EV batteries come from a global supply chain that starts in mines scattered across a handful of countries, passes through refineries concentrated heavily in China, and ends in massive factory complexes where cells are assembled into finished packs. The journey from raw earth to a working battery involves at least four key minerals, multiple continents, and a web of geopolitical and environmental trade-offs that are reshaping energy policy worldwide.
The Key Minerals Inside Every EV Battery
A typical EV battery relies on lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite, though the exact recipe depends on the battery chemistry. Nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries held about 60% of the global market in 2022, followed by lithium iron phosphate (LFP) at just under 30%. LFP batteries skip nickel and cobalt entirely, using iron instead, which is one reason they’ve been gaining ground: they sidestep two of the most geopolitically fraught minerals in the supply chain.
Regardless of chemistry, every EV battery needs lithium and graphite. Lithium serves as the ion carrier that shuttles charge between electrodes, while graphite forms the anode, the electrode that stores lithium ions during charging. Together, these four minerals define the geography of EV battery production.
Where the Minerals Are Mined
Each mineral has its own map. Australia and Chile dominate lithium mining, together accounting for the majority of global output. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) produces roughly 70% of the world’s cobalt. Indonesia has become the leading nickel producer by a wide margin, with the Philippines and Russia trailing behind. And graphite mining is overwhelmingly concentrated in China, which produced an estimated 77% of the world’s natural graphite in 2023, or about 1.23 million metric tons out of a global total of 1.6 million. Madagascar and Mozambique are distant runners-up, each producing around 100,000 metric tons.
This geographic concentration creates fragility. A policy change, natural disaster, or trade dispute in any one of these countries can ripple through the entire EV industry.
From Raw Ore to Battery-Grade Material
Mining is only the first step. Raw minerals need to be chemically refined into high-purity compounds before they can go into a battery cell, and this is where the supply chain narrows dramatically. China is the dominant refiner for 19 of the 20 critical minerals tracked by the International Energy Agency, holding an average market share of around 70% across those materials.
Between 2020 and 2024, China captured 73% of the net growth in refined lithium production and 91% of the growth in refined cobalt production. For graphite and rare earths, the concentration is even steeper: roughly 90% of recent supply growth came from China alone. So even when minerals are pulled from the ground in Australia or the DRC, they often travel to Chinese refineries before they can be used in any battery, anywhere in the world.
Environmental Costs of Extraction
Mining these minerals carries real environmental weight. Lithium extraction from brine, the method used across South America’s “lithium triangle” of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia, is particularly water-intensive. At two Argentine salt flat operations studied in detail, freshwater consumption ranged from about 47,000 to 135,500 liters per metric ton of lithium carbonate produced. On top of that, each ton required pumping 320,000 to 537,000 liters of underground brine to the surface for evaporation. In arid regions already facing water stress, that demand creates tension with local communities and ecosystems.
Hard-rock lithium mining, common in Australia, avoids the brine water problem but generates conventional mining waste and requires significant energy for crushing and chemical processing. Nickel mining in Indonesia has driven deforestation of tropical rainforest. Cobalt mining in the DRC raises both environmental and human rights concerns, though the scale of the most problematic extraction has shifted over time.
The Cobalt Labor Question
Cobalt from the DRC has drawn intense scrutiny over artisanal mining, where individuals and small teams dig by hand with little safety equipment, sometimes including children. But the picture has changed significantly over the past fifteen years. Artisanal mining’s share of world cobalt production peaked around 2008 at 18 to 23%, then fell steadily. By 2020, artisanal operations accounted for just 6 to 8% of global cobalt output and 9 to 11% of DRC production specifically. In practical terms, if a refiner randomly sourced cobalt from the DRC, there was roughly a 90% chance it came from a large-scale industrial mine.
That doesn’t erase the problem. Even a single-digit percentage of a massive and growing market still represents thousands of workers in dangerous conditions. Major automakers and battery producers have responded with supply chain audits and traceability programs, though enforcement remains uneven.
The Carbon Footprint of Manufacturing
Once refined materials reach a battery factory, they’re assembled into cells, grouped into modules, and packaged into the large battery packs that sit beneath an EV’s floor. This manufacturing process has its own carbon cost, and it varies enormously depending on where it happens. The median cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of a lithium-ion battery falls between 48 and 120 kilograms of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour of capacity.
For a 75 kWh battery pack (a common size in mid-range EVs), that works out to roughly 3,600 to 9,000 kilograms of CO2 before the car ever turns a wheel. The wide range reflects differences in electricity grids: a factory running on coal-heavy power produces a battery with a much larger carbon footprint than one powered by renewables or natural gas. This is why the location of battery factories matters as much as their existence.
Where Battery Factories Are Being Built
China currently dominates battery cell manufacturing, but North America and Europe are building capacity fast. Fewer than ten EV battery plants were operating in the United States as of recent counts, with 13 additional facilities announced and expected to come online within five years. Volkswagen alone has committed to building six gigafactories across Europe over the coming decade. South Korea’s battery giants, including operations by LG, Samsung, and SK, supply cells from factories in both Asia and new North American plants built in partnership with automakers like GM, Ford, and Hyundai.
This factory buildout is driven partly by economics (shipping heavy battery packs across oceans is expensive) and partly by policy designed to reduce dependence on any single country’s supply chain.
How U.S. Policy Is Reshaping the Supply Chain
The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in 2022, ties the full $7,500 U.S. EV tax credit to where battery materials come from. The credit splits into two halves. To qualify for $3,750, at least 60% of the value of a battery’s critical minerals (in 2025) must be extracted or processed in the U.S. or a free trade agreement partner country, or recycled in North America. That threshold rises to 70% in 2026 and 80% in 2027. For the other $3,750, at least 60% of battery components must be manufactured or assembled in North America in 2025, climbing to 70% in 2026, 80% in 2027, 90% in 2028, and 100% by 2029.
Vehicles also cannot contain battery components or critical minerals from “foreign entities of concern,” a category that includes China and Russia. The practical effect has been a scramble by automakers to secure mineral supplies from allied nations and build processing capacity outside of China, something that will take years to fully achieve given how entrenched the current supply chain is.
Recycling as a Future Source
As early waves of EVs reach end of life, recycling is emerging as a supplementary mineral source. Modern commercial recycling facilities can recover meaningful amounts of the most valuable materials: recovery rates reached over 40% for nickel and cobalt and about 20% for lithium in 2023, measured against the total feedstock theoretically available for recycling. Those numbers are climbing as recycling technology improves and as more spent batteries enter the waste stream.
Recycling won’t replace mining anytime soon. The volume of batteries retiring today is still small compared to the volume being manufactured. But over the next decade, recycled minerals are expected to meaningfully reduce the amount of new material that needs to come out of the ground, particularly for cobalt and nickel, where recycling economics are most favorable.