Usually, the China monthly NEV sales summary comes up on 9th or 10th of the month, but not this time. While I was tracking NEV sales information, I found another SMM report for China April 2019, this is purely about vehicle Li battery installation in China. However, this number covers all vechicles, not just pessenger cars. The other major Li battery user in China, I suspect is bus.
Here is the summary of this report:
- total vehicle Li battery installation in April was 5.4GWh, 46% increase from same period last year, and 6.4% increase from March 2019. I understood that March was a very impressive month. The installation figure also indicated that NCA battery market share decreased by 7% in April and LFP battery market share increased 9%, which I suspected that public bus sector in replacing a huge amount of ICE buses in the coming months.
- all provincial governments shall publish its public transportation replacement and subsidy plans by 1st of August 2019.
- Cobalt price stable for April
- there are industrial and battery Li producers trying or testing to raise prices in April, but large player prices were stable
I found it very hard to believe that FMC and Livent published very negative Li forecast. One of the definite outcomes is to cause the market for Li minors to be depressed for a longer time frame. Now Westfarmers is a smart investor (who knows WA so well and so connected in WA government and industries) which indicates that it is more or less the right time to buy Li minors now. Hence, my imagination starts to run wild, and my tongue gets tight...
