This is a moving target and I’m certainly not an expert but I’ll...

This is a moving target and I’m certainly not an expert but I’ll give you the situation as I understand it.

There are three main competing battery technologies in the global EV market: NMC, NCA and LFP.

NMC and NCA are high-nickel chemistries favoured by western carmakers (NCA is Tesla, NMC almost everyone else). The high nickel content provides these batteries with high energy density (= more distance) and high discharge rates (=faster acceleration) at the expense of high cost and less stability (less safe).

LFP are favoured by Asian automakers and have the opposite characteristics. Cheap and safe but lower performance.

For some reason that a battery chemist could explain, the high nickel batteries are much more amenable to lithium hydroxide as a feedstock. And LFP prefers lithium carbonate. That’s why hydroxide has sold for a premium over the last few years.

However this picture is changing somewhat. Tesla recently announced a switch to LFP for its entry level models. And advances in LFP technology are closing the performance gap.

Hence carbonate prices surging recently.

So to answer your question, the chemical we produce will likely be determined by whichever customer we sign an offtake deal with. That is the situation LAC are currently in.

Lithium sulphate is an intermediate product in the production process. Further processing to either carbonate or hydroxide is fairly simple from that point.

Hope that helps.