Mercedes is taking the lead in making more environment friendly, socially acceptable and balanced use of lithium and cobalt for making their cars. As our automobile industry is primarily based on fossil fuel energy, engineers are thinking to make car using technology this is a part of the strategic plan Ambition2039 by Mercedes. The primary aim of this plan is converting all the fuel based car to plug-in hybrids or fully electric vehicles with more carbon neutral cars. To make this possible Mercedes insists on source of the raw material and refined quality for more sustainability. The key criteria for the decision of suppliers and for making contract with supplier within the supply chains for raw material is the “initiative for responsible mining assurance” (IRAMA). The company contract states clearly that partners will only commit to work in there supply chain only to work with the audited raw material supplier maintaining the norms of the IRMA mining standard. Also in future the supply chains will be monitored in regular basis.
Goals of Mercedes Benz
The clear goal of Mercedes Benz stated by the member of thevBoard of Management of Daimler AG also responsible for Daimler Group Research and Mercedes Benz Cars COO Markus Schafer said that Mercedes clear developmental goal is to increase the range of future batteries significantly through advances in the energy density, to advance in production maturity of future battery technology to significantly reduce charging times and further reduce uses of critical materials. In the coming generation of battery cells, the cobalt content already reduced to 10 percent.
The company has already started working on this plan from 2018, auditing the advisory firm of Mercedes RCB global to make the cobalt supply chain behind battery cell more transparent by auditing them in every stage. After going through a risk assessment throughout the suppliers more than 120 suppliers are identified after conducting 60 audits.
In the present situation there is not certified cobalt mind according to the standard of IRMA. Currently Mercedes is working with IRMA and RCS to deal with the local situation as people still couldn’t come in terms with the use of cobalt in batteries and this topic faced some active criticism among people. To come through with public demand the approach is to limited number of cobalt mines in the Congo of Democratic republic, each one audited with some specific set of standard and requirement in the standards of IRMA for responsible mining. Also keeping the environment friendly mining and human rights factor in mind is the primary goal. In short, it can be concluded that Mercedes is taking a commendable step towards a greener earth.