It’s fitting that the country’s biggest conference on electric vehicle chargers is held next week in Las Vegas, Nevada. Nevada is known as the Silver State, and silver is to electric vehicle as gasoline is to the internal combustion engine. These days silver is often found as a byproduct of mining for copper, and copper is essential for those EV chargers.
Silver prices have soared this past year, even though the demand for electric vehicles here in the U.S. has seemingly dipped. Silver is only a small component of today’s EV, used in battery terminals. But the promise of a better battery, the solid-state one, depends, for now on using a silver and carbon composite (AG-C).
Solid State Ahead:
This composite requires as much as a kilogram of silver per battery pack. It comes with a big promise. The “promise” is that this new battery has a higher density and a range up to to 600 miles. The battery pack is smaller, so the EV chassis can shrink. A breakthrough that is particularly relevant for the 2026 Las Vegas Charging Summit is that these solid state batteries are said to charge from 0 to 80% in under ten minutes.
Of course, there’s always been hype around the solid-state battery. It seems to be the proverbial technology that is always, “around the corner.” But now it sounds real.
A year ago Samsung started shipping solid state batteries to BMW for testing and at least three other auto manufactuers have lined deals with Samsung for 2027-2028 models. At a tradeshow this March Samsung revealed its solid state battery. An EV that could do 600 miles and charge in under 10 minutes will blow the current technology out of the water, even if production costs for silver add to the cost.
Solid Silver?
Silver is estimated to add $2500 or $3000 to the vehicle cost but then, there might be savings from another precious metal (read on!). According to the Silver Institute 2024-2026 report and Oxford Economics, an internal combustion car uses 15-25 grams of silver in production, a traditional EV has about 24 to 50 grams, and the solid-state, high-end battery car will require about 32 ounces, or 1 kilogram of this 21st century gold.
One issue that the naysayers overlook, and again, this is the Nevada nugget – high-priced silver in an EV battery is a “forever metal”. Here’s an analogy- if your fusty Aunt gifted you an outdated Victorian tea set and an ugly piece of silver jewelry – you would not be putting them in the trash. Instead, you would take these items to a recycler that pays the spot price for the mineral. Silver effects get smelted down, refined, and turned into new products. In the “circular economy there is no waste. That’s important, because while the price of silver might be high today, it means that going forward, more demand can be tempered with recycled material.
The Circular Economy:
There is a story from the gasoline vehicle industry that underscores why EVs are a circular, sustainable solution. As we know, gasoline is not a renewable source- it is drilled from the ground, refined, transported to a service station, and burned at the tailpipe by vehicles. The gasoline is gone, but the particulates and exhaust stay air-borne. That’s toxic, and you have to drill for more.
In the 1970s, gas emissions were known to be a health risk and scientists and car makers worked together to reduce the exhaust from the tailpipe. They created a catalytic converter, a filter that sits behind the car’s muffler, and it traps many of the lethal chemicals.
The kicker is that the catalytic converter relied on using a precious metal called platinum to soak up the gases. Back then, the demand for this metal, aptly called “the little silver” produced a price spike. Soon after, palladium was introduced, and its price also spiked.
Unlike silver, the precious metals used in the catalytic converter have a one-time life- just like the gasoline that gets burned off. After about 170,000 miles the minerals are wasted but these precious minerals cost about 25 times more per ounce than silver. As EV manufacturing grows and gas-production levels off, the absence of a catalytic converter can help offset the cost for silver, and other precious minerals in the EV.
When delegates gather in the Silver State next week for the charging conference, it’s good to remember that 450 miles from Las Vegas, in Reno, NV, there is Redwood Materials, a tech favorite, state-of-the-art recycler. I visited there and today they mostly recycle an EV battery for the core elements of lithium, cobalt, and nickel. In the Silver State there’s a second bonanza coming, as they and others gear up to reclaim those kilograms of silver.