Accelerate the World's Transition to Sustainable Energy - to fight Anthropogenic Climate Change, page-336

Zippo

You write:

So you don’t really claim anything other than what other people have suggested, no I believe but what I’ve read and these speculative articles seem believable to your good self?

You are trying to make it sound as if the sources I quote are "speculative". Silly me and here I thought they were reputable sources.

Perhaps I ought to digress... and explain how I view future predictions from experts, brokers, and the like.

Firstly, one thing is for sure. Most predictions - even from the most knowledgeable sources - often do not come true. My best example is "Gartner", the IT industry experts. Their opinions and future projections during the period of the dot.com boom/bust were often incorrect (in hindsight) and yet, even today, people look at their research for market trend perditions. Some would argue that prediction of the future is pointless - it will ALWAYS turn out different that what we expect. However, to blindly walk into the future also carries high risk.

I accept that the aim of market research is to make the most accurate predictions about the future based on what we know of as at today. Just like any investment decision is based on incomplete facts, we make the best possible decision based on what we know as of today.

Now roskill say about themselves: Roskill is the leader in critical materials supply chain intelligence. We deliver this through market reports, consulting, sustainability and cost analysis, and events. Our customers trust our global team for independent, expert insight.

.... and they have done this since 1930.

However, I do note that they get quoted by many resource companies in their company presentations, so even if I ignore their self proclaimed expertise, resource companies base their investments on this research.

As for broker research, there is good quality and there is bad quality broker research. From the little I know, UBS is not generally considered to be the worst research house ( do you think it is?). I also differentiate between a stock report - where they might be trying to flog you a specific company who they may or may not have a corporate relationship with - and market research, where they can sometimes dig into a global network of research resource. I personally find such market research to be insightful. I would not describe it as speculative, even though it is trying to look into the future.

One other element - a very important element - when reading market research that is making all sorts of predictions about the future is to do a reality check... by looking back at history. This can be a valuable cross check, to gauge how reasonable or unreasonable some of the predictions sound.

So, when I look at market research by market experts, I also look at how battery prices have actually trended over history. Here is one such recent and very detailed analysis from the MIT (a reputable educational institution I thought):

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2021/ee/d0ee02681f

The following chart is probably most pertinent:



Now, I am aware that there are physical limits as to how much further batteries can be improved in terms of their chemistry or material composition. However, when looking at the future predictions of further cost reductions, I am almost certain that significant cost reductions are likely to be garnered simply from economies of scale in mass production.

The following link provides a discussion of the article:

"Battery costs determine price parity of electric vehicles with internal combustion engine vehicles," says Venkat Viswanathan, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not associated with this work. "Thus, projecting battery cost declines is probably one of the most critical challenges in ensuring an accurate understanding of adoption of electric vehicles."

So yes, I am still expecting to see EVs reach price parity with ICE cars within the next 2-4 years based on battery costs continuing their rather dramatic price decline (like 97% over the last 30 years!).

Speculative articles?!? ... well if you think so!

So far, the only evidence against my prediction/speculation/research that you have provided is the platitude that "things always take longer than people expect".