The global shortage of microchips has had a devastating impact on multiple industries, not least automotive manufacturers, who are expected to have lost some $210 billion in 2021 because they couldn’t get enough chips to drive the systems in their vehicles. But how did we get to this state of affairs?
Are we on target for making zero-emission vehicles account for half of all cars sold in the U.S. by 2030? Not without enough rare earth minerals to build them.
The 17 “rare earth” minerals that are essential to so many high-tech products today, from electric cars to magnets and military systems, aren’t literally rare, but their mining and production is. Read more.