The Future of Electric Vehicles and Material Resources: A Foresight Brief

The main goals of this foresight brief are to: • highlight major opportunities and challenges in the mainstreaming of EVs, • examine the sustainability case of EVs by focusing on material resources, and • offer policy recommendations for ensuring the long-term resource sustainability of EVs. The scope of this work is limited to battery powered EVs because of the fact that the presence of vehicles using electric motors fuelled by other power sources (including fuel cells) is, for now, essentially negligible in comparison to battery powered EVs. Furthermore, this report focuses on electric cars. Though the use of other EVs – including buses, trucks, bikes, and scooters – is also increasing rapidly, passenger electric cars represent both the trend and challenges in the electrification of the transport sector. Moreover, this work focuses on the issues linked to material resources used in batteries, which are common across various types of EVs.