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The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

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Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#61

Post by rmm »

iguy wrote: post #59
rmm wrote: post #56

This was so evident 2-3 years ago it’s ridiculous. I worked on a bunch of projects in 16/17 and what I told all my clients is get to production and lock down offtake agreements ASAP as the amount of projects coming online was huge for the short term (with regards to hard rock lithium) and even worse long term (salars etc). Even the most optimistic of ev adoption rates showed oversupply by 2023. Some other facts I rem…

> * lithium market is opaque. No open market and all contract based Interesting, I didn't know this. Do you know why? Are other metals mostly open (like gold) or mostly like this?

Most markets are open, it’s the more exotic/specialist metals that are closed. With lithium it’s just the way it’s always been. Historically the market for lithium was industrial uses (lubrication etc) and there were only 3-4 big players that produced it (and often as byproduct of other processes). The big 3/4 companies would produce and often even refine it internally so no need to publish prices. The ev boom is obviously changing that, and they missed it somehow, hence the hard rock miners filling in the demand gap these next few years

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#62

Post by muzika »

sjwright wrote: post #10

The electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed. Electric cars are still deeply strangled by two key factors: industry inertia and the cost/supply of lithium batteries. Once those two factors are solved (and a build-up of lithium mines is key to that) electric cars will go from being a niche within a niche to utterly dominating the market very, very quickly. Within the next decade we might see companies like Hyundai…

Most people who buy Teslas don’t want “just” an EV, they want a TESLA.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#63

Post by muzika »

lettergram wrote: post #27
sjwright wrote: post #10

The electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed. Electric cars are still deeply strangled by two key factors: industry inertia and the cost/supply of lithium batteries. Once those two factors are solved (and a build-up of lithium mines is key to that) electric cars will go from being a niche within a niche to utterly dominating the market very, very quickly. Within the next decade we might see companies like Hyundai…

I suspect Tesla knows their space fairly well. Until there is a car that can go 400 miles on a single charge and recharge in 2 minutes, with cheap repairs and work well in all weather conditions for a decade or two, you won’t see the masses jump on EV. You may see people in cities (often these are more affluence). I don’t really see EV becoming wide spread (I.e. ~50% of the market) for at least 10-15 years. Even then…

For most people 300 miles of range is plenty. Longer range and quick charge time only matters when you are taking a long trip - and I would say 10min charge time will be sufficient to make it moot point when comparing to ICE cars.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#64

Post by saagarjha »

muzika wrote: post #62
sjwright wrote: post #10

The electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed. Electric cars are still deeply strangled by two key factors: industry inertia and the cost/supply of lithium batteries. Once those two factors are solved (and a build-up of lithium mines is key to that) electric cars will go from being a niche within a niche to utterly dominating the market very, very quickly. Within the next decade we might see companies like Hyundai…

Most people who buy Teslas don’t want “just” an EV, they want a TESLA.

I guess it's good for Tesla that they've managed to make an EV that attractive.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#65

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

Aren't other metals like Nickel and whatnot are the main bottleneck for the vast numbers of batteries required for the electric car boom? Didn't we already know for the long time that lithium is very abundant, but it's those other metals (which are required much less by mass, but still required) that might be a problem, and this is why different companies are betting on different lithium chemical processes, because they don't know for sure which secondary metal will become the bottleneck?

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#66

Post by yread »

rmm wrote: post #60
yread wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had to guess what will be the price of lithium once those big mines come online? 5000/ton Li2CO3 (at 99%) or even lower? And do you think there will ever be an open market with future contracts?

On the first question it’s been a while so haven’t really followed too closely, but once the salars come online depending on the agreements they have in place they really will have the ability to set the price to whatever they want (as they have been doing for past 3-4 decades). These hard rock mines are making serious money on the fact that the big 3/4 missed the boat (somehow) on the lithium/ev boom. I reckon they…

Thanks, that's interesting. And what do you think of this PFS? https://www.share-talk.com/european-metals-hldg-aimemh-pfs-c...

People in .cz think this is a gold mine but investors don't seem to agree

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#67

Post by iguy »

rmm wrote: post #55
Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #12

Do people really build mines with a 5-year horizon? Of course it's going to outpace demand... initially. The great thing about mines is that you can just leave the lithium in the ground if the current prices aren't right.

Yeah we always do. Mining is incredibly cyclical boom/bust In Australia for this reason. Also it’s just as difficult to leave it in the ground. Any decent mining operation takes at minimum 2-3 from construction to production so you still need to take that into account (unless you lock down some offtake agreements to hedge the risk)

How financialized are mines, for want of a better term? i.e. Are people buying the mining company's shares assumed to be taking the gamble on what prices will be in 5 or 10 years, or do mining companied buy a ton of futures to try to even things out?

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#68

Post by Brometheus »

nardi wrote: post #57
sjwright wrote: post #10

The electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed. Electric cars are still deeply strangled by two key factors: industry inertia and the cost/supply of lithium batteries. Once those two factors are solved (and a build-up of lithium mines is key to that) electric cars will go from being a niche within a niche to utterly dominating the market very, very quickly. Within the next decade we might see companies like Hyundai…

> In my opinion Tesla needs to prepare to be in the budget space. They need to partner with an external manufacturer to sell a product with normal door handles that competes with Hyundai and Toyota. Because once the cost of batteries falls, I predict a substantial slice of their market will simply disappear to the economy manufacturers. I suspect that many people who love Telsa really just love the idea of electric v…

http://www.wimjellema.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Global-...

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#69

Post by ThomPete »

Retric wrote: post #21
sjwright wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course EVs are booming in relative terms. Things boom all the time in relative terms. That's not remarkable. The pure EV market will eventually dominate vehicle sales in most segments, and most of the rest will be PHEV. Have EVs even hit 1% of worldwide vehicle sales yet? Call me back when it passes 10% and we'll talk about an EV boom.

We are well past that 1%. Global EV Sales In May 2019: Over 179,000 At 2.3% Market Share https://insideevs.com/news/357198/global-ev-sales-in-may-201... The current trend is under 4 years until EV’s are 10% of global car sales. It’s likely adoption will slow down at some point, but 50% of all new car sales being EV could happen within 10 years. Though it would take much longer for EV’s to represent 1/2 of all cars on…

Pretty sure that's relative to the sales not to how many cars are EV of the entire car fleet , also probably a bunch of hybrids in that too.

Re: The Lithium Mine Buildup Is Outpacing the Electric-Car Boom

#70

Post by rmm »

yread wrote: post #66
rmm wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the first question it’s been a while so haven’t really followed too closely, but once the salars come online depending on the agreements they have in place they really will have the ability to set the price to whatever they want (as they have been doing for past 3-4 decades). These hard rock mines are making serious money on the fact that the big 3/4 missed the boat (somehow) on the lithium/ev boom. I reckon they…

Thanks, that's interesting. And what do you think of this PFS? https://www.share-talk.com/european-metals-hldg-aimemh-pfs-c... People in .cz think this is a gold mine but investors don't seem to agree

I remember looking at that project back in the day and couldn’t make the numbers work. Not sure if much has changed.

Firstly it’s an underground mine which is inherently much higher risk/cost compared to open cut.

Second logistically it’s a world away from customers (Asia etc)

Again if they had kicked it off back when, and were in production now they could have locked in some good terms from the starved customers and maybe set themselves up as a player, unfortunately I think they have missed the boat.

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