Research at U.S. and Canadian neutron sources has led to multiple advances in the North American auto industry, including increases in energy-efficiency generally and in the availability and quality of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs), which eliminate gasoline costs and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions. A recent assessment by the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), calculated the present value of these benefits over 2017 to 2030 at $48 billion, based on sales data from North American BEV manufacturers that use neutron beam research and consumer willingness to pay for BEVs. RTI further calculated the portion of these benefits attributable to the research ($20 billion), using a conservative assumption that the research accelerated these benefits by only 2 years. Scaling the impact to Canada’s EV adoption rates and economic size places the value to Canada at $1.6 billion—over 2 times more than all of Canada’s investments in neutron beam laboratories over 70 years (estimated at $750 million).
Today, the industry and governments are investing heavily to transition the Canadian auto sector to production of BEVs, and companies such as Volkswagen, Stellantis, Umicore and BASF are building battery gigafactories in Canada. Much research in Canada is focused on improving battery cost and performance, which would further increase benefits from EV adoption. Neutrons continue to be indispensable to the analysis of many EV battery materials for this research.
