World's most valuable commodity 224 Mar 2017 09:52
Tesla needs lithium to succeed. As do a great many other tech firms. But the batteries in electric vehicles use a lot more lithium than a smartphone. For instance, a Tesla Model S battery has 63 kilograms of lithium in it, the equivalent of 10,000 smartphones. That’s getting lots of people very excited about lithium. As a Deutsche Bank research note put it last year:
This is the dawn of the Lithium-ion Age
The commercialization of the lithium-ion battery in the 1990’s powered a 20- year surge in the telecommunication and computing industries following the rapid development of light, powerful, rechargeable batteries. As we enter the second half of this decade, the emergence of the Electric Vehicle (EV) is a globally significant thematic based on the same battery technology.
Governments are setting carbon emissions targets for the automotive industry whilst also subsidizing EV technology. Beyond traditional demand markets and the emergence of EV, another potential market is beginning to materialize. Battery energy storage on a grid-, industrial-, commercial- and consumer-scale is reaching commercial viability, and rapidly falling battery costs suggest that the Energy Storage sector could grow materially over the next 10 years.
Global lithium demand was 184kt in 2015, with battery demand increasing 45% YoY and accounting for 40% of global lithium demand. Based on our analysis, global lithium demand will increase to 534kt by 2025, with batteries accounting for 70% of global demand.
As The Economist put it at the start of 2016:
Demand is on the up. At the moment, the main lithium-ion battery-makers are Samsung and LG of South Korea, Panasonic and Sony of Japan, and ATL of Hong Kong.
But China also has many battery-makers. Adam Collins of Liberum, another investment bank, talks of an “inflection-point” in Chinese demand for lithium salts. Its government is stepping up the promotion of lithium-ion batteries and electric vehicles, with the biggest emphasis on buses. Sales of “new energy” vehicles in China almost tripled in the first ten months of 2015 compared with the same period in 2014, to 171,000…
This major ramping up in demand has – as you’d expect – translated into a sharp increase in lithium prices. This chart tells the story – pay particular attention to the doubling in prices at the backend of 2015:
That kind of massive ramp up in price tells us a couple of things. It would say it shows signs of panic buying. The price could slide once the panic subsides. But the panic itself tells us that there are people in the market who do not want to miss the boat and are worried there won’t be enough lithium to meet demand.
Hang on, what is lithium?
If you’re unfamiliar, lithium is the lightest of all metals. If you were to see it in the wild it would appear soft and silver-white, which is why it’s known as “white petrol”. It