Thanks for calling me stupid. Unfortunately I can't be bothered taking the time to bleed with your intended insults.
I guess we'll see what is forthcoming. $600 per ton of offtake is absolute top dollar for 'current' producers - it's not 'the' baseline price to use as reference if you're still a couple of years from production and a supply/demand parity has been reached. And yes - it will be reached, because all existing kingpin producers are planning for significant upramping 'now'. Can PLS beat them to the punch? I don't know. But I doubt existing producers will give up market share without a fight. They also have one major advantage - sector experience.
As for the 500kt LCE - yes - i'd say thats accurate. The next generation of Li batteries hitting the market have double the energy density of what's currently available, and I think it's reasonable to assume this energy densification (?) trend will continue into the future. You really think battery technology, when billions upon billions is being poured into R&D, globally, by countless teams, is going to stay static to the parameters we know now? It's going to advance like wildfire. Moore's law.
Reality is nobody knows where the renewable movement is headed. It's nothing but predictions and pie charts and my-opinion-is-louder-than-yours projections at the moment. And it's all projections of other countries desperately needing to change, ironically, low wealth countries that can barely afford the ticket price of EVs, but meanwhile, locally, nobody I know (apart from myself) has an EV on their radar in any way, shape or form. Who do you know that can afford to burn $180K on a Tesla? $400K on a BMW i8? Or even $70K on a compact car - a BMW i3?
And nor do we have the infrastructure to support an EV boom. More than just EV powering stations - we'll be needing extra power stations, power infrastructure to support the almighty electrical consumption that EV uptake will require. And yes - they're electricity pigs. Electricity might be cheap, but that doesn't stop EVs from them being energy thirsty. Most electrical grids around the world are not 'complete' enough to handle a massive EV onslaught. Australia certainly isn't.
We all think we know the answer. But if it was that easy, we'd all be rich.
(20min delay)