Agency shed Bloomberg The American newspaper highlighted Saudi Arabia’s efforts to become a center for manufacturing electric car parts, following its recent efforts to achieve its goal of diversifying its economy away from oil.
In a report entitled “Saudi Electric Car Battery Bets A Warning to the World,” the agency said, “The world’s oil capital wants to become electric and clean. To do so, it is seizing the important minerals for batteries and taking a stake in the electric vehicle supply chain.”
Bloomberg said that Saudi Arabia is betting on the manufacture of car batteries, which no country in the world has done except for China.
“As shortages loom and companies try to secure expensive resources in a bid to ramp up industrialization, the kingdom has drawn in lithium miners and battery manufacturers to start operations and fill a critical gap.”
Saudi Arabia wants 30 percent of cars on its capital’s roads to be electric by the end of this decade.
She said that the establishment of manufacturing and processing centers for electric cars is a “wise move”, and this will ultimately not only help reduce costs, but will immediately ensure that Saudi Arabia becomes “a major part of the global electric vehicle manufacturing chain.”
So far, besides China and the major battery makers, a few have managed to increase the scale of manufacturing, while the Kingdom has the resources and capital to achieve this, which many companies and countries do not have.
Saudi Arabia is now using the advantage of rising oil prices and demand for electric cars to bring regarding this shift in manufacturing, which others are struggling to achieve.
The Kingdom’s geographical location adds to this, allowing it to supply Europe with it and to get resources from China and Australia.
The kingdom has begun rapidly evaluating and issuing mining licenses to benefit from its mineral resources, unlike, for example, the United States, where permits have been suspended and approvals for plans to extract minerals have fallen to the lowest levels in several years.
Bloomberg said that the kingdom’s progress in manufacturing battery materials would turn “what is a major threat to its economy into a long-term benefit.”
She explained that “it would not be surprising if companies and countries ended up exchanging battery materials with their dependence on Saudi oil.”
The report referred to partnerships and contracts concluded by the Kingdom to achieve this purpose, such as the contract it concluded with the Australian company “EV Metals Group”, and “Avas Group”, which signed an agreement in February to manufacture electric cars and lithium batteries.
The Saudi Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources announced projects worth $6 billion as part of a larger push to boost the mining industry.
Riyadh is studying 150 license applications submitted by foreign companies for the purpose of exploration for minerals.
Foxconn Group, the largest iPhone assembler, is in talks to set up a $9 billion factory to manufacture chips and parts for electric cars.
The government signed an agreement to buy up to 100,000 electric cars over 10 years from Lucid, in which the country’s sovereign wealth fund owns a stake.
The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said in a previous report, commenting on the agreement, that it is in line with achieving the goals of “Vision 2030”, which seeks to achieve wide-ranging reforms at the level of the economy, society, quality of life and diversification of the Kingdom’s economy.
These plans, according to the agency, are in line with the Green Saudi Initiative and the Green Middle East Initiative, which were previously announced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
