I understand what you are getting at @Bunn-Wackett and, in...

I understand what you are getting at @Bunn-Wackett and, in theory, I agree with you. However, where I disagree is when I look at the data.

You used nickel as the example so I will provide a graph to illustrate the point.


The graph is from data contained in Trading Economics. You can check it out for confirmation.


The second graph from Trading Economics as well for Li.

If nickel was in short supply relative to all available industrial applications then you would expect that the price of nickel would be bid up over time. Certainly, if there was more demand (by production units) in one sector of production (supported by consumer demand) then that sector, in theory, would bid prices up until supply equaled demand. The bidding up of these the price for nickel would be at the expense of other users of the commodity or it would have a direct impact of the overall price by pushing it higher in the aggregate.

Given the reporting that has been coming out in the media re sales of EVs, it appears that the demand is there (currently). However, manufactures have to be forward looking as well and they may see a slowdown coming that we, the average punter, cannot.

I also agree that the technology behind EVs means that there are many more raw materials that are needed to produce a single vehicle and thus a bottleneck in any one of these supply chains will have a negative impact on production capacity. From what I am reading at present, this does not appear to issue it was say two years ago. This claim is supported by the number of EVs sitting in car yards ready to be sold. The average days on a car lot is greater today than it was 12 months ago.

I suppose that what I am suggesting is that this is very complex issue and, per my previous post, it will take the economic historians to look back at the COVID, and post COVID period to provide some answers to these issues in 10 or 15 years from now.

BTW - nickel as a traded commodity compared to lithium is chalk and cheese. At present Li spot pricing through the few exchanges that trade it is still very immature compared to other commodities (and even they can be manipulated at times).

IMO DYOR