Nobody has an exact answer for that question. My personal opinion is that we are close to the spot price bottom in China and prices in general should pick up over the rest of the year. There are several factors to consider:
- in China EV sales are picking up in March (but it seems that they are still held back by big discounts on ICE models, there will be new emission standards for ICE vehicles in July, so car makers dump models that will not meet the new emission standards, sometimes with even bigger discounts than are offered for EV models)
"There are still some old models on the market that do not meet China 6b emission regulations, and the de-stocking of these models may have an impact on the production, sales and prices of the auto industry, according to the note.However, CITIC Securities also pointed out that the duration of the impact of the transition will not be too long, and the degree of impact will be significantly smaller than the switch of China's auto industry emission standard from China 5 to China 6a in 2019."
more details on impact of new emissions standard:
China's transition to new emission standard: How will this affect auto market? - CnEVPostThis is what I expect could happen in China in March. We can also see from the registration figures in Norway, Netherlands, Sweden and Spain that March will also be a strong month in Europe
Electric Vehicle registrations in Europe: 14 countries, 80+% of BEV market (eu-evs.com)
- customers in the battery industry have very low inventories, there is not much wiggle room for them to draw down lithium inventories
https://s22.q4cdn.com/453302215/files/doc_financials/2022/q4/Slides-LTHM-4Q-2022-Earnings_vFinal.pdf
Several Chinese producers allegedly sitting on inventories according to "Chinese sources", this one is hard to believe for me.
- some Chinese producers already going bankrupt or at least having to halt production
https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/small-chinese-lithium-carbonate-firms-shut-down-as-prices-fall-insider-says
