Race to the Future

Race to the Future

Electric Cars Are Taking Off, but When Will Battery Recycling Follow?

Many companies and investors are eager to recycle batteries, but it could take a decade or more before enough used lithium-ion batteries become available.

Battle Over Deep-Sea Mining Takes on New Urgency as Trial Run Winds Down

A Canadian company is testing mining equipment in the Pacific Ocean in its quest for metals needed for electric vehicles. Environmentalists oppose the mining, which could begin in 2024.

Race to the Future

How a Quebec Lithium Mine May Help Make Electric Cars Affordable

The project also illustrates how difficult it is to get lithium out of the ground and break China’s dominance in processing the metal and turning it into batteries.

Race to the Future

Secret Data, Tiny Islands and a Quest for Treasure on the Ocean Floor

Mining in parts of the Pacific Ocean was meant to benefit poor countries, but an international agency gave a Canadian company access to prized seabed sites with metals crucial to the green energy revolution.

Race to the future

Can a Tiny Territory in the South Pacific Power Tesla’s Ambitions?

Nickel is vital to electric car batteries, but extracting it is dirty and destructive. A plant with a turbulent history in New Caledonia is about to become an experiment in doing it better.

Race to the Future

Chile Writes a New Constitution, Confronting Climate Change Head On

Chile has lots of lithium, which is essential to the world’s transition to green energy. But anger over powerful mining interests, a water crisis and inequality has driven Chile to rethink how it defines itself.

Race to the Future

As Miners Chase Clean-Energy Minerals, Tribes Fear a Repeat of the Past

Mining the minerals that may be needed for a green energy revolution could devastate tribal lands. The Biden administration will be forced to choose.

Times Insider

In Congo, Bolivia and Beyond, Where the Green Future Begins

The Times’s Race to the Future series is focused on the competition for electric-car resources that will shape the 21st century.

Race to the Future

Why a Chinese Company Dominates Electric Car Batteries

Beijing gave CATL lavish subsidies, a captive market of buyers and soft regulatory treatment, helping it to control a crucial technology of the future.

Green-Energy Race Draws an American Underdog to Bolivia’s Lithium

Chinese and Russian industrial giants seek to tap mineral deposits vital to electric cars. A Texas entrepreneur has his own strategy: the long game.