Ranking of world’s 20 best selling electric cars and their battery metals show automakers grappling with soaring raw material prices.

Indonesia has played a key role in global markets as a bulk materials supplier, but President Joko Widodo has pledged to eventually stop exports of all raw commodities to turn the country into a major manufacturing hub for electric transportation.

“We’ve got decades worth of high rates of investment into infrastructure as the world seeks to decarbonize. That’s a widely held consensual view."

Nickel was the top performer among industrial metals, which also rallied as worries eased about economic growth in top metals consumer China.

Lithium has burst into 2022 with a fresh price spike that hands electric-vehicle makers more warning of even sharper cost pressures to come.

"Expectation on resuming steel production and restocking demand before Chinese holidays could shore up iron ore prices," said Huatai Futures.

Refined nickel inventories in ShFE warehouses were last at 4,859 tonnes, close to a record low of 4,455 tonnes in August 2021.