Electric cars in the future would have the same cycle as current smartphones.

** No professional opinions or terms were used in this article. I wrote down my current personal thoughts on the market that I'm personally interested in. 

Recently, electric vehicles are solidifying their trend as environmental vehicles to replace the current internal combustion locomotives. Hydrogen cars are considered as alternatives, and many studies are continuing, but for the convenience of the article, I would like to describe the trend of future cars based on electric cars. It is not at a deep professional level, but just trying to express shallow ideas in terms of suppliers that supply materials to automakers.

I have been working in the steel industry for such a long time that supplies materials to automotive companies and auto parts companies. As a result, I become interested in cars, and when data or articles on trends and technologies about electric vehicles come out, I read them and see them from a marketing perspective that I have learned.

Looking at the trend closely, I think that interest in batteries is almost at the level of runaway rather than changes in the supply pattern of steel materials in cars or stories about vehicle design. In the automobile market, which has endured for a long time with fossil fuels, the change to fuel now is not just fuel change, but results in almost everything being turned upside down. 

Electric cars are not just fuel changes, but they are bringing about breakthroughs in advanced IT technology with semiconductors, lightening batteries, battery life, battery raw materials, and autonomous driving.

So, if you buy a car - of course there are people who change cars every year or in a very short period of time. - , it is expected to have the same cycle as a smartphone, not an item that is continuously used for a certain period of time. It may or may not be in the near future, but if you look at China's electric vehicle policy drive, which can be strongly pursued once the policy is established, and if you look at the sanctions of each carbon-related country unless there's another alternative, you don't think it's that far away, 

In future automobiles (electric vehicles), IT-related fields will be led by existing companies such as Samsung Electronics, Apple, and Google etc., and steel will not deviate much from existing suppliers, so it will be a battery war in the end.

A battery is divided into a cathode material and an anode material. In this sense, are there enough reserves for the raw materials of the cathode material to last for decades or hundreds of years? Or wouldn't it be possible to develop and replace the raw materials that are currently in the battery? 

Competition will be fierce. As expected, the battery war is intensifying around large companies that have the ability to mobilize funds, and competition to secure raw materials is also fierce. You don't know who will win. However, it seems to be moving on to such a competition that once it explodes, it will be a big hit.

In the end, in order to win or survive the battery competition, rapid deployment of the Supply Chain must be premised. It is understood that activities such as securing lithium mines and researching sodium continue. Since companies around the world have been interested in lithium mining for a long time, the supply lineup may already be solidified to some extent. Some raw materials are about 70% owned by China. In that sense, this raw material market also seems to have some vested interests in some companies. 

What's clear is that this period of upheaval can eventually be an opportunity from heaven for some people and companies if it's a change that reverses almost everything, such as securing battery materials and excellent IT technology. In the meantime, there seems to be a war of securing new raw materials again. Whether the war is a battery war or an IT war, the winner and the loser will be divided after some time, but now they seem to be just fiercely preparing for the war.

In Mexico alone, factories that make battery-related materials are being built here and there, and there are requests to secure steel materials that go into batteries here and there. The market is clearly visible. However, if you wonder how to enter this market and even if you enter it fortunately, you would doubt you can survive and continue to develop it. It could be a market you may hesitate to be in. 

It feels like many companies survived and were eliminated in the early days of smartphones. The smartphone companies that come to my mind now are S** and A** company. Yes, there have been several companies in other countries. But I can only think of two companies now.

In existing internal combustion engines, whether the design is good or bad, whether you like the color or not, liquid fuel is used normally, so there was no need to hesitate about fuel. But it will be different in the future. Indeed, we have more options than we do now. A lot of options, a lot to think about. We could buy a car right away, but after a while, it would be heartbreaking if a car with a better function and a lighter, longer-life battery came out at the same price. 

From a company's perspective, it has struggled to establish a supply line, but if other technologies are developed and the supply from those developed technologies is transferred to other companies, it will inevitably suffer a huge loss. From now on, it is not a matter of entering the industry first and later. It is a matter of how interested you are in analyzing the market, establishing strategies, and implementing them.