Us gas prices hit record highs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia plays an important part in the production of the nickel that ends up in batteries used by many electric vehicles.

On February 25th, nickel was trading on the London Metal exchange for around $ 24,000 a ton. By March 8th, it was trading at $ 80,000 (down from a peak of over $ 100,000). There are a few reasons for the massive uptick in price – because it’s 2022, there are financial shenanigans involved.

The move in nickel prices is the biggest-ever one-day increase in the six base metals. The move is by far the biggest-ever one day increase.

Russia supplies up to 6 percent of the world’s nickel. The country is a distant third behind Indonesia and the Philippines. The CEO of Benchmark mineral intelligence says 20 percent of that supply comes from a single Russian company.

Norilsk overall accounts for 7 % of all in nickel supply. Auto OEMs and battery cell producers will terrified of losing 20 % of a market with prices already at decade long highs.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, tweeted that the company plans to shift its standard distance cars away from nickel-hungry lithium-ion battery cells. He said that Tesla will be moving to iron cathode tech, but it’s hard to tell how long that process will take.

Last week, Musk tweeted that the world needed to produce more oil and gas to make up for what it had been getting from Russia.

It’s not impossible to make batteries without nickel. Volkswagen and other automakers are looking into other battery technologies that do n’t use it or cobalt the price of which has also been on the rise.