Published
1 year agoon
Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer behind the United States, is going all in on electric vehicles and battery production.
While many Republican leaders continue to yell “drill, baby, drill” and bad-mouth EVs, the Saudis want 30% of the cars in the capital city of Riyadh to be electric by, 2030, Bloomberg reports.
“The world’s oil capital wants to go electric and get clean,” writes Bloomberg’s Anjani Trivedi. “To do so, it’s getting its hands on minerals critical for batteries and taking a stake in the electric vehicle-supply chain. That should put countries and companies prone to announcing ambitious plans but then doing little to make them a reality on high alert.”
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Trivedi also warns: “It’s almost too late for the U.S. and parts of Europe to catch up. Other places in the Middle East are also looking to make the transition away from their economic reliance on oil toward greener technology. Abu Dhabi recently drew in a lithium firm to build facilities at the Khalifa Industrial Zone to extract the metal and recover valuable by-products from lithium-mica and phosphate minerals.”
Read more at this Bloomberg link.
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Bill McEwen is news director and columnist for GV Wire. He joined GV Wire in August 2017 after 37 years at The Fresno Bee. With The Bee, he served as Opinion Editor, City Hall reporter, Metro columnist, sports columnist and sports editor through the years. His work has been frequently honored by the California Newspapers Publishers Association, including authoring first-place editorials in 2015 and 2016. Bill and his wife, Karen, are proud parents of two adult sons, and they have two grandsons. You can contact Bill at 559-492-4031 or at Send an Email