By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 18th, 2024
As a leader in the Quantum Computing world, IBM will help recreate the features that define these rare metals and find a way to mass produce them as alternatives across the board.
German engineering and technology giant, Robert Bosch GmbH has announced its new partnership with International Business Machines Corp (IBM) as it embarks on a rare journey to find alternatives to rare earth metals that are widely used in electric cars. As reported by BNNBloomberg, the partnership will entail the use of IBM’s Quantum Computers in identifying features of these rare metals and how they can be simulated to create alternatives.
The tech and engineering world has been a very robust one with notable growth over the past decade. While the evolution of the industry has led to the emergence of new products such as electric vehicles, it has also introduced significant challenges that go beyond what stakeholders had been envisaging over time.
While the chip shortage was ushered in with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic back in 2020, the industry typically recovered as lockdowns improved. However, there is a more damning challenge with rare earth metals like Lithium, Nickel, and Cobalt, some of which are indispensable for car batteries.
Companies utilizing these metals to produce car parts go to great lengths to source them, and the demand is increasing at a very sporadic rate. As it stands, it seems unsustainable to continually depend on these metals for the next decade, informing the partnership Bosch has inked with IBM to explore alternatives.
The company is committed to injecting as much as 10 billion euros through 2025 to fund sustainable approaches with its mobility offshoot tagged as one of the units that will benefit more.
As a leader in the Quantum Computing world, IBM will help recreate the features that define these rare metals and find a way to mass produce them as alternatives across the board.
Bosch and IBM Partnership: Powering Sustainability
Remarkably, the partnership between Robert Bosch and IBM is one that will power sustainability beyond the current deposits or supply of the current earth metals.
“We share our experience in simulating materials for very specific application areas with IBM, and in return we gain deeper insights into the power and applicability of quantum computing including hardware,” Bosch Chief Executive Officer Stefan Hartung said in a statement describing the partnership as a mutually beneficial one.
The Quantum Computers that will be deployed by IBM can process a large load of data that will take regular powerful computers days and even weeks to sort through. This quantum computing technology is considered a new frontier in data processing and it has attracted interest from big multinational firms including Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) among others.
With expectations for the partnership to start yielding positive results soon, the firm said its linkup with IBM “underscores the importance that alliances have for Bosch’s digital transformation.”
“They are a way to pool the forces required for the rapid and successful development of promising areas,” it added.