Not Enough Li " Tianqi ", page-2

very interesting reading Fingers...

Have you all noted the most important sentence in the article about the sentiment at the Lithium market:

'He said a major reason for building the processing plant in Australia (rather than China, where Tianqi is based and has current facilities) was that customers wanted diversity and security of supply'

in another words: we know the costs will be slightly higher but we pay the premium for the security of supply

...and same will be in conservative Germany lead Europe - the big players in Europe (LG, Panasonic, BMW, Daimler  etc.) will want the security of supply in the first place since the share of the cost purely of Lithium Carbonate on the  overall Li battery is marginal - but the point is that it is essential.

If Tesla S battery needs 60 kg of Li2CO3 (roughly 11 kg of pure Li) - it is about $600 (at $10 for 1kg of Li2CO3). Even if the price is 20$ for 1kg of Li2CO3 - we are at $1200. Still the fraction  of the overall ~$15000 for the whole battery.

If the Europeans want the security of the supply for the decades they  will have no other option then to start dig also Lithium under Cinovec hill.

The location and security of supply starts to play more important role then we have thought.