Good News & Bad News, page-26790

There is a lot of talk around about the impact of sodium batteries, and that this is going to impact Lithium batteries and the resource companies mining for the raw materials. SP are to fall, fear fear and more fear. A bit like LIT in Afghanistan, India, Iran, mud in Nevada and 5 African mines that are coming on line. Most of this information is originated out of China or have Chinese influence. Why? The converters were making all the money up to 15 months ago when it all shifted towards the miners. They don't like this one bit, so they are trowing everything at it to get the prices down. They are mainly successful in this as the industry is immature and BEOT can take easy positions to go first short and then long. Now sodium is the petrol to the scaremongering fire. Sodium batteries have there applications but its density is super low, resulting in poor performance and range. Great for the tuff tuff's in India and China but these batteries will only fill a small part of demand, that wasn't there in the first place. These customers would have continued to use their smoking older ICE cars and bikes.
Maq Bank just came out with their forecast on car usage for the remainder of this decade.
Currently, from all cars sold in 2022 some 24% have some kind of battery. (14m units)
By 2026 ( BTW, Maq bank thinks we sell less overall cars by 2026 than today) this is predicted by them to grow to 48% or a total of 23m units. Thats an uplift of 64%. If we assume that we are in equilibrium today ( personally I doubt this) then over the next 3 years we need to find supply for an additional 9m car units. Now think about this for a moment. Today we have producers PLS, ALB, SQM, Green bushes, AKE and a few smaller here and there. We need 64% more in 3 years. Mmmmm, LTR, CXO, PLS extension, SYA, Maybe LLL, thats about it for something meaningful. Are they plugging the hole for the extra 9M? No way. Then we are not talking about LIT used for a range of other things, Home batteries, scooters, planes, boats, trucks to name a few.
So let the scaremongering continue, just don't fall for it.