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At the current rate I can see all new Nordic short haul ferries being electric by 2025.

I assume the he3da battery plant will initially be power storage, the automative crowd will have a longer proving period (years).

You can use many different elements and technology to make a battery, but lithium is overwhelmingly preferred for its low weight and energy density. You only need to look at the periodic table to understand why - Lithium is the third lightest element (behind hydrogen and helium). No amount of wizardry will change this fundamental physics. Just look at the energy density figures: Lithium-ion 100-300Wh/kg vs Vanadium redox weighing 10x more for a similar capacity, a 1 tonne battery just won't work in a Prius/Tesla. That said Vanadium redox has potential in the larger MW-scale grid storage world, it's probably bigger, I think they just literally fill the electrolyte in a "swimming pool" or underground bunker, it'll probably last 20-25 years and is less likely to start a fire than lithium. That said, if they perfect solid-state lithium metal batteries (note: different tech to lithium ion) that solves the boomy firey problems then the future is safely going to be powered by lithium. If they perfect that you can either triple the driving range or reduce the weight by 70%.

PS if you want to feel better about the long term lithium prospects, take a look at page 9 of the seeking alpha, ranks mining companies by development stage and MCAP. EMH has one of the better resources and cheaper entry points.

China spot pricing is still about $22k per tonne, 2018 long term contracts ranging $13-16k. EMH mention on seeking alpha March round up https://seekingalpha.com/article/4159678-lithium-junior-miner-news-month-march-2018?page=5 Unofficial seeking alpha opinion 2018 - Off-take discussions. Late 2018 - DFS to be released. Mid 2019 - Bankable Feasibility Study to be released. Late 2021 - Production to commence.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/softbank-and-saudi-arabia-announce-new-solar-power-generation-project.html Saudi Arabia and Japan's SoftBank expanded their partnership on Tuesday, announcing the world's biggest solar power generation project The 200 gigawatts of capacity will be spread throughout Saudi Arabia. The first two solar parks will be able to generate 7.2 gigawatts of power and are scheduled to begin construction this year and start generating electricity in 2019. The first parks will not include battery storage, but the new Saudi electricity generation company will begin adding that feature to solar farms within two to three years, according to Son. These type of announcements can sometimes be scaled back slightly - but the Saudi's are gonna need a HELLUVA lot of lithium!

Blonde, remind me, what was the previous extraction %? Using your maths it was previously about 80%

Some interesting media rumours going around re: Volkswagen supply, VW CEO suggesting they have no immediate plans to be a battery manufacturer (supply chain hardball perhaps?) and orders in place with Samsung, LG Chem and possibly CATL. All 3 expanding in Europe, little mention in Czech except Skoda probably adding 3000 workers at a new production line. Difficult to say if people are avoiding Czech investment on purpose? Several Gigafactories announced near Czech, just not in it quite yet.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/03/volkswagen-bets-big-on-electric-with-25-billion-battery-bonanza/

Never assume an mou is in the bag. An mou is what you sign when you want to suggest a deal is done but neither side wants to commit any finance. 9/10 I see these come undone.

Sounds like CEFC have an unusual history, they had about 1.5bn euros of assets in Czech but recently their CEO was arrested for...something odd, before the Chinese government did their classic "shake down" and recently converted the company into a China state/government owned bank portfolio fund. Lord knows what officially is going on there

CEFC also provided $20m in bond finance to Pilbara minerals for their lithium mine, so maybe they are angling to provide finance to the Cinovec project? The Chinese are all over trying to secure lithium supply, possibly just some long term bond interest and associated retail investments.

It's not the worst idea I've ever heard, remarkably constructive compared to some statements I've heard on the topic. I'm not entirely sure what the mid to long term Syria plan is anyway - it currently seems to be to drive out the Syrian population and clear a NATO controlled path from Egypt to Turkey, in which case a Marshall plan would make a lot of sense once complete.

http://praguemonitor.com/2018/03/23/pm-babi%C5%A1-migration-crisis-be-solved-outside-europe I'd say from there it is very clear what his political demands are, he wants reduced forced quotas of refugees and a modern 'Marshall Plan' to economically boost the Middle East/North African economy to prevent the need for refugees to leave in the first place. Assuming that NATO gives a monkeys about Lithium anyway - you'd think energy security was right up there with defence strategy so who knows.

Interesting week for Babis then, he has previous form with Jens Stoltenberg (Babis wanted a tougher NATO response to the refugee crisis, I don't think he got it). Jens is an interesting character, a centre-left Norwegian who looked after energy, defence, finance departments etc. Norway also has an abundance of energy from their hydroelectric power, so they may have more than a passing interest in lithium technology (they are also building major power cables between Norway/UK/Denmark/Germany/Belgium). It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall for that conversation - quid pro quo? Fair enough if Babis wants to play hardball for 'the Czech people', but if he farts around too much he risks having no mines at all. "The Government Office also told CTK that Babis will meet NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday morning. The EU summit will be held on Thursday and Friday. Top politicians of EU member states will talk about the future of the internal market, trade, social affairs, foreign affairs, and the forthcoming summit of the EU and the West Balkan countries, which will be held in Sofia in May." PS also kinda sounds like BMW are playing hardball in their negotiation tactics too..

Hello there, yes I'm still around and keep my holdings in SYNC. It seems the SP has plateaued slightly of late, however Blue Earth and Nightstar seem to be plodding forward at a rate of knots, so I suspect this is partly because the progress was already priced into the SP. Very happy with Valirx's technical progress and patent news as well, highly enjoy the technical potential as well, SCLP seem to be doing OK too so there's a reasonable amount of funky UK Biotech going on right now (I am not fully researched nor invested in SCLP, but from a laymans overview it appears like a nice technology). Nightstar (part of the SYNC portfolio) is actively out there curing (or preventing blindness) in a bunch of clinical trials, I am not sure whether there is any competition in the states, but the progress seems good from what has been publicly reported. It's now treating Choroideremia and X-linked retinitis pigmentosa, with Best Vitelliform macular dystrophy and Stargardt disease in the pipeline. The general concept of using an engineering virus to correct DNA mutations and provide functional copies of key proteins is good. But it does require surgery (i.e. it's not in pill form) so I would imagine the training curve will be steep for the rollout.

The Tesla delay on announcing the Gigafactory 3 makes sense given the enormous efforts made trying to ramp up US production of the new Tesla car, but it is interesting that the Czech republic keeps cropping up as a potential destination for the factory. Especially given the Tesla delay in announcement, Czech political involvement and EMH quiet. Fingers crossed

A partnership between two Swiss companies converted a Komatsu dumper truck with a giant 700 kWh battery pack. They originally planned to fit a massive 600 kWh lithium-ion battery pack to power the electric motor, but they actually managed to fit 700 kWh of energy capacity on the chassis of the vehicle by using 1,440 prismatic NMC cells for a total battery pack weight of 4.5 tons.The only other EVs coming close to its energy capacity are some electric buses, like BYD�s 60-ft all-electric bus with a 547 kWh battery pack. What is interesting about electrifying dumper trucks is that they are often used to carry ore up and down mines. While diesel trucks burn fuel even on their way down a mine, there�s a great opportunity for electric vehicles to actually gain energy on their way down thanks to regenerative braking. The Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) expects that the truck will be able to recuperate 40 kWh of its way down the quarry � something the truck does 20 times a day for a total of 800 kWh of energy capacity through regenerative braking.

Thanks Earache, I was aware it seemed a bit fantasy-land, it was just odd it originated from something I found on a semi-governmental website. With EMH rigged for silent running these daft articles spread like they're in a vacuum! Looking forward to reading something official.

https://www.he3da.cz/single-post/2018/01/27/Czech-HE3DA-plans-production-in-the-USA The Czech battery manufacturer HE3DA wants to start with battery production in the USA by 2021. At the end of 2017, HE3DA announced plans for a new giga-factory in Horn� Such� (Czech Republic). Aided by USD 1 billion from investors, battery production is scheduled to start in March 2019. Construction will be followed by a half-year test run, the company states in a blog post. Designed to be fully automated and manned with robots, the factory will have an annual production capacity of 1.2 GWh. Jan Proch�zka, owner and director of HE3Da, states on plans for a USA manufacturing facility which mirrors the European design and concept: �Before CES 2018, we had meetings with the Nevada state government and several entities that are helping us implement our project involving the construction of a giga-plant in Nevada. During CES 2018, we had the opportunity to meet in person with numerous international private firms and we arranged further meetings with them.� OK........................ A bit presumptious PR marketing from He3da or is this genuine?