Rumours & Speculation, page-619

Thought I would share a conversation I had with a good mate over lunch who is currently one of the chief engineers designing 4 new EV's for a major auto manufacturer. (I will keep this generic for obvious reasons but I hope it helps.)
I asked some questions that were answered within confidentiality boundaries,
1. Where does Vanadium fit within the Lithium landscape?. Answer- Vanadium has great potential for base load storage with deep cycle time but won't be used in the auto industry in the foreseeable future. Lithium has way more potential and further development moving forward.
2. Who do you think has the best battery technology. Answer- LG are at the cutting edge of mass produced lithium batteries but their are others.
3. What do you see holding back EV's moving forward. Answer- Big Oil, Finance and the auto industry itself as they all have conflicting agendas.
Big Oil is a no brainer but I asked why finance. He said because lease companies need to reprice residual cost on cars moving forward as EV's become mainstream and ICE's become less popular. Also Finance have alot of servicing equipment leased to motor repair shops and dealerships and EV's don't need this stuff so the finance needs to be unravelled. Which leaves the Auto industry and he said a little known fact was that car dealers make the majority of their profit from servicing cost, not the selling of the car and EV's need next to no servicing which has the potential to make Auto dealerships as we know them obsolete.
Some of this has been covered on this forum, but I thought since my mate lives and breaths the auto industry his perspective was interesting. Finally I asked did he think my investment in a producing lithium miner was a sound one and he answered the I couldn't go wrong as the EV era is here and the ICE era will be finished within the next decade.