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    How Biden Uses His ‘Car Guy’ Persona to Burnish His Everyman Image

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    In the run-up to the midterm elections next month, President Biden is hoping his gearhead reputation will appeal to some parts of the Trump base.WASHINGTON — At a Secret Service training facility in Maryland late this summer, President Biden peeled out in his cherished 1967 Corvette Stingray, pushing it to 118 miles per hour, according to the speedometer that flashed across the screen in an upcoming episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage.”Mr. Biden and Mr. Leno, a fellow car enthusiast, gushed during the show about an electrified classic Ford F-100 — the president’s latest attempt to bridge a passion for muscle cars with an environmental agenda that relies on a transition to electric vehicles.Two years into his presidency, Mr. Biden is once again embracing a persona that has served him since his earliest days in politics almost five decades ago: the car guy.The president has long used his affinity for cars to burnish his workaday origins and, more recently, to conjure an aura of vitality despite being the oldest president in American history. In the run-up to the midterm elections next month — with control of Congress and the future of his agenda at stake — Mr. Biden is hoping his gearhead reputation will appeal to some parts of the Republican base.In a country of car lovers, polls suggest that Democrats are still headed to defeat. But people close to Mr. Biden say his love of cars goes beyond the usual political posturing that is put on display only when voting is near. It is something of an obsession, they say.In Oval Office meetings to chart the future of America’s car industry, Mr. Biden regales aides with obscure trivia about automobiles that were made before many of them were born.Ahead of a gathering of car executives at the White House last year to highlight the electrification revolution, the president huddled with staff members to ponder an important national question: Which vehicle might he test-drive for the cameras? He took a hybrid Jeep Wrangler for a spin on the South Lawn — a perk of the presidency he was happy to accept.Read More on Electric VehiclesA Bonanza for Red States: No Republican in Congress voted for the Inflation Reduction Act. But their states will greatly benefit from the investments in electric vehicle spurred by the law.Rivian Recall: The electric-car maker said that it was recalling 13,000 vehicles after identifying an issue that could affect drivers’ ability to steer some of its vehicles.China’s Thriving Market: More electric cars will be sold in the country this year than in the rest of the world combined, as its domestic market accelerates ahead of the global competition.A Crucial Mine: A thousand feet below wetlands in northern Minnesota are ancient deposits of nickel, a sought-after mineral seen as key to the future of the U.S. electric car industry.“You all know I’m a car guy,” Mr. Biden said at the Detroit auto show last month. “Just looking at them and driving them, they just give me a sense of optimism.”He added, “Although I like the speed, too.”The son of a car dealership manager, Mr. Biden has attributed his love of fast cars to his father, who he has said was a great driver. His lineage came with automotive benefits.In high school, a young Mr. Biden drove a 1951 Plymouth convertible. On the occasion of his senior prom, he impressed his date with a Chrysler 300D that he borrowed from his father’s lot. By the time he was in college, Mr. Biden had purchased a Mercedes 190SL.The Corvette Stingray, which was maintained by Mr. Biden’s sons during his vice presidency, was a surprise wedding present from his father.The interior of Mr. Biden’s 1967 Corvette Stingray.Adam Schultz/Biden for PresidentSecret Service rules prohibit presidents and vice presidents from driving on public roads for safety reasons. Once you reach the highest office, you are relegated to the back of a bulletproof limousine.In 2011, when he was vice president, Mr. Biden told Car and Driver magazine that the security requirement that forbade him to rev engines was “the one thing I hate about this job.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Former President Ronald Reagan famously cherished his red 1962 Willys Jeep, which was a gift from his wife, Nancy, that he would only ride around his ranch. In the early 1990s, Mr. Reagan once gave Mikhail S. Gorbachev a ride in his Jeep Scrambler with a license plate that read “Gipper” during a visit to the ranch.President Bill Clinton used to lament that he could no longer drive his blue 1967 Mustang convertible. In 1994, he drew cheers from a crowd that might have otherwise been hostile when he took his old car for a short drive at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.Even President Donald J. Trump was known to have a multimillion-dollar luxury car collection, though he was rarely seen driving over the years.“It’s convenient for senior American politicians to have a favorite American muscle car,” said David A. Kirsch, a professor at the University of Maryland’s business school and the author of “The Electric Vehicle and the Burden of History.” “It is a type of affinity with the American worker, and I think it does connote an image of male virility and machismo that is important for a leader who wants to appear strong.”Mr. Biden’s love of cars has always been part of his political image.The 2009 recovery act that Mr. Biden oversaw as vice president was instrumental in saving the American car industry and the rescue of Detroit after the financial crisis the previous year. At the time, Mr. Biden helped lead the rollout of $2 billion in research grants to accelerate the development of batteries for electric vehicles.When Mr. Biden was seeking re-election in 2012 on the ticket with President Barack Obama, his mantra at campaign rallies was: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”The White House has sought to capitalize on Mr. Biden’s knowledge of cars and the industry, regularly scheduling events at manufacturing facilities owned by Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. The visits also offer the president the opportunity to engage in car talk while shining a light on an industry in transition.After Mr. Biden’s visit to Ford last year, when he test-drove the electric F-150 Lightning, the company received 200,000 reservations for the new truck.“When the president is driving it, people see this is a piece of automotive technology that’s cool,” said Mark Truby, Ford’s chief communications officer.Mr. Biden driving the new Ford F-150 Lightning at the Ford Dearborn Development Center last year.Doug Mills/The New York TimesDespite recent signs of progress, managing the move to electric vehicles is a political challenge. Supply chain disruptions have made it more difficult for consumers who want electric vehicles to get them. European countries are upset over the Biden administration’s efforts to favor domestic manufacturing with tax credits.The shift to electric is also increasingly tied to culture wars at a time of deep national divisions. This month, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said Democrats who promote electric vehicles were trying to “emasculate the way we drive.”Mr. Leno, who is one of the few people to have been driven by Mr. Biden since he took office, said the president handled his green Corvette with aplomb.“You know, he’s a good driver,” Mr. Leno, who would not confirm if the president actually pushed his car to triple-digit speeds, said in an interview. “He still has a Corvette; he can drive a stick. I mean, most presidents are not car guys.”Still, Mr. Biden will not be driving electric cars or his own classic combustion vehicle on public roads anytime soon.“I miss it,” Mr. Biden told Mr. Leno on the show, which airs on Wednesday night on CNBC. “Every once in a while I take the Corvette out of the garage and just run up and down the driveway.” More

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    Biden’s ‘Made in America’ Policies Anger Key Allies

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    The president’s plans to bolster America’s electric vehicle and battery production have opened a rift in relationships in Asia and Europe.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s efforts to bolster domestic manufacturing are coming under diplomatic fire from key allies, with European governments accusing his administration of undercutting the trans-Atlantic alliance with “Made in America” policies that threaten their economies.The objections center on policies included in the Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to make the United States less reliant on foreign suppliers by providing financial incentives to locate factories and produce goods in the United States, including electric vehicles. Mr. Biden has touted the law as key to creating “tens of thousands of good-paying jobs and clean energy manufacturing jobs, solar factories in the Midwest and the South, wind farms across the plains and off our shores, clean hydrogen projects and more — all across America, every part of America.”But that has prompted cries of protectionism by foreign officials and accusations that the Biden administration is violating trade laws by giving preferential treatment to U.S.-based firms.“We are having concerns that a number of the provisions are discriminatory against E.U. companies, which of course obviously is a problem for us,” Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Union’s commissioner for trade, told reporters in Washington on Thursday.The disagreement represents the first major rift between the United States and Europe since Mr. Biden took office last year. The president, who promised to take a softer diplomatic touch than the Trump administration had with its “America First” agenda, has worked closely with European allies on a number of priorities, including punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. In his first months in office, Mr. Biden quickly moved to repair relations with Europe, including by resolving a 17-year dispute over aviation subsidies.But the unified front between the United States and Europe showed signs of strain during this week’s annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. European officials complained to the top ranks of the Biden administration that provisions in the expansive climate and energy law to support domestic production of electric vehicles violate international trade rules that require countries to treat foreign and domestic companies equally. They argued the provisions are unfair to their domestic car industries.Mr. Dombrovskis said that he and other European officials would be directing their concerns to Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, whose agency is responsible for implementing much of the law, along with Katherine Tai, the U. S. trade representative, and Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary.Read More on Electric VehiclesRivian Recall: The electric-car maker said that it was recalling 13,000 vehicles after identifying an issue that could affect drivers’ ability to steer some of its vehicles.China’s Thriving E.V. Market: More electric cars will be sold in the country this year than in the rest of the world combined, as its domestic market accelerates ahead of the global competition.A Crucial Mine: A thousand feet below wetlands in northern Minnesota are ancient deposits of nickel, a sought-after mineral seen as key to the future of the U.S. electric car industry.Banning Gasoline Cars: California is leading the way in the push to electrify the nation’s car fleet with a plan to ban sales of new internal-combustion vehicles by 2035, but the rule will face several challenges.In a meeting with Mr. Dombrovskis on Thursday, Ms. Tai “shared her view that seriously combating the climate crisis will require increased investments in clean energy technologies,” the Office of the United States Trade Representative said in a statement. Both Ms. Tai and Mr. Dombrovskis “asked their teams to increase engagement” on the issue.European officials are discussing whether to contest the law, which was passed by Democrats along party lines, at the World Trade Organization, which could be time consuming and fruitless, or to formally raise the matter through the Trade and Technology Council that was formed last year.The crux of the international fight centers on more than $50 billion in tax credits to entice Americans to buy electric vehicles. The law restricts the credit to vehicles that are assembled in North America. It also has strict requirements surrounding the components that go into powering electric vehicles, including batteries and the critical minerals that are used to make them. That is creating new incentives for battery makers to build recycling and production facilities in the United States.Foreign companies that manufacture cars and car parts in the United States can also qualify for the credit. But some foreign carmakers, particularly those from Asia, tend to import more components for electric vehicles from outside the United States, meaning that fewer of their models qualify.That has sparked accusations that the terms of the law were written to benefit U.S. companies like General Motors or Ford, rather than foreign companies like Toyota and Honda, even though many foreign companies have invested heavily in the United States.“We understand that some trading partners have concerns with how the EV tax credit provisions in the law will operate in practice with respect to their producers,” said Eduardo Maia Silva, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “We are committed to working with our partners to better understand their concerns and keep open channels of engagement on these issues.”European officials are concerned that the U.S. law will drive a wedge between European companies and their home countries if carmakers such as Porsche are under pressure to set up shop in the United States instead of opening more factories in Germany. Since the law went into effect, Honda, Toyota and LG Energy Solutions of South Korea have all announced major battery investments in the United States.A previous version of the bill would have offered the tax credit to only U.S.-produced vehicles. But Canada and Mexico both lobbied against that draft version, and the measure was ultimately expanded to apply to vehicles produced throughout North America.Asian allies have also expressed concerns about the law.When Vice President Kamala Harris met with South Korean leaders in Tokyo and Seoul last month, the allies did not hesitate to express their frustration.Hours before Ms. Harris attended the funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, Korean officials, including Prime Minister Han Duck-soo expressed their concerns about the legislation to the vice president in a closed-door meeting. The Japanese government has also expressed concerns.Frank Aum, a senior expert on Northeast Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said the tax credit was a “direct harm” to South Korean companies like Hyundai and Kia that wouldn’t get the benefit of the tax credit.“South Korea is feeling very much betrayed because of the investments that they have made in the electric vehicle battery and semiconductor industries in the U.S. over the last couple years,” he said.Just months before he signed it into law, Mr. Biden stood with the chairman of Hyundai in Seoul to celebrate the South Korean company’s investment in a new electric vehicle and battery manufacturing facility in Savannah, Ga. In meetings with Mr. Han and later with President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea in Seoul, Ms. Harris said she would consult with South Korea as the law is implemented. The Biden administration has downplayed the tensions, saying that it is relying on its strong relationships with other governments to talk through those differences and fight the bigger battle of climate change.In an Oct. 7 speech at the Roosevelt Institute, a Washington think tank, Ms. Tai called out the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism — a proposal that would encourage cleaner manufacturing by levying a tax on imported goods based on how many greenhouse gasses their production emits — saying that those European measure could also cause tensions with allies. But the United States and Europe should work through those differences to combat climate change together, she added.“As we seek to reduce our carbon footprints and benefit our industries, we’re each going to do things that cause anxiety, whether it’s the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism or the Inflation Reduction Act. But this also creates an opportunity for us to work together, to tackle this existential crisis that threatens all of us,” Ms. Tai said.Still, trade experts have warned that the U.S. efforts could potentially kick off a similar wave of protectionist measures to match those adopted by the United States.Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, said last month that the European Union should consider adopting electric vehicle bonuses for cars that are produced within the E.U. and meet rigorous environmental standards.In that event, America’s policies could backfire in the long run, if American cars or components face similar barriers to being sold in Europe or Asia, said Chad P. Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.“I think the risk on the U.S. side is that if we don’t address some of their major concerns, that they’ll ultimately do the same thing,” he said.Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, said at an event this week that he hopes that eventually U.S. allies will benefit from America’s investment in its production of goods such as critical minerals because it will also solidify their supply chains.A Treasury Department spokeswoman declined to comment on how Ms. Yellen responded to the complaints of her European counterparts this week. In remarks at her closing news conference on Friday, Ms. Yellen touted the ambitions of the Inflation Reduction Act without acknowledging the concerns in Europe and Asia.“It’s our nation’s most aggressive domestic action on climate,” Ms. Yellen said. “And it puts us on a strong path to meet our emissions reduction goals.” More

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    Did You Recently Buy an Electric Vehicle? We Want to Hear About It.

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    People are buying electric vehicles at a record pace, snapping up battery-powered cars and trucks as quickly as automakers can make them. In just a few years, electric vehicles have gone from expensive novelties for the superrich to a must-have product for many people.We’re doing a story on who’s buying electric cars today, hoping to better understand people’s decisions and what they think of the vehicles. We particularly want to speak to people who bought their first electric vehicle in the last year or so.We will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first. We may use your contact information to follow up with you.Tell us about your electric car purchase.Required questions are noted with * More

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    This Remote Mine Could Foretell the Future of America’s Electric Car Industry

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    Hiding a thousand feet below the earth’s surface in this patch of northern Minnesota wetlands are ancient mineral deposits that some view as critical to fueling America’s clean energy future.Tim Gruber for The New York TimesA company called Talon Metals is drilling here around the clock, extracting samples of rock rich with nickel in a bid to become the country’s sole source of a material used to power zero-emission vehicles.But some locals are fighting the mine, for fear it could pollute their environment. The pushback hints at how difficult it may be to build an all-American supply chain that powers the country’s transition to electric vehicles.This Remote Mine Could Foretell the Future of America’s Electric Car IndustryTAMARACK, Minn. — In this isolated town of about 100 people, dozens of employees are at work for Talon Metals, drawing long cylinders of rock from deep in the earth and analyzing their contents. They liken their work to a game of Battleship — each hole drilled allows them to better map out where a massive and long-hidden mineral deposit is lurking below.The company is proposing to build an underground mine near Tamarack that would produce nickel, a highly sought-after mineral that is used to power electric vehicles. It would be a profitable venture for Talon, which has a contract to supply nickel for Tesla’s car batteries, and a step forward in the country’s race to develop domestic supply chains to feed the growing demand for electric vehicles.But mines that extract metal from sulfide ore, as this one would, have a poor environmental record in the United States, and an even more checkered footprint globally. While some in the area argue the mine could bring good jobs to a sparsely populated region, others are deeply fearful that it could spoil local lakes and streams that feed into the Mississippi River. There is also concern that it could endanger the livelihoods and culture of Ojibwe tribes whose members live just over a mile from Talon’s land and have gathered wild rice here for generations.Talon says it will invest heavily to design the world’s greenest and most responsible mine yet, one that they say “Joe Biden can love.” But some people in the community remain skeptical, including about the company’s promises to respect Indigenous rights, like the tribes’ authority over lands where their members hunt and gather food. Part of that mistrust stems from the fact that Talon’s minority partner, Rio Tinto, provoked outrage in 2020 by blowing up a 46,000-year-old system of Aboriginal caves in Australia in a search for iron ore.Kelly Applegate, the commissioner of natural resources for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, said he was “very concerned” about how the mine might damage the environment. “This again is an assault on Native culture, a disturbance of our way of being, another trauma that could potentially happen to our people,” he said.He described it as a “huge environmental justice issue” to mine local resources for electric cars that the tribe’s members would be unable to afford. Except for some wealthy homeowners who spend their summers around the lakes, the area is one of the poorest parts of Minnesota. Native Americans in Minnesota experience poverty at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group in the state. Locals say the only Tesla for miles is Talon’s company car.“Talon and Rio Tinto will come and go — greatly enriched by their mining operation. But we, and the remnants of the Tamarack mine, will be here forever,” Mr. Applegate said.The project, which lies 50 miles west of Lake Superior, highlights some of the challenges that are emerging as the Biden administration tries to transition America to electric vehicles. The administration has said it wants to make the supply chains for batteries more resilient by sourcing minerals inside North America. But that desire could bring its own potential for environmental damage and infringement of the rights of Indigenous Americans. Much of the nation’s supply of battery materials is near tribal land.The world urgently needs to switch to cleaner cars to limit the global damage from climate change, many climate activists say. Last week, California approved a plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.But current supply chains for electric vehicle batteries — and the batteries that would be needed for the electric grid that would charge that fleet of vehicles — rely on some adversarial and heavily polluting foreign nations. Much of the nickel that goes into car batteries is produced by strip mines that have decimated rainforests in Indonesia and the Philippines, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide before being refined in Chinese factories powered by coal.Read More on Electric VehiclesBanning Gasoline Cars: California is leading the way in the push to electrify the nation’s car fleet with a plan to ban sales of new internal-combustion vehicles by 2035, but the rule will face several challenges.Inflation Reduction Act: The law extends tax incentives in an effort to steer more U.S. consumers toward electric cars. But new rules complicate the qualification process.Plug-In Hybrids: After falling behind all-electric cars, U.S. sales of plug-in hybrids have been surging. The high cost of electric cars and gasoline have given them an opening.Car Crashes: Tesla and other automakers capture data from their vehicles to operate their products. Experts say the collected information could also improve road safety.Another source of nickel is a massive mining operation north of the Arctic Circle in Norilsk, Russia, which has produced so much sulfur dioxide that a plume of the toxic gas is big enough to be seen from space. Other minerals used in electric vehicle batteries, such as lithium and cobalt, appear to have been mined or refined with the use of child or forced labor.With global demand for electric vehicles projected to grow sixfold by 2030, the dirty origins of this otherwise promising green industry have become a looming crisis. The Democrats’ new tax and climate bill devotes nearly $400 billion to clean energy initiatives over the next decade, including electric vehicle tax credits and financing for companies that manufacture clean cars in the United States.New domestic high-tech mines and factories could make this supply chain more secure, and potentially less damaging to the global environment. But skeptics say those facilities may still pose a risk to the air, soil and water that surrounds them, and spark a fierce debate about which communities might bear those costs.The project is near lakes and streams that feed into the Mississippi River, and where Ojibwe tribes have gathered wild rice for generations.The potential risks to plants and wildlife come from the sulfide ores; the ores, in which materials like copper and nickel are lodged, can leach out sulfuric acid and heavy metals. More than a dozen former copper mines in the United States are now Superfund sites, contaminated locations where taxpayers can end up on the hook for cleanup.In January, the Biden administration canceled leases for another copper-nickel mine near a Minnesota wilderness area, saying the Trump administration had improperly renewed them.Talon Metals insists that it will have no such problems. “We can produce the battery materials that are necessary for the energy transition and also protect the environment,” said Todd Malan, the company’s chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy. “It’s not a choice.”The company is using high-tech equipment to map underground flows of water in the area and create a 3-D model of the ore, so it can mine “surgically” while leaving other parts of the earth undisturbed, Mr. Malan said. Talon is also promising to use technology that will safely store the mine’s toxic byproducts and do its mining far underground, in deep bedrock where groundwater doesn’t typically penetrate.Talon has teamed up with the United Steelworkers union on work force development. And Rio Tinto has won a $2.2 million Department of Energy grant to explore capturing carbon near the site, which may allow the mine to market its products as zero emission.“We can produce the battery materials that are necessary for the energy transition and also protect the environment,” said Todd Malan, the chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy at Talon.In a statement, Talon said it was committed to “meaningful consultations with tribal sovereign governments and tribal people” and producing a mine plan that addressed their concerns, as well as working with tribal governments interested in economic benefit sharing.The company has held several informational meetings with tribal staff and members, but some tribal members say they still need far more details from Talon about its plans.If the mine comes online in 2026 as scheduled, it will be positioned to feed a hungry market. The United States currently has one operating nickel mine, in Michigan, but its resources will be exhausted by 2026.In Washington, a bipartisan consensus is growing that the country should reduce its reliance on risky overseas minerals. To limit global warming to the levels that advanced countries have agreed on, the International Energy Agency estimates, the world will need roughly 20 times as much nickel and cobalt by 2040 as it had in 2020 and 40 times as much lithium.Recycling could play a bigger role in supplying these materials by the end of the decade, and some new car batteries do not use any nickel. Yet nickel is still highly sought after for electric trucks and higher-end cars, because it increases a vehicle’s range.The infrastructure law passed last year devoted $7 billion to developing the domestic supply chain for critical minerals. The climate and tax law also sets ambitious thresholds for ensuring that electric vehicles that receive tax incentives are partly U.S.-made.Elisabeth Kachinske logged core samples containing nickel at Talon’s offices in Tamarack, Minn.Talon’s proposed mine could help Tesla meet those thresholds. Tesla gets its nickel from China, Australia, New Caledonia and Canada, and its chief executive, Elon Musk, has begged miners to produce more.Some environmental and left-leaning groups that have long been skeptical of domestic mining are adjusting those positions, arguing that resources are needed for the energy transition.Collin O’Mara, the chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, said that there was a growing need for battery materials that were mined responsibly, and that Talon was promising to use state-of-the-art techniques to minimize the mine’s footprint.But he acknowledged that for local residents it would still take a leap of faith in new technologies and Talon’s ability to apply them. “There still isn’t an example of an existing mine that has had no impacts,” he said.The economic potential — and the environmental risks — may go far beyond a single mine. The entire region is home to deposits of nickel, copper and cobalt, which were formed 1.1 billion years ago from a volcano that spewed out miles of liquid magma.Talon has leased 31,000 acres of land in the area, covering an 11-mile geological feature deep under the swamp. The company has zealously drilled and examined the underground resources along one of those 11 miles, and discovered several other potential satellite deposits.Elizabeth Skinaway, a member of the Sandy Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa, is especially concerned about damage to the wild rice, which she has gathered in lakes near the proposed mine for 43 years.In August, the company announced that it had also acquired land in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to explore for more nickel.Talon will start Minnesota’s environmental review process within a few months, and the company says it anticipates a straightforward review. But legal challenges for proposed mines can regularly stretch to a decade or more, and some living near the project say they will do what they can to fight the mine.Elizabeth Skinaway and her sister, Jean Skinaway-Lawrence, members of the Sandy Lake Band of Minnesota Chippewa, are especially concerned about damage to the wild rice, which Ms. Skinaway has been gathering in lakes several miles from the proposed mine for 43 years.Ms. Skinaway acknowledges the need to combat climate change, which also threatens the rice. But she sees little justice in using the same kind of profit-driven, extractive industry that she said had long plundered native lands and damaged the global environment.“The wild rice, the gift from the creator, that’s going to be gone, from the sulfide that’s going to leach into the river and the lakes,” she said. “It’s just a really scary thought.”“We were here first,” said her sister. “We should be heard.”The Talon drill site near Tamarack. More

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    Red Flags for Forced Labor Found in China’s Car Battery Supply Chain

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    The photograph on the mining conglomerate’s social media account showed 70 ethnic Uyghur workers standing at attention under the flag of the People’s Republic of China. It was March 2020 and the recruits would soon undergo training in management, etiquette and “loving the party and the country,” their new employer, the Xinjiang Nonferrous Metal Industry Group, announced.But this was no ordinary worker orientation. It was the kind of program that human rights groups and U.S. officials consider a red flag for forced labor in China’s western Xinjiang region, where the Communist authorities have detained or imprisoned more than 1 million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs and members of other largely Muslim minorities.The scene also represents a potential problem for the global effort to fight climate change.China produces three-quarters of the world’s lithium ion batteries, and almost all the metals needed to make them are processed there. Much of the material, though, is actually mined elsewhere, in places like Argentina, Australia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Uncomfortable with relying on other countries, the Chinese government has increasingly turned to western China’s mineral wealth as a way to shore up scarce supplies.That means companies like the Xinjiang Nonferrous Metal Industry Group are assuming a larger role in the supply chain behind the batteries that power electric vehicles and store renewable energy — even as China’s draconian crackdown on minorities in Xinjiang fuels outrage around the world.The Chinese government denies the presence of forced labor in Xinjiang, calling it “the lie of the century.” But it acknowledges running what it describes as a work transfer program that sends Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities from the region’s more rural south to jobs in its more industrialized north.Xinjiang Nonferrous and its subsidiaries have partnered with the Chinese authorities to take in hundreds of such workers in recent years, according to articles displayed proudly in Chinese on the company’s social media account. These workers were eventually sent to work in the conglomerate’s mines, a smelter and factories that produce some of the most highly sought minerals on earth, including lithium, nickel, manganese, beryllium, copper and gold.It is difficult to trace precisely where the metals produced by Xinjiang Nonferrous go. But some have been exported to the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and India, according to company statements and customs records. And some have gone to large Chinese battery makers, who in turn, directly or indirectly, supply major American entities, including automakers, energy companies and the U.S. military, according to Chinese news reports.It is unclear whether these relationships are ongoing, and Xinjiang Nonferrous did not respond to requests for comment.But this previously unreported connection between critical minerals and the kind of work transfer programs in Xinjiang that the U.S. government and others have called a form of forced labor could portend trouble for industries that depend on these materials, including the global auto sector.A new law, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, goes into effect in the United States on Tuesday and will bar products that were made in Xinjiang or have ties to the work programs there from entering the country. It requires importers with any ties to Xinjiang to produce documentation showing that their products, and every raw material they are made with, are free of forced labor — a tricky undertaking given the complexity and opacity of Chinese supply chains.A Critical Year for Electric VehiclesAs the overall auto market stagnates, the popularity of battery-powered cars is soaring worldwide.Charging Stations: The Biden administration unveiled proposed regulations that would require stations built with federal dollars to be located no more than 50 miles apart.General Motors: The company hopes to become a leading force in the electric vehicle industry. Its chief executive shared how G.M. intends to get there.Turning Point: Electric vehicles still account for a small slice of the market, but this year, their march could become unstoppable. Here’s why.New Materials: As automakers seek to electrify their fleets and to direct electricity more efficiently, alternatives to silicon are gaining traction.The apparel, food and solar industries have already been upended by reports linking their supply chains in Xinjiang to forced labor. Solar companies last year were forced to halt billions of dollars of projects as they investigated their supply chains.The global battery industry could face its own disruptions given Xinjiang’s deep ties to the raw materials needed for next-generation technology.Trade experts have estimated that thousands of global companies may actually have some link to Xinjiang in their supply chains. If the United States fully enforces the new law, it could result in many products being blocked at the border, including those needed for electric vehicles and renewable energy projects.Some administration officials raised objections to cutting off shipments of all Chinese goods linked with Xinjiang, arguing that it would be disruptive to the U.S. economy and the clean energy transition.Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, a Democrat from New York who helped create the Congressional Uyghur Caucus, said that while banning products from the Xinjiang region might make goods go up in price, “it’s too damn bad.”“We can’t continue to do business with people that are violating basic human rights,” he said. To understand how reliant the battery industry is on China, consider the country’s role in producing the materials that are critical to the technology. While many of the metals used in batteries today are mined elsewhere, almost all of the processing required to turn those materials into batteries takes place in China. The country processes 50 to 100 percent of the world’s lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite, and makes 80 percent of the cells that power lithium ion batteries, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a research firm.“If you were to look at any electric vehicle battery, there would be some involvement from China,” said Daisy Jennings-Gray, a senior analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.The materials Xinjiang Nonferrous has produced — including a dizzying array of valuable minerals, like zinc, beryllium, cobalt, vanadium, lead, copper, gold, platinum and palladium — have gone into a wide variety of consumer products, including pharmaceuticals, jewelry, building materials and electronics. The company also claims to be one of China’s largest producers of lithium metal, and its second-largest producer of nickel cathode, which can be used to make batteries, stainless steel and other goods.Xinjiang Non-Ferrous Metal Industry Group was one of the region’s earliest miners, operating the state-owned No. 3 pegamite mining pit beginning in the 1950s.Shen Longquan/Visual China Group, via Getty ImagesIn recent years, the company has expanded into Xinjiang’s south, the homeland of most Uyghurs, acquiring valuable new deposits that executives describe as “critical” to China’s resource security.Ma Xingrui, a former aerospace engineer who was appointed Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang in 2021, has talked up Xinjiang’s prospects as a source of high-tech materials. This month, he told executives from Xinjiang Nonferrous and other state-owned companies that they should “step up” in new energy, materials and other strategic sectors.Xinjiang Nonferrous’s role in work transfer programs ramped up several years ago, as part of efforts by the Chinese leader Xi Jinping to drastically transform Uyghur society to become richer, more secular and loyal to the Communist Party. In 2017, the Xinjiang government announced plans to transfer 100,000 people from southern Xinjiang into new jobs over three years. Dozens of state-owned companies, including Xinjiang Nonferrous, were assigned to absorb 10,000 of those laborers in return for subsidies and bonuses.Transferred workers appear to make up only a minor part of the labor force at Xinjiang Nonferrous, perhaps a few hundred of its more than 7,000 employees. The company and its subsidiaries reported recruiting 644 workers from two rural counties of southern Xinjiang from 2017 to 2020, and training more since then.Some laborers were sent to the company’s copper-nickel mine and smelter, which are operated by Xinjiang Xinxin Mining Industry, a Hong Kong-listed subsidiary that has received investment from the state of Alaska, the University of Texas system and Vanguard. Other laborers went to subsidiaries that produce lithium, manganese and gold.Before being assigned to work, predominantly Muslim minorities were given lectures on “eradicating religious extremism” and becoming obedient, law-abiding workers who “embraced their Chinese nationhood,” Xinjiang Nonferrous said.Inductees for one company unit underwent six months of training including military-style drills and ideological training. They were encouraged to speak out against religious extremism, oppose “two-faced individuals” — a term for those who privately oppose Chinese government policies — and write a letter to their hometown elders expressing gratitude to the Communist Party and the company, according to the company’s social media account. Trainees faced strict assessments, with “morality” and rule compliance accounting for half of their score. Those who scored well earned better pay, while students and teachers who violated rules were punished or fined.Even as it promotes the successes of the programs, the company’s propaganda hints at the government pressure on it to meet labor transfer goals, even through the coronavirus pandemic.A 2017 article in the Xinjiang Daily quoted one 33-year-old villager as saying that he was initially “reluctant to go out to work” and “quite satisfied” with his income from farming, but was persuaded to go to work at Xinjiang Nonferrous’ subsidiary after party members visited his house several times to “work on his thinking.” And in a visit in 2018 to Keriya County, Zhang Guohua, the company president, told officials to “work on the thinking” of families of transferred laborers to ensure that no one abandoned their jobs.Chinese authorities say that all employment is voluntary, and that work transfers help free rural families from poverty by giving them steady wages, skills and Chinese-language training.“No one has been forced to become ‘transferred labor’ in Xinjiang,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, told reporters in Beijing this month.It is difficult to ascertain the level of coercion any individual worker has faced given the limited access to Xinjiang for journalists and research firms. Laura T. Murphy, a professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam University in Britain, said that resisting such programs is seen as a sign of extremist activity and carries a risk of being sent to an internment camp.“A Uyghur person cannot say no to this,” she said. “They are harassed or, in the government’s words, educated,’ until they are forced to go.”Files from police servers in Xinjiang published by the BBC last month described a shoot-to-kill policy for those trying to escape from internment camps, as well as mandatory blindfolds and shackles for “students” being transferred between facilities.Other Chinese metal and mining companies also appear to be linked with labor transfers at a smaller scale, including Zijin Mining Group Co. Ltd., which has acquired cobalt and lithium assets around the globe, and Xinjiang TBEA Group Co. Ltd., which makes aluminum for lithium battery cathodes, according to media reports and academic research. Other entities that were previously sanctioned by the United States over human rights abuses are also involved in the supply chain for graphite, a key battery material that is only refined in China, according to Horizon Advisory, a research firm.An indoctrination center in Hotan, China. In 2017, the regional government announced plans to transfer 100,000 people from the cities of Kashgar and Hotan in southern Xinjiang into new jobs.Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesThe raw materials that these laborers produce disappear into complex and secretive supply chains, often passing through multiple companies as they are turned into auto parts, electronics and other goods. While that makes them difficult to trace, records show that Xinjiang Nonferrous has developed multiple potential channels to the United States. Many more of the company’s materials are likely transformed in Chinese factories into other products before they are sent abroad.For example, Xinjiang Nonferrous is a current supplier to the China operations of Livent Corporation, a chemical giant with headquarters in the United States that uses lithium to produce a chemical used to make automobile interiors and tires, hospital equipment, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and electronics.A Livent spokesman said that the firm prohibits forced labor among its vendors, and that its due diligence had not indicated any red flags. Livent did not respond to a question about whether products made with materials from Xinjiang are exported to the United States.In theory, the new U.S. law should block all goods made with any raw materials that are associated with Xinjiang until they are proven to be free of slavery or coercive labor practices. But it remains to be seen if the U.S. government is willing or able to turn away such an array of foreign goods.“China is so central to so many supply chains,” said Evan Smith, the chief executive of the supply chain research company Altana AI. “Forced labor goods are making their way into a really broad swath of our global economy.”Raymond Zhong More

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    Ford Plans 6,000 New Union Jobs in Three Midwestern States

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    Ford Motor said on Thursday that it was planning to invest $3.7 billion in facilities across the Midwest, much of it for the production of electric vehicles, which the company said would create more than 6,000 union jobs in the region.“We’re investing in American jobs and our employees to build a new generation of incredible Ford vehicles,” Jim Farley, the company’s president and chief executive, said in a statement. “Transforming our company for the next era of American manufacturing requires new ways of working.”The announcement, made jointly with the United Automobile Workers union, detailed investments in three states. Ford said it would invest $2 billion and create about 3,200 union jobs in Michigan, including many tied to production of the new F-150 Lightning pickup truck, the company’s highest-profile and most important bet on electric vehicles.In Ohio, Ford will spend over $1.5 billion and create nearly 2,000 union jobs, primarily to build commercial electric vehicles in the middle of this decade. The company also said it would add over 1,000 union jobs at an assembly plant in Kansas City, Mo., that will produce commercial vans, some gas-powered and some electric.The company had indicated that some of the investments would be coming, like the expansion of production capacity for the F-150 in Michigan, but had not detailed the magnitude.The moves follow Ford’s announcement last year that it would build four factories in Kentucky and Tennessee — three battery factories for electric vehicles and a truck assembly plant — irking union officials and elected leaders in Midwestern states, who worry about losing manufacturing jobs to the South.In addition to the new Midwestern jobs, Ford said it would convert nearly 3,000 temporary jobs into permanent full-time positions before the date that its contract with the U.A.W. calls for — which is after two years of employment.“We are always advocating to employers and legislators that union jobs are worth the investment,” the U.A.W. president, Ray Curry, said in a statement. “Ford stepped up to the plate by adding these jobs and converting 3,000 U.A.W. members to permanent, full-time status with benefits.”Assembling the F-150 Lightning at the Dearborn Truck Plant. Ford will add about 3,200 jobs in Michigan, many tied to the electric truck’s production.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesSam Abuelsamid, an auto industry analyst at Guidehouse Insights, said the changes were important as a way to help Ford attract and retain labor in a tight job market, while potentially helping the company avoid costly labor unrest during negotiations over a contract that expires next year as it spends billions on the transition to electric vehicles. A six-week strike by workers at General Motors in 2019 cost that company billions of dollars.“I’m sure one thing Ford would absolutely love to avoid is the potential for a strike,” Mr. Abuelsamid said. “Keeping a positive relationship with the U.A.W. now is to their benefit.”But the investments appear unlikely to substantially diminish the broader threat that the shift toward electric vehicles poses to the autoworkers union and to employment in the U.S. vehicle manufacturing industry, which stands at around one million.“It’s about changing the perception of what’s happening,” Mr. Abuelsamid said. “It’s a balancing act between your work force and your investors,” who would prefer to see labor costs rise more slowly or decline at unionized automakers like Ford and General Motors.Because electric vehicles incorporate far fewer moving parts than gasoline-powered vehicles, they require significantly less labor — about 30 percent less, according to figures that Ford has generated.As a result, estimates suggest that the toll of electrification on auto industry jobs could be significant absent large new government subsidies. A report released in September by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, which has ties to organized labor, found that the auto industry could lose about 75,000 jobs by 2030 without substantial government investment.By contrast, the report found, if additional government subsidies encourage the domestic manufacturing of components and greater market share for vehicles assembled in the United States, the industry could add about 150,000 jobs over the same period.President Biden has backed substantial subsidies for electric vehicles, including vehicles made by unionized employees, but those measures have languished in the Senate and their prospects are uncertain.In the meantime, much of the job growth tied to electric vehicles has occurred at nonunion facilities owned by newer automakers like Tesla, Rivian and Lucid, or U.S.-based battery facilities owned wholly or in part by foreign companies like the South Korean manufacturers SK Innovation and LG Chem.In Thursday’s announcement, Ford noted that its new battery and vehicle production facilities in the South would create about 11,000 jobs. But those employees will not automatically become union members, and workers in those states tend to face an uphill battle in unionizing.For investors, however, Ford’s additional investments in electric vehicles appears to be welcome news as the company seeks to reinvent itself amid competition from the likes of Tesla and Rivian. Ford’s stock price, which had dropped substantially this year, rose more than 2 percent on Thursday.Ford also said Thursday that it sold 6,254 electric vehicles in May, a jump of more than 200 percent from a year earlier. That number included 201 F-150 Lightnings, which the company started producing in April.The company has about 200,000 reservations for the Lightning, which is central to its efforts to catch up to Tesla, and stopped accepting new ones because production will take months to meet demand.Ford indicated that sales of the truck would be much higher in the coming months as production increased and trucks in transit reached dealerships. Ford is aiming to produce 150,000 Lightning trucks a year by the end of 2023.Sales of electric vehicles — and conventional cars — have been limited by a shortage of computer chips. Ford’s overall sales of new vehicles in May fell 4.5 percent from a year earlier. Auto executives are also increasingly worried that the supply of lithium, nickel and other raw materials needed to make the batteries that power electric cars is not keeping up with the growing demand for those vehicles.Vikas Bajaj More

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    Jim Farley Tries to Reinvent Ford and Catch Up to Elon Musk and Tesla

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    On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Jim Farley, the chief executive of Ford Motor, took a spin in what could become one of the most important vehicles in the company’s 113-year history: an electric F-150 pickup truck.Sitting at the wheel of a prototype at the company’s test track in Dearborn, Mr. Farley floored it. From a standing stop, the 4,000-pound truck surged forward. “Four seconds,” he shouted when it reached 60 miles per hour. “That’s unbelievable for a vehicle of this size.”Steering the truck to a series of dips and rises in the track, he said, “Let’s see if we can get some air,” and shouted “Yes!” as the wheels briefly left the tarmac over one incline. In a final lap, he careened around a steeply banked turn and floored it again on a straightaway until he hit 99 miles an hour — just short of the track’s 100 m.p.h. speed limit.“I can’t wait,” Mr. Farley said as he stepped out, shaking his head. “I can’t wait till customers get this truck.”These are tense and exciting times for the auto industry. Driven by the dizzying success of Tesla, sales of electric vehicles appear to be on an unstoppable rise. The switch from making gasoline-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles that emit no pollution from tailpipes will have far-reaching effects on the environment, climate change, public policy and the economy.Automakers are spending tens of billions of dollars to retool plants and are rushing to retrain workers for what may be the industry’s greatest transformation since Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing with the moving assembly line in 1913. They are also fighting to simply catch up to the juggernaut that is Tesla.The question for Ford is whether a car guy from the Detroit area can take on Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, whose company is rapidly expanding and is valued by investors at about 16 times as much as Ford.Tesla nearly doubled the number of cars it sold around the world last year to almost one million. Ford sold many more vehicles — nearly four million — but sales fell 6 percent as it struggled to get enough computer chips, batteries and other parts. Tesla has a brand that people associate with luxury and technical sophistication. Ford is viewed as a maker of large, utilitarian trucks and sport utility vehicles.“The traditional auto industry is pretty far behind Tesla,” said Earl J. Hesterberg, chief executive of Group 1 Automotive, a large auto retailer, who has known Mr. Farley for two decades. “In the past, if you were behind by a few years, the big players could catch up. But today, the speed of change is so much greater.”Auto experts say the electric F-150, known as the Lightning, must be a success if Ford is to thrive in the age of electric vehicles. Introducing this truck now is equivalent to “betting the company,” said William C. Ford Jr., the company’s executive chairman, who is a great-grandson of Henry Ford. “If this launch doesn’t go well, we can tarnish the entire franchise.”A Critical Year for Electric VehiclesThe popularity of battery-powered cars is soaring worldwide, even as the overall auto market stagnates.Going Mainstream: In December, Europeans for the first time bought more electric cars than diesels, once the most popular option.Turning Point: Electric vehicles account for a small slice of the market, but in 2022, their march could become unstoppable. Here is why.Tesla’s Success: A superior command of technology and its own supply chain allowed the company to bypass an industrywide crisis.Rivian’s Troubles: As the electric vehicle maker pares down its delivery targets for 2022, investors worry the company may not live up to its promise.Green Fleet: Amazon wants electric vans to make its deliveries. The problem? The auto industry barely produces any of the vehicles yet.The company has amassed about 200,000 reservations for the trucks, but it could still stumble. Production could be slowed by the global chip shortage or the surging costs of lithium, nickel and other raw materials crucial to batteries. The software that Ford has developed for the truck could be flawed, a problem that hampered sales of a new electric Volkswagen in 2020.Ford and Mr. Farley do have some things going for them. Unlike many other electric cars, the F-150 Lightning is relatively affordable — it starts at $40,000. Tesla’s cheapest car is the compact Model 3 sedan, which starts at more than $48,000. The Lightning has tons of storage, including a giant front trunk, which is appealing to families and businesses with large truck fleets. And it helps that Tesla will not begin making its Cybertruck until next year.And Ford is also already in the E.V. game with the Mustang Mach-E, an electric sport utility vehicle. It had sales of more than 27,000 in 2021, its first year on the market, and won favorable reviews.Production of the F-150 Lightning is scheduled to start next Monday. Competing models from General Motors, Stellantis and Toyota — Ford’s main rivals in pickups — are at least a year away. Rivian, a newer manufacturer that Ford has invested in, has begun selling an electric truck but is struggling to increase production.“If the Lightning launch goes well, we have an enormous opportunity,” Mr. Ford said.‘Jimmy Car-Car’In many ways, Mr. Farley checks most of the boxes when it comes to leading a large U.S. automaker. Like Mary T. Barra, the chief executive of G.M., whose father used to work on a Pontiac assembly line, Mr. Farley has family roots in the industry: His grandfather worked at a Ford factory. On visits to his grandfather, he would tour Ford plants and other sites important to the company’s history. As a 15-year-old, he bought a Mustang while working in California one summer and drove it home to Michigan without a license. His grandfather nicknamed him “Jimmy Car-Car.”But like Mr. Musk, a native of South Africa who was a founder of PayPal and other companies, Mr. Farley has had a varied career and been involved in creating businesses. Born in Argentina when his father was working there as a banker, Mr. Farley, 59, also lived in Brazil and Canada when he was growing up. His career started not in the auto industry but at IBM. He spent a long stretch at Toyota. He helped the Japanese automaker overcome its reputation for making boring and economical cars by working on its fledgling Lexus luxury brand, now a powerhouse.“He has what I call a restless mind,” said Jim Press, a former senior executive at Toyota and Chrysler. “His mind is never idling, always contemplating. He has a boldness that helps him push beyond what others think.”Mr. Farley has family roots in the automotive industry.Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesIn 2007, Alan R. Mulally, Ford’s chief executive at the time, hired him to help turn around Ford. He sharpened the company’s marketing, often making early use of Facebook and social media, and ran its European operations.Some at Ford bristled at his intensity. “Worrying about hurting people’s feelings isn’t at the top of his agenda,” Mr. Hesterberg said. “But it’s probably what’s necessary these days. The traditional auto industry is behind Tesla, and business as usual isn’t going to cut it.”In the last few years, Mr. Farley re-evaluated Ford’s strategy, visited technology companies in California and came to a realization: “They’re after our customers.”In 2018, Ford’s brain trust saw that the company was at great risk of falling behind Tesla, G.M. and Rivian in electric cars and pickup trucks. Ford decided not to build a new electric truck and its batteries from scratch as other automakers were doing, but to modify an existing F-150, buying batteries designed by a supplier. The move was risky because converting traditional vehicles to battery-powered ones can be difficult — batteries weigh more than engines and are placed under the floor rather than under the front hood.“We didn’t know how this would turn out, but we knew there would be a heavy penalty if we didn’t swing for the fences,” Mr. Farley said.Yet the Ford truck team’s first estimate for how many Lightnings it might sell was a paltry 20,000 a year. The estimate was oddly low because Tesla was achieving sales growth of about 50 percent a year and planning to build two giant factories.Cars Are About Software NowIn part because of his team’s lowball estimate for Lightning sales, Mr. Farley, who became chief executive in December 2020, said he was increasingly convinced that Ford needed to transform itself. Many auto executives acknowledge that one of Tesla’s main advantages is that it is far ahead of established automakers in developing software that operates its motors, manages it batteries, and informs and entertains drivers and passengers. Partly as a result, Tesla, born in Silicon Valley, makes cars that go farther on a full battery than cars made by almost anybody else.Tesla can also remotely update the software in all its cars, an ability that Ford and other established carmakers have only recently begun using. Most cars made by established manufacturers must be taken to dealers for even minor upgrades or fixes.It is not surprising, then, that Mr. Farley worries most about the potential for software bugs in the Lightning’s millions of lines of code.“As an automotive company, we’ve been trained to put vehicles out when they’re perfect,” he said. “But with software, you can change it with over-the-air updates. Our quality system isn’t used to this software orientation.”Mr. Farley said it was so critical for Ford to beef up its software chops that he spent months recruiting one of the top names in auto technology, Doug Field, who has held senior positions at Tesla and Apple.In an interview, Mr. Field, who early in his career worked at Ford, said he was drawn by the chance to build a technology team at a company with a century’s expertise in engineering and manufacturing. “If we can combine those, that is going to be something to be reckoned with,” he said.In March, Ford announced it was separating into two divisions — one, Ford Blue, will continue making internal combustion models, and another, Model E, headed by Mr. Farley and Mr. Field, will develop electric vehicles.So far, investors have supported Mr. Farley’s strategy. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ford stock traded as high as $25, up more than 300 percent since Mr. Farley took the helm, but it has fallen back to about $15. Still, Ford’s market value now exceeds that of G.M., which has long been the largest U.S. automaker.Yet Wall Street still thinks that Tesla, which is worth more than $1 trillion, will dominate the industry and that companies like Ford, worth $62 billion, and G.M., $58 billion, will become relative minnows.No wonder that Mr. Farley is spending most of his days on the Lightning. Over a dinner near his home in Birmingham, north of Detroit, he pulled out his phone and scrolled through a long email he gets every evening, with updates on every facet of the launch. “Software, manufacturing, batteries, chips, body assembly,” he said, reading off the subheadings.Workers on the production line of the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning.Sylvia Jarrus for The New York TimesOne night recently, Mr. Ford was in California when an email arrived late in the evening — from Mr. Farley, who was nine time zones away in Germany. “Jim had four or five things he wanted to talk to me about,” Mr. Ford said. “I get at least two updates a day from him.”Computer chips are a big concern. A shortage has been disrupting auto production around the world for more than a year, and outside the Dearborn Truck Plant a few hundred gasoline-powered F-150 trucks are parked and waiting for a minor but crucial component — the device that controls their automatic windshield wipers is delayed for the want of chips.Before his test drive, Mr. Farley took an hourlong tour of the Lightning assembly line, looking at how much work remains.At a section of the production line, he was shown new robotic, self-guided skids that carry the Lightning’s steel bed, or box, from one work station to the next. The skids eliminate the need for a costly and complex overhead conveyor system. Bill Dorley, the box team leader, told Mr. Farley that his crew was practically ready to go. “We just need parts,” he said.Just outside that section of the plant, heavy earth-moving machines were demolishing the concrete walls and floors of a building that was built in the 1930s to produce the Ford Model A. That space will allow the company to expand Lightning production. As Mr. Farley moved along the assembly line, workers waved and shouted greetings and sought selfies with the boss.Approaching a group of workers, Mr. Farley asked how they were doing and what they needed.Michael Johnson, who will bolt in the Lightning’s suspension system, highlighted one of the central concerns that many manufacturing workers have about electric vehicles: jobs. Because electric vehicles have fewer parts than conventional trucks, they can be made by fewer workers. Mr. Johnson was specifically concerned about a truck plant that Ford is building in Tennessee, a state that has been less welcoming to unions like the one that represents workers in Dearborn.“Is this plant going to be safe?” Mr. Johnson asked.Mr. Farley replied that the Tennessee plant would build a different truck. He added that Ford planned to start making the motors and axles for its electric vehicles, rather than buying them from suppliers. “So our own plants are going to be very busy,” he said.Ford’s future rests on that being the case. More

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    How the War in Ukraine Could Slow the Sales of Electric Cars

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    The price of nickel, an essential ingredient in most batteries, has soared because of fear that Russian supplies could be cut off.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shaken the global market for nickel just as the metal gains importance as an ingredient in electric car batteries, raising fears that high prices could slow the transition away from fossil fuels.The price of nickel doubled in one day last week, prompting the London Metal Exchange to freeze trading and effectively bring the global nickel market to a standstill. After two years of supply chain chaos caused by the pandemic, the episode provided more evidence of how geopolitical tensions are destroying trading relationships that companies once took for granted, forcing them to rethink where they get the parts and metals they use to make cars and many other products.Automakers and other companies that need nickel, as well as other battery raw materials like lithium or cobalt, have begun looking for ways to shield themselves against future shocks.Volkswagen, for example, has begun to explore buying nickel directly from mining companies, Markus Duesmann, chief executive of the carmaker’s Audi division, said in an interview on Thursday. “Raw materials are going to be an issue for years to come,” he said.The prospect of prolonged geopolitical tensions is likely to accelerate attempts by the United States and Europe to develop domestic supplies of commodities that often come from Russia. There are nickel deposits, for example, in Canada, Greenland and even Minnesota.“Nickel, cobalt, platinum, palladium, even copper — we already realized we need those metals for the green transition, for mitigating climate change,” said Bo Stensgaard, chief executive of Bluejay Mining, which is working on extracting nickel from a site in western Greenland in a venture with KoBold Metals, whose backers include Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. “When you see the geopolitical developments with Ukraine and Russia, it’s even more obvious that there are supply risks with these metals.”But establishing new mining operations is likely to take years, even decades, because of the time needed to acquire permits and financing. In the meantime, companies using nickel — a group that also includes steel makers — will need to contend with higher prices, which will eventually be felt by consumers.An average electric-car battery contains about 80 pounds of nickel. The surge in prices in March would more than double the cost of that nickel to $1,750 a car, according to estimates by the trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald.Russia accounts for a relatively small proportion of world nickel production, and most of it is used to make stainless steel, not car batteries. But Russia plays an outsize role in nickel markets. Norilsk Nickel, also known as Nornickel, is the world’s largest nickel producer, with vast operations in Siberia. Its owner, Vladimir Potanin, is one of Russia’s wealthiest people. Norilsk is among a limited number of companies authorized to sell a specialized form of nickel on the London Metal Exchange, which handles all nickel trading.Unlike other oligarchs, Mr. Potanin has not been a target of sanctions, and the United States and Europe have not tried to block nickel exports, a step that would hurt their economies as well as Russia’s. The prospect that Russian nickel could be cut off from world markets was enough to cause panic.Analysts expect prices to come down from their recent peaks but remain much higher than they were a year ago. “The trend would be to come down to a level close to where we last left off,” around $25,000 a metric ton compared to the peak of $100,000 a ton, said Adrian Gardner, a principal analyst specializing in nickel at Wood Mackenzie, a research firm.A plant owned by Nornickel, the world’s leading producer of nickel and palladium, in Norilsk, Russia.Tatyana Makeyeva/ReutersNickel was on a tear even before the Russian invasion as hedge funds and other investors bet on rising demand for electric vehicles. The price topped $20,000 a ton this year after hovering between $10,000 and $15,000 a ton for much of the past five years. At the same time, less nickel was being produced because of the pandemic.After Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the price rose above $30,000 in a little over a week. Then came March 8. Word spread on the trading desks of brokerage firms and hedge funds in London that a company, which turned out to be the Tsingshan Holding Group of China, had made a huge bet that the price of nickel would drop. When the price rose, Tsingshan owed billions of dollars, a situation known on Wall Street as a short squeeze.The price shot up to a little over $100,000 a ton, threatening the existence of many other companies that had bet wrong and prompting the London Metal Exchange to halt trading.The Russia-Ukraine War and the Global EconomyCard 1 of 6Rising concerns. More