Aaron Bent, CEO of materials company 6K, argues the lithium battery backup can’t be fixed in the near future and impacts other ‘critical infrastructure.’
After the Biden administration announced last week it would provide more than $3 billion in a push to make components and batteries for electric vehicles, one U.S. materials and battery maker is telling the president to give his plan another look.
“Take a step back,” 6K CEO Aaron Bent said on “Mornings with Maria” Thursday. “This is really a story about domestic production, national security and maintaining U.S. technology leadership.”
The price of lithium has surged 430% over the last year. Experts have signaled it’s not a shortage of the material itself, but rather the slow process to extract the material that’s causing the backup.
According to Bent, 95% of battery materials are imported from Asia, and the production problem could be fixed with a domestic supply chain shift.
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“Our dependency on foreign countries for lithium-ion batteries has the potential of being actually worse than the semiconductor issue we’re seeing today,” Bent warned.
The CEO further scolded the president, claiming batteries are required for more “critical infrastructure” than EVs.
Aaron Bent, CEO of materials company 6K, calls out President Biden’s electric vehicle push, arguing the lithium-ion battery shortage is a worse problem than lawmakers think on “Mornings with Maria” Thursday, May 12, 2022. (Getty Images / iStock / Fox News)
“Our power plants, our telecommunications, our data centers,” said Brent. “And there are literally zero battery materials produced on U.S. soil today. And that’s a serious issue. We have less than a month of supply on U.S. soil.”
While explaining how to increase lithium-ion battery production, the materials expert cautioned that it can’t be done in the short term.
“It’s going to take two major things: One is a lot of collaboration between industry and government and creating domestic supply chains here in the United States,” Bent noted. “But I think the biggest thing is it’s going to take us technological innovation.”
6K’s CEO expressed his hope for the company to “change the narrative” within key industries that put the U.S. at a disadvantage, like the lithium battery market.
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“That’s where I go back to the need to do technology innovation and willingness to support young companies to leapfrog China,” Bent said.
6K CEO Aaron Bent says the investment money will be used to support lithium ion battery production and lowering battery prices.
“Very few policymakers realize how serious an issue lithium-ion batteries are and the supply chain infrastructure, the fragility of it” and that “across the aisle, there’s a lot of support for doing something different. We just have to change and move into action,” he added.
