US carmaker Ford has joined PT Vale Indonesia and China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt’s as their new partner in a $4.5 billion nickel processing plant in Indonesia, the companies said on Thursday.
The investment is Ford’s first in the Southeast Asian country and underscores growing appetite among automakers for raw materials used in producing electric vehicle (EV) batteries, which account for about 40% of a vehicle’s sticker price, aiming to cut costs and close the gap on EV market leader Tesla.
Volkswagen, Europe’s biggest automaker, this month said that it would invest 180 billion euros ($196 billion) over five years in areas including battery production and the sourcing of raw materials.
