When a Tolaki elder named Wadimula looks out from his home in Sulawesi, he sees the edge of a 21,000-hectare mining concession where primary rainforest once stood. Thousands of kilometres away, in showrooms from Wolfsburg to Michigan, the same ore may be helping to power cars sold as the clean alternative to petrol. That is the conclusion of an analysis of corporate disclosures and trade flows from the past two years, reported by The Guardian. It traced ore from the Cahaya and Hengjaya mines, where satellite images show widespread loss of primary forest on Tolaki land, to smelters in Morowali, on Indonesia's eastern coast.

There, a local subsidiary of Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt refines it into mixed hydroxide precipitate, a key raw material for battery cathodes. Shipments to China were worth $606m in 2024 and a further $470m in 2025. From there the paths diverge. Huayou supplies CATL, the world's largest battery maker, and its own reports name US and European carmakers as end-users.

Separate files and trade data suggest a second route, via Poland, to the South Korean group LG. Volkswagen, Ford and Tesla are among the manufacturers whose batteries may therefore contain the metal, although the link is inferred from supply-chain records rather than proven batch by batch. Nickel is prized because it increases energy density and range. Environmental groups warn that the growing popularity of heavy, material-hungry SUVs raises demand for it, and with it the pressure on forests.