German high-end car giant BMW has signed a multiyear contract worth €285-million to source lithium – a key raw material for the production of battery cells – from US-based Livent, as the group accelerates the expansion of e-mobility.

Livent will supply the lithium directly to BMW’s battery cell manufacturers from 2022 on.

The automaker sources critical raw materials, like lithium and cobalt, directly from producers and makes them available to its battery cell suppliers. In this way, the company believes it has more transparency over the origin and mining methods of the material.

BMW already signed a contract with China’s Ganfeng for the procurement of lithium from so-called hard-rock deposits at Australian mines in 2019. The lithium under the contract with Livent will be sourced from Argentina, where the raw material is obtained from brine from salt lakes.

“Lithium is one of the key raw materials for electromobility. By sourcing lithium from a second supplier, we are securing requirements for production of our current fifth generation of battery cells. At the same time, we are making ourselves technologically, geographically and geopolitically less dependent on individual suppliers,” said Dr Andreas Wendt, member of the board of management of BMW responsible for purchasing and supplier network.

Meanwhile, BMW says that, together with BASF, it has commissioned a scientific analysis of the water use of different lithium mining methods in South America from the University of Alaska Anchorage and University of Massachusetts Amherst in late 2020.

The study will investigate the impact of lithium mining on local water resources and the surrounding ecosystems.

The aim is to improve the scientific understanding of the relationship between fresh water and lithium brine aquifers, to evaluate different technologies and thus provide the foundation for assessing sustainable lithium mining. The study will provide companies with a scientific basis to make more informed decisions on sustainable lithium mining in Latin America.

The results of the study should be available in the first quarter of 2022.

By 2030, at least half of BMW’s global sales are expected to come from fully-electric vehicles.