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Electric vehicles or EVs. Everyone knows Tesla. Elon Musk's giant electric car company. And a lot of people know about Nikola Motors too. Which was a multi million dollar fraud actually. It's safe to assume electric cars are the future. Most of the world already agrees to it. Though I still live in the past and have my fascination for japanese JDMs. Also old school Porsche BMW Ferrari and whatnot. That's not the point. Point is, who do you think is leading the race to dominance in the electric vehicles market you think? By the looks of it, it's the USA. But it's more of a myth than a fact. If not now, surely in the future. Because, you guessed it, China is here. China has a hand in every pie in the world. No exceptions here.
So why do I think China is leading? Let's land some facts. There is this African country. Democratic Republic of Congo. Or better known DRC. This country is stacked with natural resources. You all watched marvel cinematics and know about Black Panther and wakanda. Well, DRC over the span of it's existence had enough natural resources to be the real life wakanda. But reality is different. Over the centuries foreigners came in and milked this country and it's people to their heart's content. Feeding off the poor is what they say. So if you look at the map of Congo. You'll see a lot of mines in the eastern side of the country. And they're mostly cobalt mines. And China owns most of these cobalt mines. Most like 80% of them. Now why cobalt? You see there are lithium ion, lead storage, galvanic cell, different types of batteries. Cobalt is used to regulate the heat in the battery. The more use of cobalt in the battery, (of course in the way it's needed) the more sustainable and efficient the battery is. So as electric vehicles demands skyrocketed in the past 5 years, demand of cobalt rose too. Because the car manufacturers can use this cobalt to give their cars extra mileage. It's a key selling point of course. And most of the world's cobalt supply comes from these mines in Congo. Now you might ask how come China were allowed to buy these mines? 15 of the 19 cobalt mines in Congo are owned by China. It's out there as public information. But fact is China didn't buy it couple years ago. They bought it back in 2008. Why back then? Because China's economy is different. Because it isn't the capitalist economy they don't have to pay short term profits to it's shareholders. So Chinese companies can invest long term and think about profits let's say 15-20 years later. 15 years ago the cellphone market was on the rise. More uses of batteries means more need of cobalt right? China saw an opportunity and 15 years later they've struck gold.
Now China is the biggest owner of all cobalt supplies in the world. And the cobalt mined in the DRC, are mostly sold to Chinese companies. I bet you can see the picture here. China is using their supplies advantage to get ahead of the competition. And who knows, maybe 10 years later we'll see Chinese dominance in the electric vehicles market too. Very likely at this rate.