Hi All, Discussing with friends I point out as electric vehicles...

Hi All,

Discussing with friends I point out as electric vehicles become adopted, it will likely cause a decline in petrol stations as demand for petrol falls. Therefore it would be reasonable to assume the convenience of petrol cars would also similarly fall. As petrol cars become less convenient my hypothesis is the uptake of electric cars becomes more rapid.

Reason for the following article, is it is not just consumer demand driving adoption of EV but also regulatory.

960,000 vehicles / year affected by this just at Renault - bold is my own emphasis.

Renault (RENA.PA) expects diesel engines to disappear from most of its European cars, company sources told Reuters, after the French automaker reviewed the costs of meeting tighter emissions standards following the Volkswagen scandal.

The sober reassessment was delivered at an internal meeting before the summer break. It shows how, a year after VW (VOWG_p.DE) admitted engineering software to cheat U.S. diesel emissions tests, the repercussions are forcing major European car makers to rewrite strategic plans that will shape their futures for years to come.

"Tougher standards and testing methods will increase technology costs to the point where diesel is forced out of the market," the source summarized Bollore as saying.

Models in those first three size categories accounted for most of the group's 1.6 million European deliveries last year, and more than 60 percent were diesels.

"Everybody is backtracking on diesel because after 2017-18 it becomes more and more expensive," said Pavan Potluri, a power train analyst with consulting firm IHS Automotive.

Renault's electric car program and CO2 performance remain important assets in a world of ever-tightening emissions laws, Exane BNP Paribas analyst Stuart Pearson said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-renault-diesel-idUSKCN11C1MF

I am a believer with @sinkorswim that the adoption of lithium-ion batteries into mainstream transportation will be more rapid than the most bullish analyst.

It appears to have been missed by the analysts as they appear to not been to China and if they have they have they are not speaking to the largest producers as I have.

As from my meetings in China it was the demand for EV buses in 2016 that totally caught the whole battery industry scrambling to build capacity to meet demand.

Simon Moores  twitter today stated there are 7 mega battery factories under construction in China presently.

http://benchmarkminerals.com/Blog/t...ur-slides-from-the-benchmark-world-tour-2016/

As I have said previously on China - the demand in my opinion is probably greater than my most bullish expectations.

Joe is re-doing his demand forecasts after just visiting Korea and Japan (he did not make it to China where in my opinion demand is going off the chart):

  

I have decided to back PLS. However if the lithium stock is real (eg. Jorc / good management / capable of getting to market) the next several years are going to be just great.

It is so obvious for those that wish to research.

Also another poster queried recycling - it is not economic. If prices go up - recycling may break even.

Would mean prices higher than today - PLS is expected to be very profitable at $750/t - if prices were higher it would be making even more money....

http://investorintel.com/technology-metals-intel/recycling-recycling-the-great-lithium-challenge/

Cheers,
Super Ninja