I'll bite.Nobody is certain of anything. If they were, life...

I'll bite.

Nobody is certain of anything. If they were, life would be boring.

- court cases : there is no court case. It's outside the court system and it's suggested the decision will be within a month. Binary outcome, but IMO COB has followed the contract to the letter and some of BPL's disputes are frankly bizarre. Shedding BPL would be a huge positive.

- overseas issues: not sure what you mean here. Perhaps US/China trade dispute? I agree, this macro creates uncertainty that's tough for investing in general - particularly junior mining. I feel it's priced in, but the market will decide this, and hopefully Trump and Xi can sort it out (fingers crossed).

Musk's comment: You need to take Musk's comment in context of the backdrop of $40/pound cobalt that was in supply deficit and the media doomsday cobalt-supply scenarios jeopardising the future of batteries and Tesla's business model.

Solid state batteries touted a few years ago by Toyota then Fisker and Dyson respectively to be commercially ready by 2020-22 have all failed to be developed at all. Fisker was exposed as a complete con and Dyson has quietly shifted to lithium-ion and surprise, surprise so has Toyota. For all the talk of complete substitution by Musk, Tesla still needs cobalt (as do all lithium-ion chemistries) to stop their cars catching on fire (too frequently) - disclaimer, I love Teslas.

Thrifting cobalt by switching to NMC 811 battery production will need to happen as cobalt demand catches up to supply, but there are a few things delaying the switch:
1. NMC 811 are technically quite difficult and expensive to make. The batteries need to be made under inert conditions which costs more.
2. 811s as alluded to above, like Tesla's NCA's are less stable and more prone to overheating, requiring active cooling.
3. Cobalt is cheap again, so 523, and 622s which can take lithium carbonate and are cheaper to make, are still by far the prepdominant EV battery chemistries.


The elephant in the room - there's now so much lithium-ion battery factory capacity in the wings, it's getting harder for a substitute to displace it. Also, the scale and huge investment in Li-ion technology means is getting cheaper and more energy-dense each year.

As stated above, I'm predicting 2022-23 to be where Cobalt supply necessitates 811 Thrifting and ex-DRC supply. This timing hopefully bodes well for COB.

Not certain of anything, but you can bet that 500 pound gorillas like LG and SK/VW are thinking about securing dependable cobalt supply from 2022.