The Impending Boom, page-359

When it comes to future demand of lithium, it is always interesting to get the exact reasoning of those that think there will be an oversupply and have the effect of pushing down all lithium plays, MS being the most recent example.

Going back a year or 2, I questioned the forecasts of a couple of analysts from institutions like Macquarie via phone and email, on how they had reached the numbers they were predicting (they were predicting oversupply and lower lithium prices for 2017, plus lower share prices for all the miners especially PLS)

They were using the amount of lithium in an old 2014 Nissan Leaf (small battery), the first Chevy bolt (hybrid-small battery), then averaging those numbers and using those low figures for future projections. They ignored the larger batteries used in Teslas and the plans of others that had batteries of Tesla's size or larger (VW, Mercedes, now everyone else).

They were basically extrapolating the past into the future, without seeing that change was happening to make their numbers irrelevant. They also missed buses, trucks, small equipment, bikes and battery storage. It was totally obvious to me and I tried to tell as many as possible of how wrong their numbers were going to be.

Analysts in ALL fields do not want to make a prediction that is too different to other analysts. Their jobs depend on it. If analyst is wrong, then an individual is just part of the pack, so can't be individually blamed for getting it wrong. However one that makes a prediction way off others, but is incorrect, will probably not be an analyst for long. Hence why none of the analysts are prepared to really work out a fastly changing future.