing policies, global trade conditions, and consumer demand. 

Using a seed grant from the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, faculty fellow Kate Whitefoot is merging policy and technology to identify decarbonization pathways for light-duty passenger vehicles such as sedans, SUVs, and pickup trucks. 

“People have wondered if the transition to electric vehicles is happening too quickly because we need to make sure there are secure supplies of these battery minerals,” said Whitefoot, a professor of mechanical engineering and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. “This research directly addresses those concerns by finding ways to be resilient to disruptions. Planning for disruptions allows us to produce electric vehicles with minimized risk about the supply of minerals.” 

The key research tools are computational models that optimize vehicle manufacturers’ technology and production decisions over probabilistic disruptions to paint a picture of how prices and availability of minerals might change. Its findings are relevant to consumers, automakers, and policymakers alike. 

“These models allow us to pinpoint the disruptions that we need to pay the most attention to and that could have negative impacts on both the automotive industry and U.S. households,” said Whitefoot, noting that vehicles are typically the second-largest purchase in a household after purchasing a home, meaning price jumps would have a significant impact.

One mitigation tactic is to develop multiple battery chemistries, particularly a selection of reliable cobalt-free backups that manufacturers can quickly pivot to if there is a supply chain shock since many battery materials are sourced overseas. On the policy side, this could be reinforced by incentivizing manufacturers to design modular battery packs and electric vehicles that could  easily switch to cobalt-free alternatives like lithium-ion phosphate batteries.

By starting with passenger vehicles, Whitefoot’s research lays the groundwork for other transportation sectors including heavy-duty vehicles like buses and dump trucks, which require larger battery packs.