Last October, Amnesty International released its “Recharge for Rights” report, focusing on respect for human rights in the manufacturing process of electric vehicles (EV). As has been repeatedly reported in the media for several years, the Amnesty report confirms that where human rights are most often questioned is in the area of extraction of raw materials necessary for manufacturing. motors and batteries, such as lithium, nickel and cobalt.
According to Amnesty, cobalt mines are particularly likely to violate human rights, and the organization recalls that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which supplies 25% of the world’s cobalt, miners are often children.
11/90
This is perhaps what explains BYD’s last place in this report, with a score of 11 out of 90, the Chinese manufacturer, world No. 1 in EVs, which simply refused to say where its cobalt comes from. . Mitsubishi and Hyundai do barely better, with respective scores of 13 and 21 points. The most transparent brands about their supply chain are Mercedes (51/90) and Tesla (49/90).
But nothing to brag about according to Amnesty, which affirms that in its classification, it would take at least a score of 68/90 to consider a brand as truly concerned about human rights. The organization therefore invites manufacturers to do better and welcomes initiatives like those of the EU, a rule of which will soon condition aid for EVs on the traceability of batteries.