Study On Rare Earth Elements Demand Foercast And Policy Support Based On China’s Electric Vehicle Development

China is accelerating its automotive electrification to address the pressing oil shortage and environmental pollution.Automotive electrification can be achieved through four major different technology pathways: hybrid electric vehicles,plug-in hybrid electric vehicles,battery electric vehicles and fuel cell electric vehicles,all of which relies heavily on the use of critical mineral resources,such as rare earth elements(REEs).This study aims to construct the scenarios of future technology mix and growth regarding China’s automotive electrification by 2030,and to predict the future demand of REEs associated with such scenarios.Herein,the widely-applied Bass model is chosen to predict the future growth of these four technology pathways of electric vehicles under pessimistic,neutral and optimistic demand scenarios.Given the large possibility of technological advances,such impact is captured on material intensity and component substitution to better reflect future demand changes.Accordingly,the REEs demand associated with those four technology pathways from 2018 to 2030 is estimated.It is found that the highest demand of REEs in automotive electrification will reach 315 thousand tons,accounting for 22% of the world production during the predicted period.Specifically,the demand for Nd,Dy,Ce,Pr,and La will account for 51%,20%,12%,9.5%,and 7.7% of the total demand,respectively.To guarantee the successful development of automotive electrification in China,the related policy and plan regarding the supply of different types and quantities of REEs should be urgently made.