@happydayz On the 6th of August you had posted "Does anyone have...

@happydayz On the 6th of August you had posted "Does anyone have any idea which car companies are interested as per the last announcement tier 1 companies." A few of us had tossed around ideas of who our possible Tier 1 interest is, but we were using BMI's older chart. Using the current one in the link above, of the 7 possibilities, I'm still leaning towards either LG Chem or Samsung.

LG Chem has a battery plant in Ohio, Samsung in Michigan- the 2 states that BASF have CAM operations. They are both South Korean, not Chinese, which may be relevant, as we haven't seen our management court the interest of large players in China.

Running with a German connection, LG Chem is the main supplier of Volkswagen's batteries, although VW also have contracts with Samsung and CATL. We know BASF is exclusively supplying Porsche's high performance batteries, Porsche being owned by Volkswagen. From a 16 June Reuters article:

Volkswagen's goal was to have a small number of larger players to keep complexity under control.

Among others, Volkswagen is seeking closer ties with Germany's BASF (BASFn.DE), one of the world's largest suppliers of battery materials, according to two people familiar with the matter..

We're all in a race....we need to move into vertical integration more strongly, procuring and securing raw materials. This can happen via various forms of cooperation," he said.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/volkswagen-seeks-partnerships-battery-materials-race-2021-06-15/


My premise here, of course, is that BASF is still in play, the likelihood of which many of us were pondering last month. In another post I'll add a handful of possible further "coincidences" to the list we've already started. For now however, rereading @loisl1978's 29 June email from JW, to my eyes the language he uses suggests the relationship is still active.

"Regards BASF, unfortunately we are not in a position to make a public statement under existing confidentiality obligations.... However, any public statement needs to be agreed by both parties, which has not occurred with BASF since December 2019, when we last made such an announcement.The current situation is absolutely consistent with the behaviour of all the other arrangements that Lepidico has with third parties involved in the electric vehicle supply chain."

The verbs JW uses are present tense- "are, needs, has, is," not "were, needed, had, was." In all of our ASX announcements, management choose their words very carefully and this email seems to be no exception. Would there be a need for confidentiality if the agreement was broken?

Lastly, given the distance from Canadian sulphuric acid supply, perhaps 4 of the other 7 Tier 1 battery producers are less likely: Panasonic is in Nevada and soon Texas, Envision AESC in Tennessee, SK Innovation in Georgia and BYD in California. They supply Tesla, Nissan, Ford and BYD, amongst others, so are missing the German connection. CATL supplies VW and is in Detroit, so maybe?