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>>> Phillips 66 Announces Major Milestone in Production of Renewable Diesel
Business Wire
Apr 1, 2024
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/phillips-66-announces-major-milestone-203900162.html
HOUSTON, April 01, 2024--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) today announced a major milestone in its conversion of the San Francisco refinery into the Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex, expanding commercial scale production of renewable diesel.
The Rodeo Renewed project has progressed, with the facility now processing only renewable feedstocks and producing approximately 30,000 barrels per day of renewable diesel. The Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex is on track to increase production rates to more than 800 million gallons per year (50,000 BPD) of renewable fuels by the end of the second quarter, positioning Phillips 66 as a leader in renewable fuels.
"We are proud to announce this significant achievement at our Rodeo facility," said Rich Harbison, Phillips 66 executive vice president of Refining. "The project advances Phillips 66’s long-held strategy to expand our renewable fuels production, lower our carbon footprint, and provide reliable, affordable energy while creating long-term value for our shareholders."
Harbison added, "We’ve had strong execution to-date and are fully focused on finalizing the project in the second quarter."
The Rodeo Renewed project design also provides the capability of producing renewable jet, a key component of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), expected to start production in the second quarter of 2024.
Phillips 66 made a final investment decision to move forward with the Rodeo Renewed project in 2022, transforming the San Francisco refinery into one of the world’s largest renewable fuels facilities. As a world-class supplier of renewable fuels, the converted facility leverages a premium geographic location, unique processing infrastructure and flexible logistics to significantly reduce lifecycle carbon emissions.
About Phillips 66
Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) is a leading diversified and integrated downstream energy provider that manufactures, transports and markets products that drive the global economy. The company’s portfolio includes Midstream, Chemicals, Refining, and Marketing and Specialties businesses. Headquartered in Houston, Phillips 66 has employees around the globe who are committed to safely and reliably providing energy and improving lives while pursuing a lower-carbon future.
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>>> The Tesla Megapack is a large-scale rechargeable lithium-ion battery stationary energy storage product, intended for use at battery storage power stations, manufactured by Tesla Energy, the energy subsidiary of Tesla, Inc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Megapack
Launched in 2019, a Megapack can store up to 3.9 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity. Each Megapack is a container of similar size to an intermodal container. They are designed to be deployed by electric utilities. The energy stored can be used as required, for example during periods of peak electricity demand or when grid power is disrupted.
Tesla Energy also offers the Powerwall, a smaller energy storage device intended for home use.
History
Tesla Gigafactory 1
Tesla Giga Nevada, where the Megapack was designed and is manufactured, along with Lathrop
On April 30, 2015, Tesla announced that it would sell standalone battery storage products to consumers and utilities.[1] Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that the company's battery storage products could be used to improve the reliability of intermittent renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind.[1]
Prior to the Megapack launch, Tesla used its 200 kilowatt-hour (kWh) Powerpack energy storage product to meet the needs of utilities with large-scale storage requirements. During 2015 and 2016, Tesla deployed a combined 300 MWh of Powerwall and Powerpack technology, including an 80 MWh deployment of Powerpacks at the Mira Loma substation in Southern California.[2] In 2017, Tesla used Powerpacks to deploy 129 MWh of battery storage at the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia,[3] the biggest deployment of lithium-ion grid battery storage in the world at the time.[4]
Design work, at Giga Nevada, began on the Megapack project at least as early as the first half of 2018.[5]
In July 2019, Megapack launched.[6] It was described by Tesla as a utility-scale energy storage product, suitable for power stations and utilities.[6] Tesla claimed that Megapacks would be compatible with Tesla power station monitoring and energy control software, Powerhub and Autobidder.[6] The company stated that Megapack was designed to meet the needs of large-scale battery storage projects, as with the Hornsdale Power Reserve.[6]
Tesla acquired a former JC Penney's distribution center in Lathrop, California, in 2021 and converted it into a battery plant called Megafactory,[7] with a target capacity of 40 GWh/year when finished.[8] Next-generation Megapacks use prismatic lithium iron phosphate cells,[9] for example in the 585 MWh Kapolei, Hawaii facility.[10]
Tesla’s record energy deployment was achieved in Q1 2023, adding 3.9 GWh in a single quarter, a 360% year-over-year increase.[11][needs update]
In 2023, Tesla announced a new “Megafactory” in Shanghai to manufacture Megapacks, with the goal of producing about 10,000 packs per year.[12]
Specifications
Model Unit Cost Capacity Power Round Trip Efficiency Dimensions (W x H x D)[13] Weight[13]
Megapack $1.24M 2.6 MWh[14] 1 MW[15] 23.52 ft × 8.27 ft × 5.44 ft
(7.168 m × 2.522 m × 1.659 m) 56,000 lb
(25,400 kg)
Megapack 2 $1.47M 3.854 MWh 1.927 MW 92.0% 23.79 ft × 8.22 ft × 5.37 ft
(7.25 m × 2.506 m × 1.637 m) 67,200 lb
(30,500 kg)
Megapack 2 XL $1.39M 3.916 MWh 979 kW 93.7% 28.87 ft × 9.14 ft × 5.41 ft
(8.8 m × 2.785 m × 1.65 m) 84,000 lb
(38,100 kg)
Megapacks are assembled at the Tesla Megafactory in Lathrop, California.
Terms
Each Megapack comes with a 15-year "no defect" and "energy retention" warranty.[15] A 10 or 20 year "performance guarantee" is available for an additional cost.[15] Once a Megapack has reached the end of its useful life, Tesla says they can be returned for recycling.[16]
Megapacks are pre-assembled, including "battery modules, bi-directional inverters, a thermal management system, an AC main breaker and controls."[17]
Tesla requires customers to purchase a maintenance service agreement. Each Megapack receives a minor annual service, and a major service every ten years. The annual maintenance includes inspections and cleaning. The ten-year maintenance includes activities such as replacing the pump and fan for the thermal management system and refilling the coolant fluid.[18] Maintenance is expected to take about an hour per Megapack.[16]
Design
The Megapack thermal management system is located at the top of each unit.[16] It uses coolant fluid, made of an equal-parts mixture of ethylene glycol and water, to keep the battery at operating temperature.[16]
Each Megapack weighs approximately 51,000 pounds (23,000 kg) and the enclosure is built to a similar size as an intermodal container and includes twistlock fittings to allow automated handling.
Applications
Tesla Megapack site with solar canopies[19] 3D sketch
Grid batteries are used for ancillary services such as control of frequency and phase, black start, operating reserve etc.
Peak power
Megapacks are designed for large-scale energy storage. Megapacks are used by utilities to replace peaker power plants,[20] which generate energy during periods of peak demand. Megapacks store grid energy rather than generating it from fuel.[21]
Powerpacks continue to be used by utilities to meet smaller-scale grid energy storage requirements. For example, a 25 MW / 52 MWh deployment of Powerpacks is in use at the Lake Bonney Wind Farm in South Australia.[22]
Time shifting
Energy storage has become a requirement to help convert intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar into firm power.[23]
Other energy storage solutions, such as pumped hydroelectric storage, dominate the time-shift market. As of 2019, pumped hydroelectric storage accounted for 96% of global energy storage capacity.[24] Pumped hydroelectric storage systems have lower efficiency, but longer lifetimes than battery storage.[24]
Megapack can be deployed more quickly than other storage technologies.[25]
Supercharger stations
3D sketch of Tesla Supercharger station with solar canopies and 8 Megapack set for close to 32 MWh
Megapacks have been installed at Tesla Supercharger stations that also have solar canopies to help power the Megapacks.[26] Megapacks can smooth out electric demand on the local power grid and use the stored Megapacks electricity during peak demand so there aren't excessive surcharges on electricity to charge the electric vehicles.[27]
Deployments
Completed
In November 2019, Tesla used a Megapack to power a mobile recharging station for Tesla electric vehicles in California.[28] The mobile Supercharger was reported to deliver 125 kW, and was transported on a flat trailer attached to a truck between deployment locations.[28]
In December 2019, Tesla delivered a 1.25 MW/2.5 MWh Megapack to the Millidgeville Substation in Saint John, Canada for peak shaving.[29][30] The battery is estimated to save owner Saint John Energy CA$200,000 per year.[31] It became operational on April 3, 2020.[32]
The 300 MW Victorian Big Battery stores 377 to 450 MWh[33] near Geelong constituted the largest battery in the southern hemisphere[34] The commissioning process resumed in late September after being halted due to a fire (see "Safety" below), and the lessons learned were applied to other batteries.[35] The battery was commissioned on time in December 2021, a year after contract,[36] with an estimated return on investment of 2.4.[37]
Strata Solar, an American commercial solar services provider engaged Tesla as the battery provider for a 100 MW/400 MWh energy storage facility in Ventura County, California, using 142 Megapacks.[38] The deployment replaced a natural-gas powered peaker power plant. In 2023 Strata announced its Scatter Wash project, a Megapack-powered 255 MW / 1 GWh project in Phoenix, Arizona.[11]
Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) operates a 182.5 MW / 730 MWh 256-Megapack system at Moss Landing, in Monterey County.[39][40][6][41]
Safety
Grid-scale battery standards and fire containment practices are at an early stage of development.[42]
Fire risks are one factor that has delayed the deployment of some utility energy storage systems. Battery fires cannot be extinguished with water, which is the primary firefighting technique in most communities. A fire in a single cell can cascade to others via thermal runaway, possibly in milliseconds, potentially creating a major hazard. [42]
Preventing fires involves multiple layers of protection. First, is to prevent fire in a single cell, by eliminating sparks and short circuits. However, grid-scale systems face potential problems such as coolant leaks and faulty installation. Venting flammable gases and improved insulation reduce cascade risks. Placing controls outside of the container gives more management options. Instead of suppressants, monitoring the situation while watering surrounding areas can help contain the fire. Sensors that track local weather conditions can help avoid overheating. Lithium-free designs with lower fire risks are possible.[42]
“Plume modeling” attempts to predict how gases from burning battery chemicals might travel. The gases produced vary across battery types, hydrogen fluoride (HF) are of particular concern even at low concentrations. A later plume analysis by Vistra reported that concentrations of HF above California exposure limits could spread across an area 1300 feet in diameter under wind conditions that occur 7 percent of the year.[42]
In Raquette Lake, New York, the town passed a one-year moratorium preventing battery installation in response to protests citing fires at three New York battery installations. Protestors cited a fire in Lyme New York that burned for four days.[42]
A Megapack ignited at PG&E's Moss Landing facility in September 2022. The fire led to a day-long shelter-in-place advisory. PG&E stated that safety measures included thermal alarms that can shut down the system, an incident command center, an audible evacuation alarm, pre-fire planning with local fire crews and emergency shut down protocols. Heat-suppression systems, intended to curb thermal runaway, were accidentally triggered, dousing batteries in water that caused arcing and short circuiting. The plant was shut down for months.[43] Vistra's third installation in Moss Landing adopted the outdoor container model instead of putting the racks under a single roof. (Vistra stated that the outdoor design was chosen to expedite construction.)[42][44]
In July 2021, one of the 212 Megapack modules at the Victorian Big Battery project caught fire[45] due to a coolant leak while the battery was unmonitored. That ignited the adjacent Megapack.[35] Three days later, the fire had burnt itself out as preferred by the fire department.[46][47][42]
A 50 MW / 100 MWh battery project using Tesla Megapack 2 is under construction in Bouldercombe near Rockhampton, Queensland.[48] The alternating current section caught fire in September 2023 and spread to the cells of one Megapack module, also damaging the adjacent module. Both modules are being replaced by Tesla. Other 36 modules were operational a couple of days later.[49]
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>>> Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) -- 14-day RSI: 31.26
https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/5-oversold-blue-chip-stocks-to-buy-right-now-1274453/2/
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 82
Based in Austin, Texas, Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA), designs, develops, manufactures, sell and leases fully electric vehicles and energy generation and storage solutions. Its current portfolio of products includes Model 3 and Model S sedans, Model Y, Model X SUVs, and Cybertruck, while upcoming products include Tesla Roadster and Tesla Semi – a light commercial vehicle.
On January 24, Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) released its financial results for Q4 2023. Its revenue increased by 3% y-o-y to $24.3 billion, while net income surged by 115% y-o-y to $3.7 billion. Its normalized EPS of $0.71 missed consensus estimates by $0.03.
Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) ranks highest on our list of 11 oversold blue chip stocks to buy right now based on the value of shares held by hedge funds. As of Q4 2023, 82 hedge funds owned shares worth $6.3 billion. In its Q4 2023 investor letter, Tsai Capital Corporation, an investment management firm, made the following comments about Tesla, Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA):
“Tesla has significant and underappreciated competitive advantages across multiple verticals including electric vehicles, software and energy storage. Misunderstood by much of Wall Street – and consequently a favorite of short sellers – Tesla continues to grow rapidly and increase its lead over the competition while delighting consumers in the process. [. . .] While we expect competition for EVs to intensify and for Tesla to lose market share over time, we also believe the company will increase production and deliveries from approximately 1.8 million vehicles today to approximately 15 million vehicles in 2030 and further its lead in autonomous driving capability. In fact, we expect Tesla will eventually license its autonomous driving software, creating high-margin (70-80%), recurring licensing revenue. Tesla is also one of only two companies that dominate the energy storage market, which has the potential to grow to several hundred billion in revenue as power plants around the world increase their focus on renewable energy.”
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>>> Berkshire Hathaway Energy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkshire_Hathaway_Energy
Company type Subsidiary
Predecessor MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company
Headquarters Des Moines, Iowa
Key people
Greg Abel (Chairman)
William J. Fehrman (CEO & President)
Revenue Increase $25.15 billion (2021)[1]
Operating income Increase $4.25 billion (2012)[2]
Net income Increase $2.57 billion (2012)[2]
Owner Berkshire Hathaway (92%)
Walter Scott Jr. family (8%)
Parent Berkshire Hathaway
Website www.brkenergy.com
Berkshire Hathaway Energy (previously known as MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company until 2014) is a holding company and subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, which owns 92% of the company. Berkshire has owned a controlling stake since 1999.[3] The company also controls power distribution companies in the United Kingdom and Canada.[4] The remaining 8% is owned by the family of Walter Scott Jr.[5]
Greg Abel serves as chairman. Scott W. Thon is president and CEO. David L. Sokol was CEO until 2008.
Until 2014, it was known as MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company from its root as MidAmerican Energy Company; it took on the name of its parent to reflect the diversity of its portfolio.[6]
As of 2019, BHE "serves 4.9 million retail customers, generates 29 gigawatts of power and transports 8.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day over 16,400 miles of regulated pipeline."[4]
In 2023, a jury ordered BHE subsidiary PacifiCorp to pay $70 million in punitive damages to 17 homeowners negatively impacted by wildfires that afflicted Oregon in 2020.[7]
Subsidiaries & investments
Berkshire Hathaway Energy owns the following companies:
- MidAmerican Energy Company
- MidAmerican Renewables[8] (Renewable Energy/Wind Energy)
- PacifiCorp, purchased for $9.4 billion in 2005[9]
- Northern Powergrid (formerly CE Electric UK)
- Integrated Utility Services UK
- CalEnergy Generation
- Imperial Valley Geothermal Project
- Kern River Gas Transmission Company[10]
- Kern River Pipeline
- Northern Natural Gas Company (Omaha)[11]
- BYD Company (19.92% of outstanding shares)[12]
- NV Energy (electricity and natural gas in most of Nevada)
- Metalogic Inspections Services[13] (Oil and Gas, Power Generation, Fabrication, Pipeline, Services)
- Intelligent Energy Solutions[14] (Heat Pumps, Solar Panels, and Biomass Boilers)
- AltaLink (Electric Utility in Canada) for C$3.24 billion in 2014 [15]
In 2017, BHE's proposed acquisition of Oncor Electric Delivery Company LLC[16] was terminated after BHE was outbid by Sempra.[17][18]
BHE investigates producing up to 90 thousand tonnes of lithium carbonate per year (and other minerals) from its 350 MW geothermal power plants in the Lithium Valley next to the Salton Sea in California.[19][20]
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Battery metals glut - >>> Base Metals Up, Gold Edged Higher, Battery Metals Glut
iHub News
January 23 2024
https://ih.advfn.com/market-news/article/5435/base-metals-up-gold-edged-higher-battery-metals-glut
Base metals prices rose on improved sentiment following the Bloomberg report that Chinese authorities are considering a package of measures to stabilize the stock market.
Top metals consumer China “will remain key in driving the general trend of the whole complex, most likely resulting in rangebound moves,” Sucden Financial said.
Meanwhile, gold edged higher as the dollar softened while investors awaited economic data and central bank decisions.
Battery Metals
Wood Mackenzie forecast a glut of lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite to continue for several years.
It said automakers are likely sitting on large stockpiles of battery cells for EV sales that failed to materialize.
Citing the China Automotive Battery Innovation Alliance, Wood Mackenzie said only 387 GWh of the 747 GWh of power batteries produced in China in 2023 were installed into products.
“With storing batteries being an expensive business, automakers may have a more cautious appetite for purchasing cells in 2024.”
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>>> Arcadium Lithium Announces Completion of Merger of Equals between Allkem and Livent
Arcadium Lithium PLC
04 Jan, 2024
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arcadium-lithium-announces-completion-of-merger-of-equals-between-allkem-and-livent-302026354.html
Combination Creates a Leading Global Integrated Lithium Chemicals Producer
Key Strengths
Leading global lithium chemicals producer with the resources, scale and expertise to meet growing customer and industry needs - reliably, safely and responsibly.
Premier lithium resources and manufacturing sites in key locations globally across the lithium value chain.
Highly complementary assets and vertically integrated business model focused on enhancing operational flexibility and predictability while lowering costs.
Ability to de-risk and accelerate growth with a world-class pipeline of development projects, proven execution capabilities and technical, capital and projects expertise.
Leading sustainability profile, with an unwavering commitment to continuous improvement, decarbonization and delivering greater value to customers, employees, communities and shareholders.
PHILADELPHIA and BRISBANE, Australia, Jan. 4, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Arcadium Lithium plc (NYSE: ALTM, ASX: LTM, "Arcadium Lithium") today announced the completion of the all-stock merger of equals between Allkem and Livent. The new, combined company is a leading global lithium chemicals producer committed to safely and responsibly harnessing the power of lithium to improve people's lives and accelerate the transition to a clean energy future. With roughly U.S. $1.9 billion of combined total revenue in 2022 and a global team of more than 2,600 employees, Arcadium Lithium is one of the largest integrated producers of lithium chemicals in the world.
Paul Graves, Chief Executive Officer of Arcadium Lithium, said: "As one of the leading global producers of lithium chemicals, Arcadium Lithium has the resources, scale and expertise to meet the growing needs of our rapidly changing industry. We are a leader in every major lithium extraction process – from hard rock mining to conventional pond and DLE-based brine processing – and vertically integrated, from resource to chemical manufacturing, in strategic locations around the world. This will open doors to new opportunities and strengthen our ability to deliver value to our customers, investors, employees and communities."
Mr. Graves continued: "It is a privilege for me to lead this great company forward with such an incredible team. This transformational merger would not have been possible without the hard work and commitment of our integration planning teams over the past months. I want to thank them and all of our employees around the world for getting us to this position. Together, we are launching an exciting new company that combines the strengths and storied legacies of two incredible organizations, both with an wavering commitment to safe, responsible and sustainable operations. We look forward to building on this strong foundation and leading our industry forward."
Arcadium Lithium ordinary shares will begin trading today on the NYSE under the ticker "ALTM." Arcadium Lithium also maintains a foreign exempt listing on the ASX (via the issue of CHESS Depositary Instruments (CDIs) to Allkem shareholders) and will commence trading on a normal settlement basis on the ASX under the ticker "LTM" at 10:00am (AEDT) on January 5, 2024. Allkem shareholders received either: (a) one Arcadium Lithium ASX listed CDI; or (b) one Arcadium Lithium NYSE listed share depending where they resided and what election (if any) they had made for each Allkem ordinary share held, except for shareholders in certain ineligible jurisdictions, who will receive cash proceeds from the sale of the Arcadium Lithium CDIs in lieu of such CDIs after closing. Livent shareholders received 2.406 Arcadium Lithium NYSE listed ordinary shares for each Livent share held.
Arcadium Lithium will have approximately 1,074 million ordinary shares outstanding upon closing.
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Re-post - >>> With price of Spodumene continuing to slide have decided to sell most of my remaining PILBF. I expect the 1st half of 2024 (and maybe beyond) to be a difficult year for battery minerals. Better to lock in profits today and look for lower prices in the 2nd half of 2024. <<<
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173546830
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>>> Schaeffler AG (SCFLF), together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and sells precision components and systems for automotive and industrial applications in Europe, the Americas, China, and the Asia Pacific. The company's Automotive Technologies division offers engine systems, including rolling bearing solutions, belt products, valve train components, and systems for variable valve trains; and transmission systems, such as torsion and vibration dampers, clutches and double clutch systems, torque converters, CVT components, lightweight differentials, bearing solutions, and synchronizing and gearshift components. This division also provides chassis systems comprising wheel bearings, bearing solutions, steering components, electromechanical actuators for roll stabilizers, and power-assisted steering systems; and hybrid and electrical drive systems that include hybrid modules, electrical axle drives, and electrical wheel hub drives. Its Automotive Aftermarket division offers repair solutions for passenger cars, light commercial vehicles, heavy commercial vehicles, and tractors, as well as supporting services. The company's Industrial division provides components and systems. This division serves customers in the mobility, energy and raw materials, production machinery, aerospace, and industrial distribution. The company has a strategic partnership with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. The company was formerly known as INA Beteiligungsgesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung and changed its name to Schaeffler AG in October 2014. The company was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany. Schaeffler AG is a subsidiary of IHO Verwaltungs GmbH.
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Schaeffler - >>> Toyota’s Rival In Solid-State EV Development Is A Supplier: Schaeffler
Schaeffler and Honda are already close partners. Wouldn’t all-solid-state make a nifty battery pack for a new Acura NSX?
AutoWeek
by Todd Lassa
DEC 21, 2023
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a46192062/solid-state-ev-battery-development-toyota-schaeffler/
At the upcoming CES 2024, supplier Schaeffler Americas will display a “next-generation” all-solid-state EV battery.
Solid-state advantages include 40% better energy density than existing battery technologies, as well as much longer range, and no need for rare materials like cobalt to be mined in China or The Congo.
A Schaeffler executive says the supplier already has a customer for its solid-state technology, but he declined to name the automaker.
A well-established supplier, little known to most enthusiasts, is in the running to become a pioneer in solid-state battery EV technology. Schaeffler Group, founded in Germany in 1946, is known to the auto industry—which constitutes 60% of its business—primarily for bearings.
It returns to CES in January after a four-year absence to show a new electric beam axle for pickup trucks and a new rear-steering system. The company wants 45% of its manufacturing output in 2030 to be products that did not exist in 2020.
But the prototype Schaeffler Americas will show at CES 2024 that caught our attention is what its chief technology officer, Jeff Hemphill, described as a “next-generation” all-solid-state EV battery.
The OEM that appears to be the most active in solid-state development is Toyota, the hybrid pioneer considered behind the competition in battery-electric vehicles. But others are working on solid-state batteries as well, including Honda, Nissan, Ford, BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes-Benz.
For more detail on the Tier 1 supplier’s solid-state work, we spoke with Rashid Farahati, director of engineering for Schaeffler Americas. Schaeffler’s solid-state battery at CES is made with prototype parts encased in a pack built by another company that specializes in making small samples on the lab scale. It’s installed in a show vehicle, Farahati said.
“We have manufacturing skill and we have (parts) coating skill,” Farahati said, so the company will not even dabble in lithium-ion. “Solid-state, electrolyte, is best for Schaeffler.”
At the outset, solid-state will pencil out for expensive, high-end sports cars and luxury cars.
Despite speculation that Honda, a close partner of Schaeffler, will have a mainstream model solid-state EV on the market next year, Farahati says Schaeffler’s solid-state battery won’t be production ready until late in this decade.
Solid-state advantages include 40% better energy density than existing battery technologies, as well as much longer range, no need for rare materials like cobalt to be mined in China or The Congo, and no necessary flammable liquids inside.
So why even consider an EV with a lithium-ion battery pack? Won’t solid-state kill off that technology? Cost, it turns out, is not an advantage for solid-state.
“For now, we’re not talking about cost,” Farahati says. “I believe solid-state is not replacing lithium-ion anytime soon.”
The market is “very complicated,” he adds. For several years at the outset, solid-state will pencil out for expensive, high-end sports cars and luxury cars. Give it several years—well into the ‘30s at least—after Schaeffler’s production release before solid-state can find its way into “affordable” electric vehicles.
Farahati allowed that Schaeffler already has a customer for its solid-state technology, but he declined to name the automaker.
But wouldn’t a new, all-solid-state electric Acura NSX be nifty?
At the Monterey Car Week last August, The Drive quoted Honda executives who said the company would launch an EV in 2024 with a solid-state battery that would weigh half as much as a similar-size lithium-ion battery.
This autumn, family-controlled Schaeffler acquired the drive-technology company Vitesco Technologies, a Continental AG spinoff, for $3.8 billion, according to US News & World Report. Together, they plan to open a manufacturing plant in Ohio.
Meanwhile in Columbus, Honda and Schaeffler will partner with Ohio State University and the Institute for Materials and Manufacturing Research to repurpose a 25,000-square-foot facility into a $22 million battery cell lab and research center, scheduled to open in April 2025.
It will be able to build a full solid-state battery cell in small, prototype numbers, Farahati said.
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QuantumScape - >>> Forget Tesla: 1 EV Stock That Could Make You Rich
by Daniel Miller
The Motley Fool
December 23, 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/forget-tesla-1-ev-stock-113500008.html
Investors often dream about finding the next game-changing company. Of course, finding a game-changing company set to revolutionize an industry is far easier said than done. Remember back when Tesla changed the game by essentially introducing a sports car that was battery electric powered? And Tesla did so at a time ditching fossil fuels seemed daunting -- and that's putting it lightly. Those high-flying and wild days might be behind Tesla, although its story has plenty of room to run yet, but one company might be about to enter game-changing territory.
"If QuantumScape can get this technology into mass production, it holds the potential to transform the industry," said Stan Whittingham, co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery and winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in chemistry, in a QuantumScape press release.
QuantumScape's (NYSE: QS) battery technology could be groundbreaking. At a time when electric vehicles (EVs) are positioning themselves for mass adoption, the company could be a lucrative long-term investment. Move over Tesla; QuantumScape could be the next stock to make investors rich.
QuantumScape who?
Starting with some basic background on a company you may not have heard of, QuantumScape has over 12 years of research and development investment in its battery technologies. It employs a world-class battery development team comprising over 800 employees and owns over 300 patents and patent applications.
QuantumScape has also caught the eye of major global automakers during its journey. It has contracts with six automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), including Volkswagen, a key partner and investor, and two other top 10 OEMs, two established global luxury OEMs, and a pure-play EV company.
Encouraging results
To simplify a somewhat complicated story, QuantumScape's battery technology improves the process by simplifying the cell design. It eliminates the need for graphite, silicon, or lithium foil, enabling the battery to increase energy density and improve range while boasting 15-minute fast charging.
More specifically, QuantumScape's batteries could recharge from zero to 80% of capacity in about half the time most lithium-ion EV batteries require. An EV using QuantumScape's batteries could extend its range by roughly 80% with similar weight. Essentially, the potential groundbreaking battery technology could improve on nearly every aspect of the status quo.
At the end of 2022, QuantumScape shipped its first A0 prototype cells to potential customers for a proof-of-concept. Its top-performing AO prototype cell in one potential customer's battery testing labs achieved over 1,000 full-cycle equivalents with over 95% discharge energy retention. While management reiterated this was a cherry-picked high-end result and that there's much work to do regarding reliability, it's an extraordinary result and well above its commercial target of 800 cycles and 80% energy retention.
High upside
Huge, obvious risks come with investing in a preproduction company. The blunt truth is that no company has done what QuantumScape is trying to achieve, and the company, despite its recent encouraging test results, could ultimately fail to produce its technology entirely or as reliably as required to transform the industry.
However, QuantumScape has spent much of 2023 attempting to move from prototype to product, and the company has a cash runway that extends into 2026, with the ability to potentially raise more funds if necessary.
If QuantumScape does accomplish its targets and reaches production with a next-generation EV battery, its opportunity is massive. Consider that battery electric vehicles (BEV) only recently hit about 10% of the global light-vehicle market, and management believes the opportunity could potentially be hundreds of billions of dollars annually for decades.
Time to buy?
For all of its massive upside, there are the aforementioned risks investors take when investing in a preproduction company. QuantumScape is still a few years away from mass-producing its batteries, and the process of going from a successful prototype to a mass-production battery has been slow -- a speed Wall Street isn't fond of.
QuantumScape isn't an investment for everyone; it's not for the risk-averse or faint of heart. But a small position in QuantumScape has incredible upside after shedding nearly 70% of its value since its initial public offering. If the company gets to mass production and carves out its slice of a massive target-market pie, it could easily drive not only global electric vehicles but also your entire portfolio.
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Re-post - >>> I spent the first half of 2023 selling most of my individual holdings with the expectation of a substantial correction; obviously wrong. After the recent run I don't have much conviction for individual issues, I'm happy to collect interest payment and wait. I do like some miners, lithium and copper, but the recent bump in price combined with the negative opinions of near term potential keep me watching. I do still have a stake in Pilbara Minerals bought in late 2020 and early 2021. I like PKX, ALB, PILBF, FCX and SCCO, but not until they drop back below their recent lows. I do like semiconductors, but not at these elevated prices. It's a harder space for me to pick winners so I prefer using SMH. Again, there would need to be a substantial correction to make them attractive. As I age I become more willing to wait, watch and collect interest payments.
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>>> Toyota Lays Out Its EV Battery Road Map, Including a Solid-State Battery (Eventually)
Toyota has been very late to the EV party, but now the automaker is unmistakably looking to dominate.
Car and Driver Magazine
BY MIKE DUFF
NOV 26, 2023
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45942785/toyota-future-ev-battery-plans/
The Japanese brand was late to the EV party but plans a dramatic expansion in models and innovative battery technology; it's planning to sell 3.5 million EVs annually across 30 different Toyota and Lexus model lines by 2030.
Long-range battery packs will provide up to 500 miles of range by 2026 and 620 miles by 2027.
Toyota is aiming to introduce solid-state batteries in 2027, which will be capable of ultra-fast 10 minute recharge times from 10 to 80 percent state of charge.
Toyota recently announced it had passed the benchmark of having built more than 300 million cars since the company was founded 88 years ago. But despite having pioneered hybrid powertrains, the company's high-level skepticism towards EVs means that very few of those cars have been fully electric; the Toyota bZ4X and Lexus RZ450e have only gone on sale in the last year. It is one of the last major automakers to enter the EV space.
But following the arrival of new CEO Koji Sato, Toyota has dramatically increased its commitment to electrics, with the aim being to catch rivals with a wave of new models and innovative battery technology.
One of the first new EVs will be a three-row SUV (pictured above) that is set to be produced at Toyota's Georgetown, Kentucky, plant from 2025, and which will be aimed at the same part of the market as the Kia EV9. Toyota says this new model will use batteries produced in its own factory in Liberty, North Carolina, a plant that already employs 2000 people but is set to increase to 5000.
By 2030 Toyota says it will be able to make 30 GWh of batteries in North Carolina each year, enough for 375,000 80.0-kWh packs, but with production split across 10 different lines to produce different-sized packs for EV and plug-in-hybrid models. There will be four other lines making straight hybrid packs, and we can safely bet that the vast majority of Toyota production, and possibly all of it, will be hybridized by then.
Toyota says it is committed to making 3.5 million EVs annually by 2030, with 30 different models across Toyota and Lexus brands. It is clear a significant number of those will be produced in the States.
Toyota's battery technology is also going to develop quickly, with more details shared during a recent visit C/D made to Toyota's Shimoyama engineering center in Japan. The first evolution will be the one promised by the Toyota FT-Se and Lexus LF-ZC concepts that were shown at this year's Tokyo auto show: an ultra-compact high-performance next-generation lithium-ion battery that will be able to sit under the floors of coupes and sedans without adding excessive height. In their lowest configuration, Toyota engineers say that the battery pack will be just 3.9 inches tall, something made possible in part by side-mounted rather than top-mounted terminals.
Fast-Charging, 400-Mile Batteries . . .
This performance pack will first be used in 2026, with Toyota saying it will be 20 percent cheaper to produce than the bZ4X's pack, but also that it will allow a 10 to 80 percent fast-charge time of around 20 minutes. (The engineers we spoke to also suggested it will have a 900-volt architecture.) In its largest configuration, and in the most efficient vehicle, this performance pack will give over 400 miles of EPA range. (All range figures in the above image are quoted assuming the more generous WLTP standard, but EPA range figures are typically about 15 percent lower, so we've adjusted Toyota's claims downward accordingly to make them comparable to those of other EVs sold in the U.S.)
. . . and Cheaper, Space-Efficient Batteries
A cheaper next-generation pack will follow shortly afterward that's intended for lower-cost models and using lithium-iron-phosphate battery (LFP) chemistry as well as an innovative bipolar internal design. While a conventional monopolar battery uses separate cathode and anode elements, bipolar combines cathode and anode on a specially designed current collector, making it more space-efficient and allowing greater energy density. Toyota says this first bipolar pack will be 40 percent cheaper than the bX4X's battery and have around a 30-minute fast-charge speed, providing about 315 miles of range in its biggest configuration.
A high-performance bipolar pack will follow in 2027, switching back to lithium-ion chemistry and a high nickel cathode, with this being the one that Toyota says will ultimately deliver on its claim of a 520-mile driving range. It will also be 10 percent cheaper than the performance battery and will have a 20-minute 10-to-80-percent recharge time under the best possible conditions.
The Eagerly Awaited Solid-State Battery (in 2027)
Beyond that, Toyota confirms plans to introduce solid-state batteries as soon as 2027, although we note that the date has already slipped from the 2025 that was being quoted last year. Solid-state batteries use solid rather than liquid electrolytes, allowing for a greater tolerance of high voltages and temperatures and improving energy density and reducing weight. The challenges are complexity, cost, and the difficulty in delivering long-term durability. Toyota says its first-gen solid-state packs are targeting about 520 miles of range, with a 10-minute 10-to-80 charge capability, but also says that subsequent evolution will likely move peak range up to 630 miles. That figure that would surely be enough to persuade even the most determined EV doubter that long journeys can be accomplished electrically.
Should Toyota deliver on all these claims—and it is not a brand given to overpromising—then it will be going from the back of the pack on electrification right to the cutting edge. We certainly can’t fault the company for any lack of ambition, with the stated aim to be producing 3.5 million EVs annually across 30 different Toyota and Lexus model lines by 2030.
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>>> Pilbara Minerals Limited (PILBF) engages in the exploration, development, and operation of mineral resources in Australia. The company primarily explores for lithium. It primarily holds a 100% interest in the Pilgangoora lithium-tantalum project located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The company was incorporated in 2005 and is based in West Perth, Australia.
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>>> Gina Rinehart’s Hancock, SQM Agree to Buy Azure for $1.1 Billion
Bloomberg
by Sybilla Gross and Annie Lee
December 18, 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gina-rinehart-hancock-sqm-agree-224424596.html
(Bloomberg) -- Chilean lithium giant SQM has partnered with iron ore billionaire Gina Rinehart to make a sweetened A$1.7 billion ($1.1 billion) cash offer for Azure Minerals Ltd., ending two months of uncertainty over the deal after Australia’s richest woman crashed an earlier bid.
Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Pty. and Sociedad Quimica & Minera de Chile SA, as SQM is formally known, will offer A$3.70 for each share in the Perth-based miner, a proposal already recommended by Azure’s board, the two sides said on Tuesday. The offer represents a nearly 52% premium to the price before the previous proposal in October.
SQM had earlier offered A$3.52 per Azure share, under a similar scheme of arrangement structure — a 44% premium. But that bid was immediately thrown into question when Rinehart built a near-blocking 18% stake.
Mineral Resources Ltd., led by mining veteran Chris Ellison, followed by taking a 12% holding in Azure. His intentions are not yet clear.
At least two other major shareholders, Creasy Group and Delphi Group, have indicated that they intend to sell all of their shares to the joint bidders, handing SQM and Hancock another 23% to add to their collective 37.8%, and all but securing the bid. Creasy owns 40% of Azure’s promising Andover lithium project in West Australia.
Azure shares, however, gained as much as 2.2% in early trade Tuesday, rising to A$3.71, just above the improved offer — indicating at least some in the market are betting the lithium miner could yet attract more attention.
Rinehart’s credibility in developing bulk commodity businesses – as well as her political sway in and around the Pilbara — likely played into SQM’s willingness to partner with Hancock, said Jon Bishop, analyst at Jarden Securities.
“The alternative would’ve been Chris and Gina getting in the way of the deal and frustrating it,” Bishop said. “My view would be that SQM would look at all of those things on balance and say - well, we could go it alone as a foreigner, or we could have a situation where we can work with a party that probably makes development eminently easier.”
The lithium industry has seen a flurry of acquisition offers and deals over the past months, as the crucial role of the battery metal in the energy transition and optimistic expectations around long-term demand prompt producers and investors to bet on new sources of supply. Interest in small and mid-sized producers in Western Australia, one of the world’s most promising new lithium regions, has surged, even as prices for the metal are now at their lowest since 2021.
Rinehart added to the frenzy, stepping into a bid for Liontown Resources Ltd. and gradually building a 19.9% stake in the miner. That was enough to prompt top global producer Albemarle Corp. to withdraw its A$6.6 billion offer in October. The Australian target was left scrambling to find alternative funds for its flagship Kathleen Valley project.
“SQM brings downstream lithium chemical processing experience, while Hancock brings upstream hard rock mining experience, which in my view, makes the project more likely to reach production and successfully ramp up over time,” said Seth Goldstein, equity strategist at Morningstar Research Services LLC.
The outlook for the battery material isn’t expected to improve any time soon, as a wave of new production comes online and slower growth in electric vehicle sales in China creates oversupply in the short term, raising questions over whether some deals in the sector are too expensive.
But the current deal gives Rinehart, who has built an iron ore empire, a stake in a metal feeding the energy transition. SQM, meanwhile, gains supply outside of Chile, where the company’s current operating contract expires in 2030.
The revised deal does not contain any minimum acceptance conditions, though the takeover is contingent on more than 50% of all shareholders voting in favor of the joint bid.
If the scheme of arrangement structure is not successful, SQM and Hancock have also proposed an off-market takeover offer for a cash amount of A$3.65 per Azure share.
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Electric vehicles --> I would never buy one until the battery technology improves A LOT (see video below). I would forget about EVs for now, unless you enjoy getting incinerated in a car fire, or having your house incinerated. The new solid state batteries can fix the fire / explosion problem, but not sure when or if these will be widely adopted -
>>> A solid-state battery has higher energy density than a Li-ion battery that uses liquid electrolyte solution. It doesn’t have a risk of explosion or fire, so there is no need to have components for safety, thus saving more space. Then we have more space to put more active materials which increase battery capacity in the battery. A solid-state battery can increase energy density per unit area since only a small number of batteries are needed. For that reason, a solid-state battery is perfect to make an EV battery system of module and pack, which needs high capacity.
https://www.samsungsdi.com/column/technology/detail/56462.html?listType=gallery#:~:text=A%20solid%2Dstate%20battery%20has,safety%2C%20thus%20saving%20more%20space.
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>>> Exxon to start lithium production for EVs in the U.S. by 2027
Reuters
11-13-23
By Sabrina Valle
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstories/exxon-to-start-lithium-production-for-evs-in-the-u-s-by-2027/ar-AA1jQQMr?OCID=ansmsnnews11
HOUSTON (Reuters) -Exxon Mobil on Monday said it plans to start producing lithium from subsurface wells by 2027 to provide supplies of the key metal used in electric-car batteries and advanced electronics.
Oil majors are investing in the electrification sector as governments in the United States and Europe set programs to promote wider use of electric vehicles and reduce fossil-fuel consumption.
Exxon said it will start production from briny waters pumped out of the ground in an area in the state of Arkansas known to hold significant lithium deposits to help develop a domestic source of the metal.
"In the long term, lithium really is a global opportunity," said Dan Ammann, president of Exxon's Low Carbon business unit. "We are starting here because there is an urgent need to ramp up domestic production of these critical materials."
The largest U.S. oil company said it would use conventional oil and gas drilling methods to access lithium-rich saltwater from reservoirs about 10,000 feet underground and then use direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology to separate lithium from the saltwater.
Ammann did not disclose how much Exxon intends to invest in the lithium business, or when it might become profitable.
The company's majority-owned Canadian affiliate, Imperial Oil, also has invested in a lithium-extraction pilot project in Alberta, Canada.
Exxon plans to begin production with partner Tetra Technologies, Reuters exclusively reported on Saturday. It will produce the metal onsite and sell it under the brand name Mobil Lithium, the company said on Monday.
Exxon had acquired the rights to 120,000 gross acres of the Smackover formation in Arkansas earlier this year.
European oil rivals BP and Shell have invested in electric vehicle charging stations as part of their energy transition strategy. A Deloitte study released earlier this year showed investors would like to see more spending on such technologies.
Exxon, which invented the rechargeable lithium-ion battery in the 1970s, but stepped away from the technology, has no plans to invest in charging stations, the executive said.
Exxon is focusing on lithium production to be used not only in EVs but also consumer electronics and energy storage systems that can hold electricity generated from intermittent solar and wind power.
There are about 280 million vehicles in the United States today, and less than 3 million are EVs, or about 1% of the total, Ammann said.
"There is still 99% to go, which suggests it is a very, very big opportunity," he said.
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>>> U.S. Set to Draw Record Amount From Its Emergency Oil Reserve
Oil prices dropped sharply on the news
Investopedia
By DANIEL LIBERTO
November 01, 2023
https://www.investopedia.com/us-set-to-draw-record-amount-from-emergency-oil-reserve-5224294?utm_campaign=quote-yahoo&utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=referral
The U.S. government is contemplating releasing up to 180 million barrels of oil from its emergency supplies, people familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a desperate bid to lower high fuel prices and curb inflation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The U.S. government is contemplating releasing up to 180 million barrels of oil from its emergency supplies over several months in a bid to lower fuel prices and curb inflation.
This bold move came a day before IEA member countries are expected to reveal a collective oil release and on the same day that OPEC refused to deviate from modest oil output rises.
News of Biden's impending announcement pushed down oil prices, which hit 14-year highs in March.
Analysts believe that Biden's plan could help the market rebalance this year but won't be enough to resolve the structural supply deficit caused by sanctions on Russia.
If the White House follows through with this plan, it would represent the largest release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in its nearly 50-year history and mark the third time in the past six months that the U.S. government has tapped into its emergency supplies. The 180 million barrels of oil reportedly set to be accessed is equivalent to approximately two days of global demand, according to Reuters, and will be drawn from gradually over several months, with some sources saying that the plan is to tap into as much as 1 million barrels of oil per day.
President Joe Biden is expected to confirm these plans at 13:30 p.m. Eastern Time, when the White House has him scheduled to discuss "his administration's actions to reduce the impact of Putin's price hike on energy prices and lower gas prices at the pump for American families."
President Biden's intentions were revealed a day before the International Energy Agency (IEA) member countries are due to meet to discuss and decide on a collective oil release aimed at cooling global crude prices that hit 14-year highs in March after Russia invaded Ukraine and shortly before the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) refused to abide by requests from the West to significantly ramp up supply.
Oil Prices Fall Sharply, but OPEC Refuses to Play Ball
News of Biden's impending announcement pushed oil prices down. When markets opened in the U.S., West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent crude were both down roughly 5% to about $102 and $108 per barrel, respectively.
Goldman Sachs, in a research note sent to its clients, claimed that releasing 180 million barrels over six months would help the market rebalance this year but not resolve the structural supply deficit caused by cutting Russia out of the picture.
Oil prices have rocketed since Vladimir Putin ordered his country to invade Ukraine in late February and governments around the world responded by hitting Russia, the second biggest exporter of oil, with hefty sanctions. Subsequent supply concerns drove Brent crude futures up to about $139 per barrel earlier in March, the highest level since 2008.
Other than drawing more barrels from its own reserves and counting on IEA members to follow suit, the U.S. has been trying to convince Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil exporter in the world, and other big OPEC producers to sharply ramp up supplies and take the heat out of prices. However, OPEC has been refusing to budge, confirming that it will increase supply by a modest 432,000 barrels per day in May and not by more.
Consistently High Oil Prices Could Lead to a Recession
President Biden is desperate to lower fuel prices as it has contributed to high inflation and hurt his administration's approval rating ahead of the midterm elections in November. High oil prices harm Americans in many ways, affecting, among other things, driving costs and the amount paid to heat homes.
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>>> Battery Boom: $154B invested, 166K jobs planned in US as EV rollout intensifies
Spending from the IRA, Bipartisan Infrastructure Act has fueled EV investments
Yahoo Finance
by Pras Subramanian
September 6, 2023
New data shows the massive impact the electric vehicle buildout is already making on manufacturing and infrastructure spending in America — so far a big win for the Biden administration.
Catalyzed by legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), data from the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation — a progressive nonprofit organization that promotes clean energy investment and solutions to environmental issues — found that EV investment in factories and battery facilities totaled $154 billion since 2010, across 319 facilities. That will add up to 188,000 new jobs when all spending is complete.
The vast majority of this spending came after 2021, when the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act was signed, and in 2022 and 2023 following passage of the IRA. Of the $154 billion of spending announced, $124 billion has come since the start of 2021.
“The EV transition is impacting every aspect of the economy, including the manufacturing of EVs and the EV supply chain,” Tom Taylor, Atlas Public Policy senior policy analyst, said in a statement. Atlas Public Policy co-sponsored the data initiative, dubbed the EV Jobs Hub, with the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation. “The [data] seeks to cut through the noise from large announcements and organize it in a more digestible way,” Taylor said.
Drilling deeper into the data, the organization finds that South Korean electronics and battery giant LG plans to spend the most here in the US ($17.2B), followed by Tesla (TSLA) ($15.7B), GM (GM) ($15.5B), Ford (F) ($11.9B), and SK Innovation ($10.3B), another South Korean company focused on batteries. In terms of industry, battery manufacturing counts for 65% of all spending, the study finds.
The data isn't all rosy, however, as on the labor front the companies that spend the most don’t always hire the most. As seen in EV battery and powertrain manufacturing, fewer workers are needed to do the job. This has led to deep concern on the part of the United Auto Workers (UAW) — currently negotiating with the Big Three (Ford, GM, and Stellantis) on a new labor deal — with job protection in the form of higher wages and ending of tiered employment on the top of the union’s wish list as the EV transition rolls out across North America.
“The UAW supports and is ready for the transition to a clean auto industry. But the EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy,” UAW president Shawn Fain said in a statement in late August.
Of the companies hiring the most in the EV space since 2010, Tesla leads the pack with 28,500 announced hires, followed by Ford (13,800), Rivian (RIVN) (13,700), LG (11,300), and Hyundai (11,100). Only Ford and LG (at joint GM/LG Ultium battery plants) use unionized labor.
Indeed, of the facilities built since 2010, only 25% are represented by unionized labor, which is a concern for the White House and Democratic legislators.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for the automakers as well as politicians looking to tout the EV buildout. GM’s head of manufacturing said in a video statement on Tuesday that UAW demands would threaten the automaker’s “manufacturing momentum.” It would also threaten one of the bigger manufacturing wins the US has seen in the last 50 years.
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Re-post - >>> Opened position in Power Metals Corp. Their Case Lake property has tremendous potential reserves of lithium, cesium and tantalum. As an exploration phase miner it's early, but the promising results so far, mining friendly jurisdiction coupled with a readily available existing infrastructure (electricity, roads....) make them a great prospect. Looking at Power Metal and Patriot Battery, I picked Power Metal, believe they have as good or better long term prospects.
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>>> Power Metals Corp. (PWRMF), an exploration company, engages in the acquisition, exploration, and evaluation of resource properties in Canada. The company primarily explores for lithium, cesium, and tantalum metal deposits. It holds a 100% interest in the Case Lake property that consists of 475 cell claims located in Ontario. The company also has an option agreement to acquire 100% interests in the Paterson Lake property consisting of 106 cell claims located in northwestern Ontario; and holds Gullwing-Tot Lake property that consists of 112 cell claims located in northwestern Ontario. The company was formerly known as Aldrin Resource Corp. and changed its name to Power Metals Corp. in December 2016. Power Metals Corp. was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada.
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>>> Texas Must Upgrade Its Energy Grid To Accommodate New Renewable Power
Oil Price.com
by Charles Kennedy
Jul 14, 2023
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Texas-Must-Upgrade-Its-Energy-Grid-To-Accommodate-New-Renewable-Power.html
Texas needs upgrades to its electricity transmission grid to accommodate a soaring share of renewable energy generation, otherwise the state risks surging shares of curtailments of wind and solar power generation by 2035, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said this week.
Texas ranks first in the United States in terms of installed wind energy capacity and second in solar capacity and storage. Wind energy alone produces 21% of all electricity in the state, according to the American Clean Power Association.
Per EIA’s estimates, the combined wind and solar generating capacity in Texas’s power market is set to double by 2035, fueling a growing renewable share of total generation.
But without grid upgrades, curtailments of wind and solar generation will also soar, the administration said in a recent report discussing the transmission limits on renewables growth in Texas.
Since grid operators must maintain a continuous balance between supply and demand to assure power system reliability, in case more wind and solar power is available for production than the grid can use, grid operators have to curtail wind and solar generation to keep the grid balanced.
Last year, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) curtailed 5% of its total available wind generation and 9% of total available utility-scale solar generation. If grid upgrades are not made, those curtailments could surge to 13% of total available wind generation, and 19% of solar generation by 2035, the EIA said.
ERCOT currently has the most renewable generation in the country due to significant wind resources and focused investment in the electric transmission system, the administration said in its analysis.
“Without expanding ERCOT’s electrical transmission network and storage capacity, congestion and curtailments will rise,” the EIA said, adding that the strong projected growth in renewable energy in ERCOT over the next decade could be constrained by transmission capacity.
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>>> Threatened by shortages, electric car makers race for supplies of lithium for batteries
AP
by JOE McDONALD
June 27, 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/threatened-shortages-electric-car-makers-035822815.html
BEIJING (AP) — Threatened by possible shortages of lithium for electric car batteries, automakers are racing to lock in supplies of the once-obscure “white gold” in a politically and environmentally fraught competition from China to Nevada to Chile.
General Motors Co. and the parent company of China’s BYD Auto Ltd. went straight to the source and bought stakes in lithium miners, a rare step in an industry that relies on outside vendors for copper and other raw materials. Others are investing in lithium refining or ventures to recycle the silvery-white metal from used batteries.
A shortfall in lithium supplies would be an obstacle for government and industry plans to ramp up sales to tens of millions of electric vehicles a year. It is fueling political conflict over resources and complaints about the environmental cost of extracting them.
"We already have that risk” of not being able to get enough, said GM's chief financial officer, Paul A. Jacobson, at a Deutsche Bank conference in mid-June.
“We’ve got to have partnerships with people that can get us the lithium in the form that we need," Jacobson said.
Ford Motor Co. has signed contracts stretching up to 11 years into the future with lithium suppliers on two continents. Volkswagen AG and Honda Motor Co. are trying to reduce their need for freshly mined ore by forming recycling ventures.
Global lithium output is on track to triple this decade, but sales of electric SUVs, sports cars and sedans that rose 55% last year threaten to outrun that. Each battery requires about eight kilograms (17 pounds) of lithium, plus cobalt, nickel and other metals.
“There will be a shortage of EV battery supplies,” said Joshua Cobb, senior auto analyst for BMI.
Adding to uncertainty, lithium has emerged as another conflict in strained U.S.-Chinese relations.
Beijing, Washington and other governments see metal supplies for electric vehicles as a strategic issue and are tightening controls on access. Canada ordered three Chinese companies last year to sell lithium mining assets on security grounds.
Other governments including Indonesia, Chile and Zimbabwe are trying to maximize their return on deposits of lithium, cobalt and nickel by requiring miners to invest in refining and processing before they can export.
GM is buying direct access to lithium by investing $650 million in the Canadian developer of a Nevada mine that is the biggest U.S. source. In return, GM says it will get enough for 1 million vehicles a year.
Conservationists and American Indians are asking a federal court to block development of the Nevada mine, which the Biden administration has embraced as part of its clean energy agenda. Opponents say it might poison water supplies and soil and pollute nesting grounds for birds.
“Securing metals must not come at a sacrifice to the environment,” said a U.S. group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a report last year.
BYD Auto’s parent company, battery maker BYD Co., has announced more than $5 billion in investments in lithium mining and refining over the past 18 months.
Most are in China, but BYD also is promising to spend $290 million on a processing facility in Chile, one of the biggest lithium producers. In exchange, BYD is allowed to buy lithium from Chilean miners at a discount.
At home, BYD announced last year it would invest 28.5 billion yuan ($4.2 billion) in a venture to produce 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate a year in the eastern city of Yichun.
Another Chinese automaker, NIO Inc., bought 12% of Australian lithium miner Greenwing Resources Ltd. last year for 12 million Australian dollars ($8.1 million).
Despite rising output, the industry may face shortages of lithium and cobalt as early as 2025 if enough isn’t invested in production, according to Leonardo Paoli and Timur Gul of the International Energy Agency.
“Supply side bottlenecks are becoming a real challenge," said Paoli and Gul in a report last year.
Automakers might be putting in their own money to reassure “notoriously risk-averse” miners, according to Alastair Bedwell of GlobalData. He said miners are reluctant to “go all out” on lithium until they are sure the industry won't switch to batteries made with other metals.
Even if they do, developing lithium sources is a yearslong process.
Mines that came online in 2010-19 took on average more than 16 years from discovery to the start of production, according to Paoli and Gul of the IEA.
“These long lead times raise questions about the ability of supply to ramp up,” they wrote.
Investment by automakers might “help to remove some of their partners’ risk and ultimately create more production,” Bedwell said in an email.
Worldwide lithium resources are estimated at 80 million tons by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Bolivia’s are the biggest at 21 millions tons, followed by Australia with 17 million and Chile with 9 million. China has 4.5 million tons of known reserves and the United States has 1 million.
Forecasts of annual global production range as high as 1.5 million tons by 2030. But demand, if EV sales keep rising at double-digit annual rates, is forecast to increase to up to 3 million tons.
Sales of battery-powered and gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles took off in 2021, more than doubling over the previous year to 6.8 million, according to EV Volumes, a research firm. Last year's sales rose to 10.5 million.
China accounted for 60% of last year's sales, two-thirds of production and three-quarters of battery manufacturing.
Ford plans to sell 2 million EVs a year by 2026. GM, with 2022 sales of 3.6 million cars, has plans for 30 electric models and North American production capacity of 1 million two years from now in 2025.
Toyota Motor Co.’s annual target is 3.5 million by 2030. VW, which sold 4.6 million cars worldwide last year, is aiming for 70% of sales in Europe and 50% in China and the United States to be electric by 2030.
President Joe Biden last year announced an official goal for half of all new cars sold in the United State to be electric or other zero-emissions technology by 2030.
As sales rise, so does government unease, especially in Washington and Beijing, about access to lithium and other minerals and the potential for strategic competition.
Volkswagen’s battery unit, PowerCo, signed an agreement with Canada last August to develop suppliers of “critical raw materials” including lithium, cobalt and nickel.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in a statement welcomed cooperation with “close friends” on “raw material security.”
Last year, Canada imposed limits on foreign involvement in production of lithium and other “critical minerals” for batteries and other high-tech products.
China’s government has accused the United States, Canada, Japan and other governments of misusing phony security concerns to hurt Chinese competitors in electric cars, smartphones, clean energy and other emerging technologies.
Other governments welcome Chinese investment.
China’s biggest lithium producer, Ganfeng Lithium Co., bought Argentina’s Lithea Inc. last year for $962 million. In 2021, Ganfeng bought Mexico’s Bacanora Lithium for $391 million. It is developing a project in the northern region of Sonora with planned annual output of 35,000 tons.
China's Tianqi Lithium Inc. owns 23.8% of Chile's dominant producer, Sociedad Quimicay Minera, or SQM.
About two-thirds of the world’s lithium comes from mines. That involves crushing rock and using acids to extract metals. It leaves toxic heaps of chemical-laced tailings.
The rest is extracted from salt lakes or from salt flats called salars in Chile and Bolivia. That can require vast evaporation ponds.
The industry is working on technology to extract lithium from hot springs, lakes and clay deposits with less environmental impact.
VW has a five-year supply contract with Vulcan Energy Resources Ltd., which plans to produce lithium hydroxide from geothermal brine in Germany’s Rhine Valley.
Vulcan says its process uses no fossil fuels. That is a response to complaints EVs do little to reduce overall carbon emissions because energy for their manufacturing and charging usually comes from coal, gas and oil.
As they ramp up supplies, automakers face another bottleneck: Lack of refining capacity to purify raw lithium into battery material.
Tesla Inc. broke ground in Texas last month for a lithium refinery that CEO Elon Musk should produce enough for 1 million vehicles per year by 2025.
“The choke point is much more on refining capacity than it is on mining,” said Musk in an April conference call with reporters.
Other manufacturers including BMW AG, which aims to make at least half its sales fully electric by 2030, are buying stakes in lithium refiners.
As for GM, “I don’t know” whether it will build its own refinery, Jacobson said.
“Where I can help fund some expansion in exchange for guaranteed supply, that’s a good thing,” he said. “We should be open to doing that.”
Smaller brands without their own lithium supply might be squeezed, according to Bedwell. He said they might be forced to pay more, which might threaten the existence of some.
“Certainly, mass-market players who don’t get their lithium strategy right will be at a disadvantage,” said Bedwell.
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>>> Ford, SK joint venture set to receive $9.2 billion US government loan for battery plants
Reuters
By David Shepardson
June 22, 2023
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Energy Department on Thursday said it intends to loan a joint venture of Ford Motor and South Korean battery maker SK On up to $9.2 billion to help finance construction of three new battery manufacturing plants in Tennessee and Kentucky.
The conditional commitment for the low-cost government loan for the Blue Oval SK joint venture comes from the government's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program. SK On is a unit of South Korea's SK Innovation. The joint venture is building three battery manufacturing facilities in Kentucky and Tennessee capable of collectively producing more than 120 gigawatt hours annually, the Energy Department said.
The department said the plants will displace more than 455 million gallons of gasoline per year for the lifetime of the vehicles powered by these batteries. The project is expected to create a total of approximately 5,000 construction jobs in Tennessee and Kentucky, and 7,500 operations jobs once the plants are producing batteries.
Last year, the department awarded a joint venture of General Motors Co and LG Energy Solution $2.5 billion to help finance construction of new lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing facilities. The loan to Ultium Cells LLC is for facilities in Ohio, Tennessee, and Michigan.
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>>> Toyota unveils sweeping plans for new battery tech, EV innovation
Reuters
By Daniel Leussink
June 13, 2023
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota-market-next-gen-battery-evs-2026-built-by-new-ev-unit-2023-06-13/
TOKYO, June 13 (Reuters) - Toyota (7203.T) will introduce high-performance, solid-state batteries and other technologies to improve the driving range and cut costs of future electric vehicles (EVs), the automaker said on Tuesday, a strategic pivot that sent its shares higher.
The Japanese giant's technology roadmap, covering aspects as varied as next-generation battery development and a radical redesign of factories, amounted to the automaker's fullest disclosure of its plan to compete in the fast-growing market for EVs where it has lagged rivals led by Tesla (TSLA.O).
The plan comes a day before an annual shareholders meeting where governance and strategy - including a slow pivot to battery EVs under former CEO Akio Toyoda - will be scrutinised.
Shares of the world's best-selling automaker jumped 5% on the day to 2,173 yen, the highest since August.
Toyota said it aims to launch next-generation lithium-ion batteries from 2026 offering longer ranges and quicker charging.
It also trumpeted a "technological breakthrough" that addresses durability problems in solid-state batteries and said it is developing means to mass produce those batteries, targeting commercialisation over 2027-2028.
Solid-state batteries can hold more energy than current liquid electrolyte batteries. Automakers and analysts expect them to speed transition to EVs by addressing a major consumer concern: range.
Still, such batteries are expensive and likely to remain so for years. Toyota will hedge with better-performing lithium iron phosphate batteries, a cheaper alternative to lithium-ion batteries that have spurred EV adoption in China, the world's largest vehicle market.
At the high end of the market, Toyota said it would produce an EV with a more efficient lithium-ion battery offering a range of 1,000 km (621 miles). By comparison, the long-range version of the lithium-ion-powered Tesla Model Y, the world's best-selling EV, can drive for about 530 km based on U.S. standards.
An EV powered by a solid-state battery would have a range of 1,200 km and charging time of just 10 minutes, Toyota said. By comparison, the Tesla Supercharger network - the largest of its kind - offers the equivalent of 321 km of charge in 15 minutes.
Toyota did not detail expected costs or required investment for the plans.
Engineers at the automaker have been considering a reboot of its EV strategy since last year to better compete.
The roadmap detailed on Tuesday showed that under new CEO Koji Sato, Toyota has adopted much of the revamp that engineers and planners have been developing as options for months.
That includes use of electric-axle and other technology from suppliers such as Aisin (7259.T) and Denso (6902.T).
"What we want to achieve is to change the future with BEVs," Takero Kato, president of new Toyota EV unit BEV Factory, said in a video posted on the automaker's YouTube channel on Tuesday.
NEW ASSEMBLY TECHNOLOGY
Toyota said it was developing a dedicated EV platform to reduce the cost of new models and a heavily automated assembly line that would do away with the conveyor belt system that has defined auto production since Henry Ford over 100 years ago.
In Toyota's "self-propelling" assembly line, cars under production would drive themselves through the process.
It also said it would use Giga casting to cut production costs, adopting an innovation pioneered by Tesla using massive, aluminium casting machines to reduce vehicle complexity.
Koji Endo, senior analyst at SBI Securities, said he was surprised by Toyota's move to counter Tesla's lead in production efficiency. "I'm not sure yet Toyota can push back in a counter offensive, but it's getting ready to try," he said.
Toyota's BEV Factory, established in May, aims to produce about 1.7 million vehicles by 2030, Kato said - about half of the 3.5 million EVs Toyota aims to sell annually by that year.
In April, the automaker sold 8,584 EVs worldwide, including under its Lexus brand, accounting for more than 1% of its global sales in a single month for the first time.
Toyota sold almost 10.5 million vehicles in 2022, and has a market value of about $254 billion. By contrast, Tesla sold one-eighth as many vehicles yet is valued at around $791 billion, a premium reflecting investor belief in Tesla's growth potential.
Toyota has long said it wants to offer consumers a choice of new-energy vehicles, including petrol-electric hybrids and hydrogen fuel cells as well as battery EVs, as part of the industry's transition from petrol-powered vehicles.
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>>> Another company with plans to extract lithium in Akansas... Standard Lithium (NYSE: SLI)...
https://www.standardlithium.com/projects/arkansas-smackover
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171957314
By applying proprietary modern processing technologies and strategic partnerships Standard Lithium (TSXV.SLI) (NYSE.A:SLI) (FRA: S5L) is poised to bring the first new U.S. based lithium project in over 50+ years into production. The company’s flagship south Arkansas project is the largest and most advanced lithium brine project in the U.S. The 3.94 million tonne lithium carbonate equivalent resource, 175,000-acre project is located in a region of southern Arkansas that is home to North America’s largest brine production and processing facilities.
Standard Lithium is partnered with global specialty chemical company Lanxess AG on the project. The partnership is in the demonstration stage of testing the commercial viability of lithium extraction on a mass scale from brine that is a byproduct of existing bromine production facilities run by Lanxess in southern Arkansas.
Edit: correct symbol is SLI and also trades on the TSX
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>>> Exxon Joins Hunt for Lithium in Bet on EV Boom
Oil giant quietly laid plans this year for producing mineral in Arkansas
WSJ
By Benoît Morenne and Collin Eaton
May 21, 2023
Exxon Mobil is bracing for a future far less dependent on gasoline by drilling for something other than oil: lithium.
The Texas oil giant recently purchased drilling rights to a sizable chunk of Arkansas land from which it aims to produce the mineral, a key ingredient in batteries for electric cars, cellphones and laptops, according to people familiar with the matter.
Lithium is far removed from the fossil-fuel business, which has powered Exxon’s profits for more than a century, and signals the company’s acknowledgment that demand for internal combustion engines could soon peak, the people said. It would also mark a return for the company to an industry it helped pioneer almost 50 years ago.
Exxon bought 120,000 gross acres in the Smackover formation of southern Arkansas from an exploration company called Galvanic Energy, according to some of the people. The price tag was more than $100 million, people familiar with the matter said, a relatively small transaction for a company of Exxon’s size.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-joins-hunt-for-lithium-in-bet-on-ev-boom-1d72cdd6?mod=hp_lead_pos3
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171957170
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>>> US officials remove key obstacle to Thacker Pass lithium project
Reuters
May 16, 2023
By Ernest Scheyder
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-officials-remove-key-obstacle-200433281.html
(Reuters) -The U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday removed one of the last remaining obstacles to Lithium Americas Corp's Thacker Pass mine project in Nevada by finding nearly all of the site contains the metal used to make electric-vehicle batteries.
The opinion from the department's solicitor comes amid an acrimonious debate about whether more U.S. mines should be built to produce lithium and other green energy transition metals.
A federal judge in February rejected claims that the Thacker Pass project would cause unnecessary harm to the environment, but ordered officials to study whether roughly 1,300 acres (530 hectares) at the site where Lithium Americas hopes to store waste rock - a byproduct of the mining process - contained the metal. The ruling is being appealed, although the court has allowed construction to begin.
The judge's order was linked to an unrelated appeals court ruling that found mining companies do not necessarily have the right under U.S. law to store waste rock on federal land that does not contain valuable minerals.
Of the dozens of mining claims at the Thacker Pass site held by the company, the government found fewer than 10 did not contain lithium mineralization, an Interior Department official told Reuters.
"They're going to be able to start construction and production without these claims being in the plan of operation," the official said of Lithium Americas.
The Vancouver, Canada-based company, which is developing the project with General Motors Co, can apply for a right-of-way to use those other claims for non-mining purposes, the official said.
"We're committed to doing this job right and meeting or exceeding state and federal regulations as we advance construction," said Jon Evans, the CEO of Lithium Americas.
John Hadder of Great Basin Resource Watch, a conservation group that has appealed the court's ruling, said it believes federal law allows Lithium Americas access to the land only if lithium is consistently found in quantities that are economical to extract.
"It stands to reason that the mining company would not place millions of tonnes of waste material on an area where they see valuable mineral deposits," said Hadder.
The opinion comes as the Biden administration has taken steps to block other mines, although the official said those should not be taken as a sign of opposition to all extractive projects.
"We're in favor of increasing domestic mineral production when it's being done in the right location and in the right way," the official said.
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Re-post - >>> Deep dive into ALB vs PKX to add downstream processor of Lithium to my holdings. Long story short, beyond the Lithium hydroxide JV with Pilbara, PKX has battery materials processing lines feeding battery manufacturers, proprietary DLE technology, and produces Lithium Carbonate. They also have a host of other divisions that broaden exposure: energy agriculture, and steel production. PKX is extremely well positioned to feed materials to the battery manufacturers in Korea, and across Asia. They are approximately the same MC as ALB. Bottom line both are attractive based on their individual strengths in the respective geographic locals. For the moment PKX looks like the more attractive option due to it's holdings beyond Lithium.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171894251
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>>> Elon Musk and Tesla break ground on massive Texas lithium refinery
Reuters
By Hyunjoo Jin and Ernest Scheyder
5-9-23
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/elon-musk-and-tesla-break-ground-on-massive-texas-lithium-refinery/ar-AA1aXajb?OCID=ansmsnnews11
(Reuters) -Tesla Inc on Monday broke ground on a Texas lithium refinery that CEO Elon Musk said should produce enough of the battery metal to build about 1 million electric vehicles (EVs) by 2025, making it the largest North American processor of the material.
The facility will push Tesla outside its core focus of building automobiles and into the complex area of lithium refining and processing, a step Musk said was necessary if the auto giant was to meet its ambitious EV sales targets.
"As we look ahead a few years, a fundamental choke point in the advancement of electric vehicles is the availability of battery grade lithium," Musk said at the ground-breaking ceremony on Monday, with dozers and other earth-moving equipment operating in the background.
Musk said Tesla aimed to finish construction of the factory next year and then reach full production about a year later.
The move will make Tesla the only major automaker in North America that will refine its own lithium. Currently, China dominates the processing of many critical minerals, including lithium.
"Texas wants to be able to be self-reliant, not dependent upon any foreign hostile nation for what we need. We need lithium," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at the ceremony.
Musk did not specify the volume of lithium the facility would process each year, although he said the automaker would continue to buy the metal from its vendors, which include Albemarle Corp and Livent Corp. "We intend to continue to use suppliers of lithium, so it's not that Tesla will do all of it," Musk said. Albemarle plans to build a lithium processing facility in South Carolina that will refine 100,000 tonnes of the metal each year, with construction slated to begin next year and the facility coming online sometime later this decade.
Musk did not say where Tesla will source the rough form of lithium known as spodumene concentrate that will be processed at the facility, although Tesla has supply deals with Piedmont Lithium Inc and others.
'CLEAN OPERATIONS'
Tesla said it would eschew the lithium industry's conventional refining process, which relies on sulfuric acid and other strong chemicals, in favor of materials that were less harsh on the environment, such as soda ash.
"You could live right in the middle of the refinery and not suffer any ill effect. So they're very clean operations," Musk said, although local media reports said some environmental advocates had raised concerns over the facility.
Monday's announcement was not the first time that Tesla has attempted to venture into lithium production. Musk in 2020 told shareholders that Tesla had secured rights to 10,000 acres in Nevada where it aimed to produce lithium from clay deposits, which had never been done before at commercial scale.
While Musk boasted that the company had developed a proprietary process to sustainably produce lithium from those Nevada clay deposits, Tesla has not yet deployed the process.
Musk has urged entrepreneurs to enter the lithium refining business, saying it is like "minting money."
"We're begging you. We don't want to do it. Can someone please?," he said during a conference call last month.
Tesla said last month a recent plunge in prices of lithium and other commodities would aid Tesla's bruised margins in the second half of the year.
The refinery is the latest expansion by Tesla into Texas after the company moved its headquarters there from California in 2021. Musk's other companies, including like SpaceX and The Boring Company, also have operations in Texas.
"We are proud that he calls Texas home," Abbott said, saying Tesla and Musk are "Texas's economic juggernauts."
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Re-posts - >>> Great merger...Allkem and Livent to Create a Leading Global Integrated Lithium Chemicals Producer
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/allkem-livent-create-leading-global-091600195.html
The companies complement each others strengths to create a well positioned company ready to exploit growing Lithium demand. <<<
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171876811
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>>> Allkem/Livent Merger Presentation
https://cdn-api.markitdigital.com/apiman-gateway/ASX/asx-research/1.0/file/2924-02664721-2A1448769?access_token=83ff96335c2d45a094df02a206a39ff4
They will be a force in the industry. For me, worth considering additional shares to current position on any price weakness.
Will M&A activity accelerate? This merger ups the bar. Personally, I'd be amenable to Pilbara merging with an integrated miner/chemical processor, that would create another powerful entity.
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https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171877534
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>>> Canadian group led by Pierre Lassonde plans to buy Teck's coal mines <<<
https://www.mining.com/subscribe-login/?id=1117410
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171875530
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>>> Pilbara Minerals Limited (PILBF) explores for, develops, and operates mineral resources in Australia. The company primarily holds a 100% interest in the Pilgangoora lithium-tantalum project located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The company was incorporated in 2005 and is based in West Perth, Australia.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PILBF/profile?p=PILBF
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>>> Liontown Bids Signal Strong Outlook for Lithium, Rival Says
Bloomberg
by Sybilla Gross and Haidi Lun
May 3, 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/liontown-bids-signal-strong-outlook-234802584.html
Liontown Bids Signal Strong Outlook for Lithium, Rival Says
(Bloomberg) -- The recent flurry of bidding activity for Australian lithium producer Liontown Resources Ltd. reflects broader optimism in the sector, according to one of the country’s top miners of the key electric-vehicle battery metal.
The intense interest in Liontown, which has become an acquisition target after it spurned three bids in five months from the world’s top lithium producer Albemarle Corp., is “a really strong point of evidence” about the outlook, Pilbara Minerals Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Dale Henderson said.
“Full credit to Albemarle who are walking the talk — their CEO has spoke to the necessity for all lithium projects to come online, and here they are voting with their money,” Henderson said in a Bloomberg Television interview broadcast Wednesday. “It just underscores the support for the long-term proposition for lithium.”
The lithium sector is set for further consolidation around longer-term assets, Liontown Chief Executive Officer Tony Ottaviano said in a separate interview, while defending the company’s recent rejection of a multi-billion dollar bid for the business.
“There is a lot of demand for spodumene coming out of China, and then more broadly around the world,” Ottaviano told Bloomberg Television interview Wednesday. With global demand for lithium set to boom, bigger companies that buy longer-term assets will stand to benefit as consolidation starts to emerge, he added.
Liontown in March rejected a A$5.5 billion ($3.7 billion) offer from Albemarle, which is expected to be a key topic of interest at the US miner’s earnings call to shareholders on Thursday in New York. Ottaviano denied local media reports of an ongoing bidding war for his company.
“At the end of the day, there’s a difference of opinion around value and that’s where it sits at the moment,” he said about Albemarle’s offer. “We’ve had no further formal approaches.”
Meanwhile, Pilbara Minerals, one of Australia’s top lithium miners, said earlier this year it will nearly double production by late 2025 to meet soaring demand for the key electric-vehicle battery metal.
READ: Lithium’s Next Big Risk Is Grand Supply Plans Falling Short
The Perth-based miner plans to push ahead with the expansion, despite a recent steep pullback in lithium prices as more supply comes online, Henderson said. The resulting slide in company valuations has helped open the door to potential acquisitions in a sector still dominated by junior and mid-sized players.
“It’s an incredible market and Pilbara looks always to capitalize on that,” he said. “We’re not holding back on our investment.”
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>>> Liontown Resources Limited (LINRF) engages in the exploration, evaluation, and development of mineral properties in Australia. The company explores for lithium, gold, vanadium, copper, and nickel deposits, as well as platinum group elements. Its flagship property is the Kathleen Valley lithium project located in Perth, Western Australia. The company was incorporated in 2006 and is based in West Perth, Australia.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/LINRF/profile?p=LINRF
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Re-post - >>> I have COPJ, TECK, FCX, SCCO, HMY, FQVLF, CPPMF, CSCCF. The trend in the industry is consolidation and expanding existing assets, before opening new mines. I see more mergers and acquisitions in the future. Look at SA....great opportunity in their KSM prospect, but even after pouring millions into development the estimated capex to open the mine is an additional 5-6 billion C$ and a multi-year development timeline. KSM will probably be developed, but acquisitions and mergers are an easier route (today) to boost capacity and profit from increasing demand.
I would selectively add to some positions if prices retrace.
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Re-posts - Li, Cu, rare earths - >>> If the US is serious about developing domestic sources Rhyolite Ridge and Thacker Pass are critically important, based on their nearly complete permitting process. To my knowledge there aren't any other Lithium projects in the US at the scale of these and at the end of permitting. ALB's King Mountain project is in the permitting stage, and PLL's open pit mine in NC is up against substantial opposition with no end in sight. The Salton Sea offers a tantalizing opportunity, but the technology hurdles seem to be substantial putting any commercial mining into the future. Bottom line, we need Rhyolite Ridge and Thacker Pass.
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https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171817166
>>> Not at the present. Held BYD for a few years but sold my shares last year. Like the company but not the dicey politicking between nations. Concentrating on miners these last two years, Lithium, Copper and RE's (rare earths). Have stayed away from battery shares with the exception of owning BYD. I like BYD, I think they are the winning horse in the EV race and would own them again if politics weren't involved. Miners in Australia, Canada, and the USA look like long term winners in the new energy environment, a lot of consolidation ahead.
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https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171804479
>>> New Ioneer Mineral Resource update finds 168% increase in estimated lithium at Rhyolite Ridge
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230426005886/en/New-Ioneer-Mineral-Resource-update-finds-168-increase-in-estimated-lithium-at-Rhyolite-Ridge
Assuming Ioneer receives the fianl permits required to proceed, Rhyolite Ridge is a game changer for the USA drive to develop domestic mineral sources.
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https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171802827
>>> FWIW.....rumors are ???? Allkem share price pops amid Rio Tinto takeover rumours
https://www.fool.com.au/2023/04/27/allkem-share-price-pops-amid-rio-tinto-takeover-rumours/
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https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171803222
>>>
https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/1011
By my count there are 15 announced plans for battery production facilities to be built in the USA. All of them are Li-ion based. Ford has announced their intention to also build NMC battery production lines. I haven't followed the mid-stream announcements as closely, but many nations and miners are moving upstream to produce Lithium Hydroxide. ALB is committed to building a Plant in S. Carolina. CATL and BYD are introducing a mixed sodium Li-ion battery for low end EV's. Should be interesting to see how far they take the technology.
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https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171803303
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individual stocks MP and ARAFF at present.
I owned Lynas in the past. MP is well positioned to execute on their expansion plans in progress, patience will be rewarded.
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Tesla has said they aren't interested in miners, they want more Lithium Hydroxide facilities. SGML is years behind Pilbara in production capacity. In my opinion, fully priced at this point. I'm focusing on copper miners now. Copper mines are capex intensive hence the M&A activity with more to come, and most of the working mines are at or reaching peak production. In the long run, copper will probably be a bigger issue than Lithium.
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https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171822336
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>>> Ioneer Ltd (IONR) explores for and develops mineral properties in North America. Its flagship property is the Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron project located in the state of Nevada, the United States. The company was formerly known as Global Geoscience Limited and changed its name to ioneer Ltd in November 2018. ioneer Ltd was incorporated in 2001 and is based in North Sydney, Australia.
>>> New Ioneer Mineral Resource update finds 168% increase in estimated lithium at Rhyolite Ridge
Ioneer project to meet rising demand for U.S. electric vehicle components while creating dedicated space to protect biological diversity
BusinessWire
April 26, 2023
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230426005886/en/New-Ioneer-Mineral-Resource-update-finds-168-increase-in-estimated-lithium-at-Rhyolite-Ridge
RENO, Nev.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today Ioneer Ltd (ASX: INR, NASDAQ: IONR) released new findings showing a 168% increase of lithium within its Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron project. The Nevada site is now estimated to hold enough lithium carbonate, a critical material in electric vehicle battery production, to power upward of 50 million electric vehicles with further expansion potential pending additional exploration.
In the coming years, U.S. demand for lithium is expected to soar to keep pace with projected demand for EVs. The updated estimate underscores Rhoylite Ridge’s potential in strengthening U.S. supply chains and securing a domestic and environmentally sustainable source of lithium and boron. Because its world-class processing facility will be on-site at Rhyolite Ridge, Ioneer can more quickly produce and efficiently deliver lithium to U.S. battery manufacturers. The innovative process eliminates the need to transfer the material to a separate plant for refining and will allow Ioneer to maximize the lithium’s full potency.
“Rhyolite Ridge is a once in a generation opportunity to produce a critical and reliable source of lithium and boron for the U.S. electric vehicle supply chain. Our best-in-class operations will provide desperately needed domestic materials, create jobs and reduce emissions,” said James Calaway, the executive chairman of Ioneer. “We look forward to completing the important federal permitting process and getting to work.”
“Today’s Mineral Resource Update demonstrates Ioneer’s unique ability to supply secure and strategic materials for electric vehicle battery manufacturers,” said Bernard Rowe, the managing director of Ioneer. “These new findings demonstrate how Ioneer can help the United States sustainably source lithium and boron while combatting climate change. Ioneer looks forward to finalizing the remaining federal requirements and commencing our operations.”
Once federal permitting and construction is complete, Rhyolite Ridge is expected to quadruple current U.S. lithium chemical output. The updated report, conducted by WSP USA Inc, (formerly Golder Associates USA Inc.), now estimates Rhyolite Ridge’s Mineral Resource deposit at 360.0 million tonnes – containing 3.4 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent and 14.1 million tonnes of boric acid equivalent. That reflects a 168% increase in lithium carbonate and 18% increase in boric acid (collectively a 145% increase in mineralized resource) from an April 2020 Ioneer Mineral Resource statement. It also builds on the company's Definitive Feasibility Study, which confirmed Rhyolite Ridge as a world-class lithium and boron project that is expected to become a globally significant, long-life, low-cost source of lithium and boron.
The Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office previously estimated that Rhyolite Ridge could reduce annual domestic gas consumption by nearly 145 million gallons and prevent the release of 1.29 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year from gas cars. The DOE estimates relied upon the April 2020 findings, and the revised estimates are expected to push those environmental benefits higher.
Today’s resource estimate strengthens the mine plan being permitted by Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that avoids all Tiehm’s buckwheat, a plant classified as an endangered species by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Ioneer has also made revisions to include measures to minimize and mitigate for potential indirect impacts within the designated critical habitat areas identified. Prior to its formal federal protection, Ioneer contributed more than $1 million to ensure the plant’s long-term growth and success and has budgeted an additional $1 million annually to protect the species.
The Project’s Mine Plan of Operations, submitted to the BLM in July 2022, is currently under NEPA review.
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From Dew's board - >>> New Ioneer Mineral Resource update finds 168% increase in estimated lithium at Rhyolite Ridge
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230426005886/en/New-Ioneer-Mineral-Resource-update-finds-168-increase-in-estimated-lithium-at-Rhyolite-Ridge
Assuming Ioneer receives the fianl permits required to proceed, Rhyolite Ridge is a game changer for the USA drive to develop domestic mineral sources.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171802827
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One of the big advantages electric cars have over traditional ICE vehicles is the efficiency of power delivery. Much of that gain is lost if we sacrifice 75% of the energy through the delivery system. If the cost of a kWh of electricity is 15 cents, it's 60 cents per kWh to deliver through a system that costs $1.2MM per km to build. I may be missing something but this seems massively inefficient.
US Battery boom - >>> Automakers’ bold plans for electric vehicles spur U.S. battery boom
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
by Michael D. Plante and Jessica Rindels
October 11, 2022
https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/1011
Many automakers with U.S. operations plan to significantly ramp up production of electric vehicles this decade and, in the process, commit huge capital outlays. Meeting these ambitious manufacturing goals will require batteries—lots of them—as an electric vehicle (EV) can use hundreds to thousands of individual lithium-ion batteries.
As a result, there is a wave of new investment in gigafactories—enormous facilities devoted to the production of lithium-ion batteries. Planned investment exceeds $40 billion, targeting parts of the U.S. in an effort to build out a key part of the domestic supply chain for batteries and EVs.
What Is a gigafactory?
Individual batteries, technically known as “cells,” come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and chemistries. For example, a common AA battery is an alkaline cell.
Cells are produced in factories ranging in size from small, pilot production lines to enormous facilities covering hundreds of thousands of square feet that produce millions of cells per year. Their annual capacity is measured not in terms of the number of cells produced but rather in terms of the total energy capacity of all those batteries.
Gigafactories get their name from the fact that their annual capacity exceeds 1 gigawatt hour (GWh), or 1 billion watt hours. To put that number in perspective, a typical household in the U.S. consumes 30 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity daily, or 30,000 watt hours, while the U.S. generates several million GWh of electricity per year.
An EV battery pack, which contains hundreds or even thousands of cells, usually has a capacity of 50–100 kilowatt hours (kWh). A gigafactory with 1 GWh capacity operating at full capacity could theoretically produce enough batteries each year to power 10,000 to 20,000 EVs.
Battery factory boom rolling out
The U.S. experienced an initial wave of investment in lithium-ion battery factories after the Great Recession, driven in part by $2.2 billion of funding allocated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The capacity of those early factories was relatively small, reflecting modest sales of electric vehicles.
U.S. capacity additions were sporadic until recently when the pace of new announcements picked up. Six new facilities, worth more than $5 billion, were announced from 2018 to 2020. Since the start of 2021, more than 15 new facilities or expansions have been disclosed in the U.S., reflecting a potential investment of at least $40 billion. Several plants have also been announced in Canada.
The production capacity of these just-announced gigafactories generally dwarfs that of the earlier facilities, which was often less than 1 GWh. All but one exceeds 10 GWh of capacity, with the largest exceeding 40 GWh.
Lithium-ion battery production grows rapidly
Experts expect these new investments, as well as future ones, to significantly boost U.S. production of lithium-ion batteries (Chart 1). U.S. capacity is expected to grow more than fivefold from 2021 to 2026, according to data and estimates by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a data and market intelligence provider. By 2031, U.S. capacity is expected to expand another 86 percent.
Chart 1: Lithium-Ion Battery Capacity Expected to Surge Around the Globe
While this will boost the U.S. share of global capacity, current forecasts imply that it will remain modest, advancing from 5.5 percent in 2021 to almost 11 percent by 2031. Other areas of the world—particularly China—are also experiencing gigafactory booms. China’s production capacity, which already overshadows all other countries, is expected to rise about 486 percent from 2021 to 2031.
EV production plans drive gigafactory boom
What drives these expansion plans? One factor is electric-vehicle sales growth. While EVs still make up a relatively small share of overall sales in the U.S., sales have risen considerably in recent years (Chart 2).
Chart 2: Worldwide Electric Vehicle Sales Exceed 4 Million Units in 2021
Sales in 2021 totaled more than 466,000 units, double the level of 2020. These trends have been even more pronounced outside the U.S. where, on average, sales have doubled each year since 2010 and reached almost 4.2 million units in 2021. China, in particular, has experienced robust sales growth.
Perhaps more important than recent sales, many U.S.-based automakers plan to rapidly expand electric-vehicle production this decade. For example, Ford plans to spend $50 billion through 2026 to expand its EV production, while GM plans to invest $35 billion through 2025. Both also have ambitious targets for global sales, with Ford targeting 2 million units by 2026 and GM 1 million by mid-decade. Other companies with a footprint in the U.S. are also preparing plans to scale up production in the region.
Auto production for these companies is largely concentrated in the Midwest and the South. Due to the high costs of transporting large quantities of lithium-ion batteries, most of the newly announced gigafactories will be in the same geographical region, an area some have begun referring to as the “Battery Belt” (Chart 3).
Chart 3: New Gigafactories Cluster in the Midwest, South and Tesla Facilities
Another feature of many of these investments is that they are partnerships between automakers and battery producers. For example, the largest investment recently announced is a $5.8 billion joint project by Ford and SK Innovation for two 43 gigawatt-hour-capacity facilities in Kentucky. These partnerships allow battery companies to secure demand while allowing automakers to obtain supplies they need to produce EVs.
Investment more modest elsewhere in chain
The supply chain for batteries is much more than just the production of batteries. It begins with the mining of key raw materials, including lithium, nickel and graphite, and subsequent refining of those minerals. The next step is the production of what are known as battery materials, the inputs used in the production of the individual cells. Further downstream, there are also companies that focus on recycling lithium-ion batteries.
U.S. capacity in those parts of the supply chain is limited, and investment has been modest, although interest is growing. A few new U.S. facilities to produce battery materials have been announced over the past year, the largest of which is a $3.5 billion operation in Nevada. Additionally, there are plans for several recycling plants and, further upstream, there is growing interest in lithium mining and refining.
The U.S. government hopes to further boost investor interest in these areas through numerous provisions contained in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The act offers direct subsidies to defray the costs of producing critical minerals, battery components and battery cells. Further, the tax credit available to buyers of EVs—worth up to $7,500 per car—includes requirements for the percentage of both the value of battery components and the value of critical minerals that must be sourced from domestic producers or free-trade partners.
Notably, the subsidy also contains a prohibition on the use of critical minerals, battery materials and other components from “foreign entities of concern.” This prohibition includes any output produced within China—a major player in various parts of the global supply chain for lithium-ion batteries. The critical minerals portion of the ban takes effect at the start of 2025; the components prohibition begins at the start of 2024.
Overall, these provisions create potentially powerful incentives to boost investment in other parts of the U.S. supply chain, though it is too early to know how successful they will be.
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Lithium-air batteries - >>> Battery breakthrough
Aerospace America
BY KEITH BUTTON
MARCH 2023
https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/battery-breakthrough/
Lithium-air batteries have intrigued futurists with their promise of storing vastly more electricity than today’s lithium-ion versions. But they have always suffered from an Achilles’ heel: They couldn't be charged and discharged over and over again, as required for commercial applications, including air travel. Keith Button spoke to researchers who have made a breakthrough in that part of the lithium-air equation.
On the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, researchers strode into Perlstein Hall daily to check on their baby — a black and gray disk the size of two stacked dimes, with wires leading to a computer whose display showed voltage measurements. This one-cell battery was their attempt to push research ahead on lithium-air batteries, a still experimental class that has tantalized battery researchers and aviation futurists for at least a decade.
What’s the attraction? A lithium-air battery draws in ambient air and culls oxygen molecules from it. This way, there is no need for the metal strips that in lithium-ion batteries feed the oxidization reactions that store electricity during charging. Likewise, there is no need for the graphite lattice structure that holds lithium and supplies lithium ions so electricity can be drawn from the battery. Most important, though, might be the direct lithium-oxygen chemical reactions that lead to storing more electricity than is possible with the metal oxide reactions in lithium-ion versions. In fact, by one estimate, lithium-air batteries could someday store five times more electricity per kilogram than a Tesla battery, giving these batteries a potentially far superior specific energy.
Scale up a single cell 10 to 15 times and put thousands of those together to form a large battery, and several of these batteries could, optimistically speaking, power a 100-passenger regional plane. So why aren’t today’s aircraft flying around on electricity supplied by lithium-air batteries? The Achilles’ heel has been the tendency of these batteries to wear out too soon when subjected to multiple cycles of charging and discharging. Researcher Larry Curtiss of the nearby Argonne National Laboratory set an informal benchmark of 1,000 cycles as the threshold for commercial viability, and by extension, that would include aviation.
At Perlstein Hall in September 2021, researchers led by Mohammad Asadi, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, were in the midst of testing their solution to the problem. At the time, no one had made a comparable lithium-air battery last through more than 200 cycles. They planned to run their battery to failure to see how many cycles it would survive. The answer turned out to be slightly beyond the threshold of 1,000 cycles.
Afterward, Asadi and his team of then-doctoral students Alireza Kondori and Mohammadreza Esmaeilirad and postdoctoral researcher Ahmad Mosen Harzandi enlisted other specialists to analyze the battery’s chemistry. This larger team, 17 in all, published its findings in the Feb. 3 issue of Science: “A room temperature rechargeable Li2O-based lithium-air battery enabled by a solid electrolyte.”
How did Asadi and his colleagues make the single-cell battery behind their rechargeability breakthrough? They started with one key constraint: To be practical, the battery had to operate at room temperature. Previous room temperature designs contained a liquid electrolyte, the material that carries ions between the cathode and anode. But in 2019, Asadi set out to create a solid-state version, meaning one with a solid electrolyte. He wasn’t sure how rechargeable the battery would be, but at a minimum, he saw two potential advantages: safety, and the ability to reduce weight and volume.
Liquid electrolytes are typically flammable, which can create a bad combination in a battery. “You have heat; you have oxygen; you have flammable materials. That makes for fire,” he says.
A solid-state battery — one with a solid electrolyte — would be lighter and easier to manufacture than a battery with a liquid electrolyte that would need to be contained. The solid electrolyte also would be somewhat pliable, so it could be shaped into any geometry that is convenient.
“It gives you more freedom and flexibility for scaled-up device applications in different variant architectures,” Asadi says.
The question was what material should serve as the solid electrolyte. Today’s generation of lithium-ion batteries powering our cars and phones contain liquid electrolytes, but Asadi knew that researchers were developing solid-state versions. He and his colleagues looked at these experimental lithium-ion batteries and realized they would need an alternative to the unsatisfactory choices they saw. One of those choices was a ceramic that contained lithium. This material was highly conductive, but it also would make a poor electrical interface with the anode and cathode. The other choice was polyethylene oxide, a polymer that lithium ions move easily into from the cathode or anode, and easily back out of. The downside was that ions would not pass easily through this polymer once inside it.
They decided to mix the two in a manner that would combine the best traits of both: An electrolyte that would allow ions to pass through easily and also easily cross the interfaces with the anode and cathode. They mixed up batches of alternatives, tested the electrical properties and tweaked the ingredients for the next batch, repeating the process until they settled on their best candidate. The winner consisted of particles of ceramic measuring just 70 nanometers in diameter — less than half the size of a grain of flour. They coated these grains with a polymer and then mixed them into the polyethylene oxide. The polymer coating on each particle provided a strong chemical bond for ions to pass between the ceramic particles and the polyethylene oxide.
They mixed up the electrolyte as a slurry, poured it over a petri dish, let it dry for three days at room temperature, then dried it for two more days at 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) under a vacuum.
Following the testing in 2021, Asadi looked at the results of the ionic conductivity testing of the electrolyte, meaning how well it allowed lithium ions to pass through. “This is very good,” he remembers thinking. Also impressive was the specific energy. The one-cell battery stored 685 watt-hours per kilogram, and the researchers estimated that with design tweaks, they could have reached at least 1,000 Wh/kg. That’s about three times the capacity of the most advanced lithium-ion battery, but still somewhat short of the projected ceiling of beating a Tesla battery by five times.
But it was cracking the 1,000-cycle threshold that was most exciting. At this point, the Asadi team did not know precisely what factors within their cell produced that result. So Asadi arranged a Zoom call with his mentor, Curtiss, who had been researching lithium-air technology for about a decade at Argonne, the U.S. Energy Department-funded research lab.
“The results were really, really amazing,” Curtiss says.
Curtiss and Asadi rounded up the team of 17 to find out what went on inside the cell. They examined the cathode and electrolyte with various methods. Specifically, they were looking for chemical reactions that would explain the cell’s ability to cycle repeatedly and with a large storage capacity. They knew that in a lithium-air battery, the key energy-producing reaction occurs on the cathode. As the battery discharges electricity, lithium ions flow from the lithium anode through the electrolyte to the cathode. There, the ions react with oxygen from the air to form one of three possible compounds: lithium superoxide, which requires one lithium electron per oxygen molecule; lithium peroxide, which requires two electrons; or lithia, which requires four electrons. These four-electron reactions would provide the most storage capacity, but historically, only a high-temperature lithium-air design incorporating a molten electrolyte had achieved such reactions. The analysis showed that Asadi’s cell created these four-electron reactions during its discharging and recharging cycles, the first time a room-temperature cell had done so. Liquid-electrolyte versions had created only one- or two-electron reactions.
“That’s why we think it’s a big breakthrough,” Curtiss says.
Specifically, images from a scanning electron microscope showed the lithia in the solid-state cell were deposited on the rough surface of the cathode in 500-nanometer-deep valleys. During the recharging of the battery, the lithia decomposed as the lithium ions flowed in the other direction and were redeposited on the lithium-metal anode.
The researchers believe that the battery’s ability to last through many cycles came from two sources: The reliable growth and decomposition of the lithia, and the solid electrolyte. Since there was no liquid in the battery to contact the cathode, there were fewer pathways for unintended chemical reactions compared to what goes on inside a liquid-electrolyte battery.
“That’s why we think that it can run quite longer: because you don’t get these side reactions, parasitic reactions, that destroy the electrolyte or the cathode surface,” he says.
The four-electron lithium reactions also account for the Asadi battery’s potential to store 1,000 Wh/kg of electricity. To put that achievement in perspective, Venkat Viswanathan, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University who is not affiliated with the research of Asadi and Curtiss, says that batteries capable of providing 1,000 Wh/kg would be “transformative” for short-distance aircraft. Halle Cheeseman, a program director at ARPA–E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, sees 1,000 Wh/kg as a milepost for battery development — the point at which some shorter flights could become electrified.
The specific energy requirements for electric aircraft of the future will depend on how far they’re flying and how many people they’re carrying. While prototype advanced air mobility aircraft today are powered by lithium-ion batteries, the limited capacity of the batteries means they can power only short flights — tens of minutes long — carrying a handful of passengers. According to a paper co-authored by Viswanathan in Nature, batteries with 300 to 400 Wh/kg — at the upper limits of what lithium-ion batteries can provide — could power advanced air mobility aircraft for intracity travel. Commuter aircraft with up to 19 seats will need 1,200 to 1,800 Wh/kg, and 150- to 180-seat planes will need 1,800 to 2,500 Wh/kg.
But even with the solid electrolyte lithium-air breakthrough, Curtiss estimates it will take another 10 to 15 years of development and scaling up before lithium-air batteries can power aircraft. He bases his estimate on the development timeline for lithium-ion batteries, which were conceived in the 1970s.
“We’re going to try to get funding for scaling this up to the commercial level,” says Curtiss, while emphasizing that there is still more lab work to be done.
Ahead, the researchers will try to improve on the specific energy of the battery and increase the number of recharging cycles. In addition, they’ll try to lower the amount of electricity it takes to fully charge the battery, which is its charging efficiency, and speed up how fast it can discharge its electricity and then recharge, which is the charge rate.
As for scaling up, the issues for lithium-air are considerable but not insurmountable, says Cheeseman, who oversaw research and development for Rayovac Corp. in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2004, when the company tried to develop a lithium-air battery.
“The challenges that must be overcome aren’t necessarily more overwhelming than for any battery chemistry,” says Cheeseman, who uses they/them pronouns. “It just takes a long time to work through the challenges to get something that’s commercially viable.”
Researchers expect to encounter new problems as they scale up the technology. “It’s one thing to have it working as something the size of a postage stamp. It’s very different to have it working at the size of what would be needed in a plane,” they say.
Obtaining enough material is likely to be a serious issue. Consider a battery’s cathode, for instance. When making a lab-scale version, researchers have the luxury of making its material a gram at a time. Larger batteries would require kilograms of the material, and making lots of those will require freight cars full of it. Right now, “sometimes those materials are only available in spoonfuls,” Cheeseman says.
The history of today’s lithium-ion batteries suggests that the problem should be solvable. “Back in 1980 somebody said, ‘Here is a cathode material that might work,’ and it was available in grams. Today, it’s available in thousands, if not millions, of tons,” they say.
Viswanathan predicts that either lithium-air batteries or another battery technology he is developing, lithium/fluorinated carbon batteries, will power the longest-range electric aircraft in about a decade, optimistically. He figures on five years to work out the science, two or three years to scale up a battery-producing factory and supply lines — borrowing from Tesla’s recent quick scaleups of its factories — and then two or three years for FAA certification.
Three technologies will shrink the development timeline for today’s new generation of batteries relative to the lithium-ion generation, Viswanathan says. Machine learning now allows researchers to perform much more virtual testing on the computer before having to perform lab tests. Robots operating around the clock in the lab can mix and test more variations of battery materials, and at a faster pace, than is possible with human testers.
“In the design cycle, you want to test as much as possible on the computer because that’s cheap,” he says. “You want to do as much as possible in the lab before you have to go out in the field.”
And tools like X-ray tomography, in which the deflection of X-rays beamed at a chemical reaction are recorded over time, and electron microscopy, in which images are recorded by aiming electron beams at a reaction, permit researchers to take “movies” of the atoms to see precisely what’s occurring and what might be going wrong, Viswanathan says. “All of these things will accelerate the discovery and optimization process.”
Viswanathan’s team at Carnegie Mellon built a robot to test electrolyte candidates with no human intervention. Testing alternative chemistries — whether robotically or through computer simulations — is a lot like cooking. “You’re trying to find a recipe,” he says. “It’s a little like making a new sort of cocktail. You’re trying to get the ingredients right.”
As with cooking, a pinch or dash of an ingredient, or many ingredients, can make all the difference.
“Additives make or break batteries,” Viswanathan says. “They are all added in small proportions to give that one little thing.”
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>>> LITHIUM-ION VS. SODIUM-ION BATTERY: WHICH IS A BETTER ALTERNATIVE?
February 02, 2023
Supply Chain Strategy Blogs
https://www.gep.com/blog/strategy/lithium-ion-vs-sodium-ion-battery#:~:text=Sodium%2Dion%20Battery%3A%20Which%20Is,a%20three%20times%20higher%20lifecycle.
Sodium is more than 500 times more abundant than lithium, which is available in a few countries.
Sodium-ion battery charges faster than lithium-ion variants and have a three times higher lifecycle.
However, sodium-ion batteries lack of a well-established raw material supply chain and the technology is still in early stages of development.
Lithium is the most common element in battery manufacturing, with China controlling the global lithium-ion battery supply chain (79% of all lithium-ion batteries). China also controls 61% of global lithium refining capacity used for battery storage and electric cars.
The next big supplier is Argentina, accounting for 21% of global deposits, giving it tremendous power in raw material mining and to influence the lithium supply chain, with 13 proposed projects and dozens more in the works.
Lithium-ion batteries are made of scarce and pricey elements such as cobalt and lithium.
Lithium prices have increased by more than 700% since 2021 amid rising demand for batteries. Lithium-based batteries would likewise have difficulty meeting the increasing demand for power grid energy storage. Technology companies are looking for alternatives to replace traditional lithium-ion batteries.
Sodium-ion vs. Lithium-ion Battery Technology
Sodium-ion batteries are a promising alternative to lithium-ion batteries — currently the most widely used type of rechargeable battery. Both types of batteries use a liquid electrolyte to store and transfer electrical energy, but differ in the type of ions they use.
An examination of Lithium-ion (Li-ion) and sodium-ion (Na-ion) battery components reveals that the nature of the cathode material is the main difference between the two batteries. Because the preparation cost of the cathode from raw materials is the same for both types of battery technologies, the main cost reduction for sodium-ion batteries comes from raw materials.
lithium-ion-vs-sodium-ion-battery
Due to the multiple advantages of sodium-ion batteries, large players in the energy industry are investing in acquiring and developing this technology. For example, Faradion, a battery technology company in the UK and an innovator in Na-ion battery, was recently acquired by Reliance New Energy Solar, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, for $135 million.
Challenges for Sodium-ion Battery
Despite the advantages, sodium ion battery manufacturing needs to overcome several challenges before it can be widely adopted as a replacement for lithium-ion batteries.
Lack of a well-established supply chain for the materials used in the batteries.
Since the technology is still in its infancy, very few companies operate in this segment, leading to higher cost of batteries.
The technology to make sodium-ion batteries is still in the early stages of development.
Sodium-ion based batteries have limitations of flexibility as they cannot be turned into various shapes like prismatic, cylindrical etc.
These are less dense and have less storage capacity compared to lithium-based batteries.
Existing sodium-ion batteries have a cycle life of 5,000 times, significantly lower than the cycle life of commercial lithium iron phosphate batteries, which is 8,000-10,000 times.
Can Sodium-based Batteries Replace Lithium-ion Batteries?
While there are many potential advantages to using sodium-ion batteries over lithium-ion batteries, there are also several challenges that need to be overcome before they can be widely adopted as a replacement.
If sodium-ion batteries are to become the backbone of the energy storage industry, they must continue to improve their technical performance. Researchers are working to improve the performance and stability of the batteries, as well as to reduce their cost, while companies are looking to establish a supply chain for the materials used in the batteries.
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>>> GM, Hyundai Tap South Korean EV Battery Makers to Build U.S. Plants
The Wall Street Journal
4-25-23
by Selina Cheng
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/gm-hyundai-tap-south-korean-ev-battery-makers-to-build-us-plants/ar-AA1aj5cA
HONG KONG—General Motors Co. and Hyundai Motor Group each announced new investments to produce electric-car battery cells in the U.S. in joint ventures with different South Korean battery makers.
General Motors and Samsung SDI Co. announced Tuesday that they are planning to invest more than $3 billion in a battery-cell factory that would begin operating in 2026. The location of the plant wasn’t disclosed but the cells will support GM’s EV capacity in North America, Chief Executive Mary Barra said.
Separately, Hyundai Motor Group and South Korean battery maker SK On Co. also said on Tuesday that they have agreed to invest $5 billion to build a plant in Georgia to produce electric-vehicle battery cells, as car makers bump up spending in the U.S. to benefit from incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The companies are the latest auto and battery makers to announce plans to expand production in North America, as they try to meet local-content rules and qualify for incentives under last year’s legislation.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol traveled to the U.S. this week and is set to meet with President Biden. The two are expected to discuss issues ranging from nuclear threats in North Korea to business ties.
Hyundai and SK On will set up an EV battery-cell factory in Georgia’s Bartow County, in a 50-50 joint venture, Hyundai said Tuesday. The facility will be close to Hyundai and SK On’s EV manufacturing complex in the same state, a $5.5 billion investment announced in May last year.
The EV plant, located in Bryan County, is set to begin production in the first half of 2025 and make around 300,000 cars a year, Hyundai said at the time. The latest battery-cell facility is expected to start manufacturing later the same year and will be able to support output of the same number of EVs, according to Tuesday’s statement.
LG Energy Solution Ltd. last month said it would build a $5.6 billion complex in Arizona to make cylindrical batteries for EVs and lithium-iron phosphate batteries for energy-storage systems. Tesla Inc. last month announced that its next EV factory will open in Mexico. EV output from the Mexican factory will be eligible for EV tax credits granted under the legislation.
In September 2021, Ford Motor Co. said it was collaborating with South Korean battery maker SK Innovation Co. to construct three battery factories in Kentucky and in Tennessee, as well as a factory that produces its F-series electric pickup trucks by 2025.
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>>> Argentina's lithium pipeline promises 'white gold' boom as Chile tightens control
Reuters
April 24, 2023
By Lucila Sigal
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/argentinas-lithium-pipeline-promises-white-101109430.html
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - In Argentina's mountainous north, a strong pipeline of lithium projects close to coming online looks set to unlock a wave of production that could see its output of the key electric vehicle battery metal as much as triple within the next two years.
The world’s fourth largest producer of the silvery-white metal sits within the so-called "lithium triangle" and has been luring investment from Canadian to Chinese mining firms with a regional and market-led model, even as a wave of resource nationalism has spread in the region.
Neighboring Chile, the region's top lithium producer, last week unveiled plans for a state-led public-private model, spooking investors. Bolivia has long maintained strict control over its huge though largely untapped resources, while Mexico nationalized its lithium deposits last year.
In Argentina, despite state energy firm YPF starting to explore for lithium last year, the sector has largely been driven by private enterprise and regular approvals of new projects as the government has looked to bring in more export dollars through mining, a rare bright spot amid economic turmoil.
"Argentina has granted concessions to projects for the last 10 years," said Franco Mignacco, president of Argentina's Chamber of Mining Business. "That's why today we have this level of lithium investment and development and the chance of growth."
Mignacco estimated that Argentina's current 40,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate production could triple by 2024-2025 to 120,000 tonnes, which could take it past China and closer to Chile which currently produces some 180,000 tonnes per year.
That would be driven by new projects coming online on top of the two currently in production. The country has six lithium projects under construction and 15 in the advanced exploration or feasibility stage, Mignacco said.
That contrasts with Chile, where the industry is dominated by established players SQM and Albemarle, with few new projects underway. In Bolivia the government only recently okayed a new project by a Chinese consortium.
Argentina's production boost would come from the expansion of the only two producing operations - U.S. firm Livent's Fénix project in Catamarca and Australian Allkem Ltd's Salar de Olaroz mine in Jujuy - both expected to double output to 42,500 tonnes in the years ahead.
These would be joined by the Cauchari-Olaroz project, owned by China's Ganfeng Lithium Co and Canada's Lithium Americas Corp, which in the second half of 2023 is set to begin production with capacity for 40,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate.
'PRO-MARKET STRATEGY'
Argentina, Bolivia and Chile together sit atop half of the world's resources of the mineral under otherworldly salt flats in the high-altitude Andean plains.
But strategies for developing it are diverging.
"Argentina's lithium sector has thrived through a decentralized, pro-market strategy," said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America program at The Wilson Center, adding in contrast Bolivia's lithium sector had "repeatedly stalled as a result of excessive state control."
Chile, he said, may have found a "savvy middle ground" with its public-private model, which would hand the state majority control over all new lithium projects in a nationalist shift, but would still give private enterprise a key role to play.
The wave of resource nationalism had prompted some talk amongst officials of a potential OPEC-style lithium cartel in the region, though analysts see it as unrealistic given the diverse industry models and levels of development.
Argentina, meanwhile, faces challenges including economic turmoil with high inflation and capital controls which complicate business, while the country is headed for general elections in October creating political uncertainty.
Its lithium pipeline, though, may keep the sector bubbling and even gaining ground on rivals. Overtaking neighbor Chile would be highly unlikely but some analysts were aiming high.
"Chile today produces and exports much more lithium than Argentina," said Natacha Izquierdo, analyst at consultancy ABCEB. "But if the projects we have here today come to fruition, Argentina could overtake it."
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>>> Lithium Refining Lacks Supply, According to Elon Musk — Here Are 2 Stocks to Take Advantage
TipRanks
April 23, 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lithium-refining-lacks-supply-according-231451494.html
Elon Musk touched upon many themes on Tesla’s recent earnings call, one of which was the lack of lithium refining options. Given lithium is an essential component in EV batteries, there is an unmet need for refined lithium in the EV industry.
During the call, Musk said: “Can other people please do this work? That would be great. We’re begging you. We don’t want to do it. Can someone please? Instead of making a picture-sharing app, try lithium mining and refining, heavy industry, come on.”
In short, Musk was trying to draw attention to the opportunity at play for lithium producers.
Covering this industry for Deutsche Bank, analyst Corinne Blanchard agrees and has an idea about which companies could also represent an opportunity for investors.
“Our fundamental view of Lithium has not changed in the medium to long-term, as we believe Supply will remain short of Demand. We anticipate market tightness over the coming years, followed by a growing deficit thereafter,” Blanchard wrote. “We have a preference for the most established Lithium producers, as we believe they can offer better execution with a lower risk profile, and they are well positioned for growing volumes in key jurisdictions.”
Against this backdrop, we’ve opened the TipRanks database and pulled up the details on two of Blanchard’s recommendations. Both are Buy-rated stocks, with double-digit upside potential for the coming year. Let’s take a closer look.
Lithium Americas (LAC)
We’ll start with Lithium Americas, a lithium mining and refining company with big growth potential ahead. While still a pre-revenue concern, LAC fully owns the Thacker Pass Mine, which is situated in northern Nevada, and is its crowning asset given that it boasts the greatest lithium reserves in the US. That makes the mine a valuable resource for the nation’s developing EV industry, which needs first-rate Li-ion batteries. Furthermore, LAC also holds complete ownership and joint venture deals for high purity lithium mines in Argentina.
Although Thacker Pass is an exciting project, production is still a while away and slated for 2026. The company announced the start of construction activities in early March.
However, on the recent Q4 earnings call, the company announced that construction at the Argentine Cauchari-Olaroz mine was “substantially complete,” with production expected to kick off before the conclusion of the first half of 2023. To achieve production and positive cash flow, the company said it requires less than $50 million in extra capital costs. LAC anticipates reaching the full production rate of 40,000 tpa (tonnes per annum) of lithium carbonate by the first quarter of next year.
Assessing the company’s prospects, it is the long-term potential of the Thacker Pass Mine that is core to Blanchard’s positive thesis.
“We remain Buy rated on LAC,” said the Deutsche Bank analyst, “given its asset portfolio and strategic geographic exposure to Argentina and the US… We are positive on management’s ability to develop the Thacker Pass, although we recognize the inherent challenges to the asset being a clay-based deposit. That being said, Thacker Pass is a ~80ktpa hydroxide project, in the US, which should be highly valuable to the US domestic Lithium market.”
That Buy rating is supported by a $26 price target, and should it be met, will represent one-year share appreciation of 36%. (To view Blanchard’s track record, click here)
Blanchard is not alone in her positive take for this prospective lithium producer. LAC has garnered 5 analyst reviews over the past 3 months, and all are positive, naturally making the consensus view here a Strong Buy. In the year ahead, the analysts see the stock surging 73.5%, considering the average target stands at $32.85. (See LAC stock forecast)
Sociedad Quimica Y Minera de Chile (SQM)
We’ll now shift to Chile, a country in possession of the world’s largest lithium reserves and the second-biggest producer on earth. As such, Sociedad Quimica Y Minera de Chile is one of the world’s largest producers of lithium, iodine, and potassium nitrate. The company produces lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate from brine in Chile’s vastest salt flat, the Salar de Atacama.
The positive price environment seen during 2022 helped the company deliver robust results in its most recently reported quarter – for 4Q22. Revenue climbed by 189.8% from the same period a year ago to $3.13 billion, while beating the consensus estimate by $110 million. Gross profit hit $1.64 billion, way above the $542.8 million generated in 4Q21. That helped the company deliver EPADR (Earnings per American Depositary Receipt) of $4.03, a big increase on the $1.13 delivered in the year ago quarter and well ahead of the $3.77 forecast.
However, more recently, on last Friday, the shares took a big beating, crashing by 18.5% after Chilean President Gabriel Boric unveiled plans to nationalize the country’s lithium industry and establish a state-owned company that will be involved in lithium exploration.
Before their contracts run out, the state-controlled Codelco is expected to negotiate an agreement with SQM (and peer Albemarle) to purchase an interest in their operations.
With SQM’s contract to extract lithium in Chile’s Atacama salt flat coming to an end in 2030, Deutsche Bank’s Blanchard notes that despite believing there won’t be any major changes to current contracts, given the ongoing renewal process, SQM could be affected.
Still, whether the Chilean government’s plan actually takes place remains to be seen, and in the meantime, Blanchard highlights SQM’s value proposition and opportunity for investors.
“As we are increasingly positive on the fundamentals of the market in the medium-term, we value SQM’s upcoming volume expansion, with a focus in Chile on existing operations, but also the upcoming 20kt of hydroxide capacity in China and Mt Holland in Australia,” the analyst wrote. “We like SQM’s shareholder returns with a ~12% dividend yield expected this year, based on our numbers.”
All told, despite the Chilean government’s actions, there’s no change to Blanchard’s Buy rating on SQM or to the price target, which remains at $90 and is set to generate returns of ~42% over the coming months
Looking at the consensus breakdown, with a total of 6 Buys vs. 1 Hold and Sell, each, the analyst consensus rates this stock a Moderate Buy. At $103.63, the average target is more bullish than Blanchard allows and could see investors pocket gains of 63% a year from now.
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QuantumScape (QS) - >>> The Forever Battery That Promises to Change the EV Industry
InvestorPlace
Luke Lango
April 12, 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/forever-battery-promises-change-ev-122225224.html
As passionate as I am about electric vehicles and their potential to transform the transportation sector, there is one major obstacle that prevents EVs from reaching their full potential: the limitations of current battery technology.
Batteries are essential for powering electric vehicles, but they also pose significant challenges. Today’s batteries are expensive, heavy, slow to charge, and prone to degradation. These factors limit the range, performance, and affordability of electric vehicles.
To overcome these challenges, we need to develop better batteries that can store more energy, charge faster, last longer, and cost less. This is not a trivial task, but it is a necessary one. Without better batteries, the EV Revolution will remain a niche phenomenon rather than a mainstream reality.
So how do we make a better battery? Well, how much do you remember from your AP chemistry course?
The Battery Conundrum
Batteries comprise three essential components: a cathode, an anode, and an electrolyte. Ions move between the cathode and anode through the electrolyte, creating electric current.
For years, we have relied on conventional lithium-ion batteries that use liquid chemistry. These batteries have a solid cathode and anode, connected by a liquid electrolyte solution.
But they have one major drawback … the liquid electrolyte limits how much energy they can store in a given space. This means that we cannot make our phones, watches, and electric cars last longer and charge faster without changing the battery design.
That’s where solid-state batteries come in.
Solid-state batteries are exactly what they sound like. They replace the liquid electrolyte with a solid one. This makes for a more compact, more efficient solid battery that outperforms conventional batteries in terms of energy density and charging speed.
The potential of solid-state batteries is enormous.
With a solid-state battery, our phones could run for days on a single charge … our smartwatches could charge in seconds … and our EVs could travel thousands of miles without stopping.
That’s why some experts call solid-state batteries “forever batteries.” And that’s why these forever batteries are the key technology to accelerate the EV Revolution to the next level.
Forever Battery: The Impossible Just Became Possible
While solid-state batteries have long been a pipe dream, a group of brilliant Stanford professors and scientists partnered with tech leaders to get funding from top-notch venture capitalists. Together, in 2010, they founded QuantumScape (QS) and set out to revolutionize the battery industry.
Thirteen years later, they have achieved the impossible: a solid-state battery that actually works.
Previous efforts to create a working solid-state battery were thwarted by “dendrites.” These are tiny cracks that form in the solid electrolyte when the battery charges and discharges. They grow bigger and bigger until, eventually, they ruin the battery.
So, the key to making solid-state batteries is finding a solid electrolyte material that can resist dendrites.
That’s exactly what QuantumScape did at the end of 2020, with a single-layer battery cell. Sure, that’s not enough to power a car. But since then, the company has scaled up its breakthrough battery technology to 10-layer and 16-layer cells. In December 2022, the company began sending out its 24-layer cell prototype!
QS started sending prototypes a few years ago to car makers, and it got positive feedback. The company has already made several deals with automakers, including Volkswagen, who plans to have 25 million EVs on the road by 2030.
In other words, QuantumScape has cracked the code. It has made a solid-state battery that can power a car!
And within a few years, QuantumScape will start selling those next-gen EV batteries – and raking in billions of dollars in profits.
This is history in the making, folks. Forever batteries are here.
Obviously, QuantumScape stock is one way to profit from the forever battery revolution. Indeed, we think QS could go up by 10X from here…
But QuantumScape stock is not the only solid-state battery stock with huge potential…
The Final Word on the Forever Battery
Solid-state batteries are among the most amazing and innovative technological breakthroughs of the 2020s.
But the impossible is only becoming possible now because of computing advances.
That’s because solid-state batteries depend on a lot of complex chemical reactions. To make solid-state batteries that work well, you need to experiment with a lot of different compounds and see how they perform under various stress tests.
Doing this physically would take forever and cost a fortune. But doing this virtually on a computer is much faster and cheaper. You can simulate millions of reactions, find the most promising ones, and then test them in the lab.
This is the smartest and most efficient way to make batteries. Use the power of computing to explore millions of possibilities; Pick the best ones and verify them in the lab; Push forward with what works best.
Computing power is the driving force behind solid-state battery development.
And thanks to a secret technology that will make today’s computers obsolete, that driving force is about to become unstoppable.
This technology is the ultimate key to unlocking the full potential of solid-state batteries.
And one small company is leading the way with this game-changing tech. In fact, a major top 10 automaker is already using it to create better electric vehicle batteries.
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>>> Electric Vehicles' Effect on Semiconductors: Battery Constraints and the Promise of SiC and GaN
Motley Fool
By Jose Najarro, Nicholas Rossolillo, and Billy Duberstein –
Mar 31, 2023
https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/03/31/evs-effect-on-semiconductors-battery-constraints-a/?source=eptyholnk0000202&utm_source=yahoo-host&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=article
Semiconductor investors should get familiar with both silicon carbide and gallium nitride solutions and how they affect the automotive market.
The electric vehicle market is constantly presenting new technology and solutions. But which is the better choice for transistors, silicon carbide (SiC) solutions or gallium nitride (GaN) solutions?
ON Semiconductor (ON -1.57%) and Wolfspeed (WOLF -0.55%) are companies to watch.
>>> Tesla may get into the lithium-mining business, and these stocks are cratering
MarketWatch
Feb. 21, 2023
By Claudia Assis
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tesla-may-get-into-the-lithium-mining-business-and-these-stocks-are-cratering-69788def?siteid=yhoof2
Tesla Inc. TSLA, +1.77% reportedly is on the prowl for its own lithium-mining company, and losses are piling up for the stocks of lithium producers.
Shares of Albemarle Corp. ALB, +1.86% were down more than 4% on Tuesday, after a drop of nearly 10% on Friday. Livent Corp. LTHM, shares extended their losses a third day, down more than 3% on Tuesday after a 9% decline on Friday.
And rounding out the main U.S. publicly traded lithium producers, Piedmont Lithium PLL, -0.71% fell more than 2% after a 12% drop on Friday.
According to a Bloomberg report late Friday, Tesla is considering a potential bid for Canadian miner Sigma Lithium Corp. SGML, +3.89%.
Sigma Lithium is one of “multiple mining options” being explored, the report said.
Tesla has long wanted to mine its own metal, a key component in electric-vehicle batteries.
In September, the EV maker filed paperwork connected with a proposed lithium refinery in Texas, which would add to Tesla’s presence in the state. It also would be following the advice of the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, who has compared lithium mining to “printing money.”
The Financial Times reported in October that Tesla held talks to buy a stake in commodities giant Glencore PLC GLEN, -1.83%, but those talks fizzled.
Lithium prices peaked about a year ago and have since come off those highs. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s lithium price index is down 1.7% this year but up 34% year over year.
The index is tied to the weighted average price for lithium carbonate and hydroxide, the two primary lithium chemicals.
Tesla’s proposed lithium facility, located close to the port city of Corpus Christi, would be the first of its kind in North America, Tesla has said.
Construction could reach “commercial operations” by the end of 2024, Tesla said in an application for tax breaks filed with the Texas Comptroller’s Office.
Last month, General Motors Co. GM, -0.58% announced a $650 million investment in Canadian miner Lithium Americas Corp. LAC, +1.06%.
Also weighing on shares of lithium-mining companies is news that Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. 300750, 0.79%, or CATL, is reported to be offering discounts mostly to local EV makers on its batteries “to win more orders as lithium prices slowly unwind,” Emmanuel Rosner at Deutsche Bank said in a note.
Despite the recent losses, shares of the three lithium miners have outperformed the broader market index both over the past year and in the year to date.
In the past 12 months, Albemarle and Piedmont are up 30%, while Livent has gained slightly over 3%. That contrasts with losses of around 8% for the S&P 500 SPX, -0.16% in the same period.
The overperformance is holding for the year so far, with Albemarle up 14%, Livent advancing 18% and Piedmont gaining 43%. That compares with gains of about 5% for the S&P.
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>>> Lithium miner Sigma jumps on report Tesla considering buyout
Reuters
February 17, 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-considering-bid-sigma-lithium-221747925.html
(Reuters) -U.S.-listed shares of Sigma Lithium Corp rose 21% in extended trading on Friday after Bloomberg News reported that Tesla Inc was weighing a takeover of the Canada-based battery metals miner.
Tesla has been speaking with potential advisers about a bid, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the matter, and added that Sigma Lithium is one of the many mining options the electric-vehicle maker is exploring as it mulls its own refining.
Tesla and Sigma Lithium did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Sigma is finishing construction of a hard rock lithium mine in Brazil that it expects to open by April. The mine will produce spodumene concentrate, which can be used to make lithium hydroxide, a type of the metal preferred by some automakers including Tesla and BMW.
The project would use hydroelectric power, thus helping to greatly reduce its carbon footprint.
U.S. stock of Sigma Lithium, which has a market capitalization of $3.21 billion, nearly trebled in value last year.
Chief executive Elon Musk said last year Tesla was open to buying a mining company if producing its own supply of electric vehicle metals would speed up worldwide adoption of clean energy technologies.
Tesla and other automakers routinely talk to mining companies of all sizes about potential supplies of lithium and other EV metals without necessarily signing contracts.
Last month, Tesla signed an agreement with Piedmont Lithium Inc for supply of spodumene concentrate from Quebec, starting later this year.
Tesla also has supply contracts for nickel, lithium and a range of other EV metals from suppliers across the globe.
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>>> Albemarle Corporation (ALB) develops, manufactures, and markets engineered specialty chemicals worldwide. It operates through three segments: Lithium, Bromine, and Catalysts. The Lithium segment offers lithium compounds, including lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide, lithium chloride, and lithium specialties; and reagents, such as butyllithium and lithium aluminum hydride for use in lithium batteries for consumer electronics and electric vehicles, high performance greases, thermoplastic elastomers for car tires, rubber soles, plastic bottles, catalysts for chemical reactions, organic synthesis processes in the areas of steroid chemistry and vitamins, life sciences, pharmaceutical industry, and other markets. It also provides cesium products for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries; zirconium, barium, and titanium products for pyrotechnical applications that include airbag initiators; technical services for the handling and use of reactive lithium products; and lithium-containing by-products recycling services. The Bromine segment offers bromine and bromine-based fire safety solutions; specialty chemicals, including elemental bromine, alkyl and inorganic bromides, brominated powdered activated carbon, and other bromine fine chemicals for use in chemical synthesis, oil and gas well drilling and completion fluids, mercury control, water purification, beef and poultry processing, and other industrial applications; and other specialty chemicals, such as tertiary amines for surfactants, biocides, and disinfectants and sanitizers. The Catalysts segment provides hydroprocessing, isomerization, and akylation catalysts; fluidized catalytic cracking catalysts and additives; and organometallics and curatives. The company serves the energy storage, petroleum refining, consumer electronics, construction, automotive, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, and crop protection markets. Albemarle Corporation was founded in 1887 and is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. <<<
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>>> Stem, Inc. (STEM) operates as a digitally connected and intelligent energy storage network provider in the United States and internationally. It offers energy storage systems sourced from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The company also provides Athena, an artificial intelligence platform, which offers battery hardware and software-enabled services to operate the energy storage systems. In addition, it offers system design and engineering services, supply chain management, energy storage value stream optimization, warranty and preventive maintenance plan management, operation and maintenance reporting, and program enrollment and incentive management services. The company serves commercial and industrial enterprises, independent power producers, renewable project developers, and utilities and grid operators. Stem, Inc. was incorporated in 2009 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
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>>> Lithium’s Next Big Risk is Grand Supply Plans Falling Short
Bloomberg
by Annie Lee and Mark Burton
January 15, 2023
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lithium-next-big-risk-grand-220000291.html
(Bloomberg) -- Electric-vehicle producers are hoping that an imminent wave of lithium supply will bring relief for their expansion plans after a two-year squeeze, but the battery metal’s die-hard bulls warn of more pain if producers fall short.
Rampant lithium demand has caught many forecasters by surprise, with booming global EV sales causing consumption to double over the past two years. With suppliers unable to keep pace, a blistering price rally sent the total spot value of lithium consumption rocketing to about $35 billion in 2022, up from $3 billion in 2020, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Some bearish lithium-watchers say fast-growing supply, rather than dizzying demand, will be the decisive factor in 2023. Five analyst forecasts reviewed by Bloomberg point to much more balanced global market after clear shortages in 2022, while BYD Co., China’s top EV seller, is counting on a lithium surplus.
But there are many skeptics from who warn of fresh tightness if miners from Chile to China and Australia hit hurdles in launching daunting volumes of new supply. The reviewed forecasts peg production increases of between 22% and 42% in 2023: a breakneck pace for any complex extractive industry.
“I really don’t think there’s any reason to believe that so many tons can magically appear this year to return the market to balance,” Claire Blanchelande, a lithium trader at Trafigura Group, said by phone from Geneva. “The pain is not over yet.”
At stake is the pace at which the world’s vehicle fleet adopts battery power. Lithium-ion battery costs rose last year for the first time in the EV era, according to BloombergNEF. Elon Musk bemoaned lithium’s “insane” rally and said high raw material costs were among Tesla Inc.’s biggest headwinds.
Not Matched
There’s broad agreement that lithium supply is heading for a major increase in 2023 as a wave of expansions or new projects get up and running. The more bearish voices say that supply wave will hit the market just as China’s withdrawal of generous EV subsidies causes demand to cool, creating a mismatch that could trigger a sharper fall in prices.
Average prices this year are likely to fall about 8% from average 2022 levels, according to the mean of five forecasts reviewed by Bloomberg.
The divisive issue is whether less-established producers will be able to deliver in full, defying a range of regulatory, technical and commercial challenges. The extraordinary pace of lithium’s expansions - across both demand and supply - has made forecasting the market a contentious pursuit.
“2023 is when lithium becomes what I call a volume game,” said Chris Berry, president of House Mountain Partners, a consultant to the battery-materials sector. “We need to see a supply response from both existing producers and near-term producers who will need to execute flawlessly in the face of sustained lithium demand.”
Softer Market
Lithium prices have already come down about 20% from an eye-popping record in November, in an early sign of respite for buyers. Lithium carbonate in China fell to 480,500 yuan a ton ($71,500) on Jan. 13, the lowest since August.
A cause for optimism on supply is that the largest increases will be coming from veteran top producers like Albemarle Corp. and Chile’s SQM that are considered more likely to succeed. But they only account for about a third of anticipated increases, according to data from BMO Capital Markets.
The next tier down is a small army of nascent lithium producers who will need to prove they can get up and running. And beyond those, there’s unconventional new sources like lepidolite — a lithium-bearing mineral that’s emerging in China as a serious option. JPMorgan Chase & Co. called it “one of the largest threats” to prices.
But it’s also a controversial topic, with some specialists saying it’s costly and environmentally harmful to convert in large volumes for battery use.
“We will see more lepidolite be brought online in China in 2023,” Cameron Perks, analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence said. “But we won’t see as much as being predicted by others. Give it five or 10 years, and it will increasingly become an important part of the market.”
All of this means the path to supply and cost relief for carmakers is fraught, even before considering the demand side of the ledger.
No Collapse
For now, China’s withdrawal of EV credits, as well as uncertainties over the pandemic and global economy, are weighing on the outlook. But a faster-than-expected reopening of China’s economy, and the rest of the world escaping a deep slump, could yet deliver an upside surprise.
“The market consensus and the consensus that I would agree with is that in 2023 pricing is likely to plateau, with perhaps some potential for downside but by no means do I see any sort of a pricing collapse,” said Berry of House Mountain Partners.
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>> Nevada lithium mine gets conditional $700M government loan
By SCOTT SONNER
Associated Press
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nevada-lithium-mine-gets-conditional-700m-government-loan/ar-AA16jHdS?OCID=ansmsnnews11
RENO, Nev. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy announced a conditional loan of $700 million Friday to an Australian mining company to pursue a lithium project still facing environmental hurdles in Nevada as the U.S. seeks domestic supplies for a key component in electric vehicle batteries.
The move ups the ante in what's already a high-stakes battle over President Joe Biden's energy agenda and conservationists fighting to protect an endangered wildflower found only at the proposed mine site on a high desert ridge halfway between Reno and Las Vegas.
Ioneer Ltd. has hoped to begin mining at Rhyolite Ridge by 2026 in Esmerelda County. The Energy announcement said the site could produce enough lithium to support production of about 370,000 electric vehicles annually for decades.
The loan would be the latest project to demonstrate the Biden administration's commitment to strengthen the nation's battery supply chain, electrify the transportation sector and cut reliance on fossil fuels and foreign supplies of raw materials, the Department of Energy said.
Jigar Shah, director of DOE's Loans Programs Office, said his office is “excited to further develop an environmentally responsible U.S. supply chain for critical materials.”
“Rhyolite Ridge is a major step towards bolstering domestic lithium production for clean energy technologies,” he said.
James Calaway, executive chairman of Ioneer, said the conditional commitment “highlights the project's strategic role in strengthening the nation's critical mineral supply chain in providing a secure, sustainable and reliable domestic source of lithium for the growing vehicle ecosystem.” Bernard Rowe, Ioneer's managing director, said it came after 23 months “of discussion and due diligence” by Energy and “represents a significant milestone” for the project.
But the project still faces a significant legal and regulatory challenge in developing a mining operations plan that will provide adequate protection for the endangered Nevada wildflower, Tiehm's buckwheat. (lol)
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in declaring it endangered last year that it is on the brink of extinction and the mining project posed the single biggest threat to its survival.
Conservationists have sued in the past to protect the 6-inch-tall plant with yellow blooms and vowed on Friday to do so again if necessary.
“What this looks like is a fairly transparent effort by the Biden administration to build political and economic momentum for the project in an effort to steamroll the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Endangered Species Act,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Ioneer is going to have to completely overhaul the design of this mine if they expect to pass through permitting,” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “We’ve sued or initiated lawsuits over Tiehm’s buckwheat four times already, and we won’t back down until every buckwheat is saved." (lol)
The Energy Department announcement said the Ioneer project is working to minimize impact on the plant. It said the loan is contingent on completion of an environmental impact statement in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
The Biden administration has made a plan for half a million charging stations for electric vehicles a signature piece of its infrastructure goals. That effort, and the growth of electric vehicle companies such as Tesla, will require much more lithium to make batteries.
Although lithium reserves are distributed widely across the globe, the U.S. is home to just one active lithium mine, in Nevada. Worldwide demand for lithium was about 350,000 tons (317,517 metric tons) in 2020, but industry estimates project demand will be up to six times greater by 2030.
Shah said large projects like this go forward step by step.
"We clearly are not committing any capital to the project yet," Shah said Friday in a telephone interview with AP. “They still have to meet the conditions. But by doing this, it gives their equity investors some comfort that they should continue to invest in the project.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., is among those backing the project.
“I applaud the Energy Department for providing this loan to help support the mining and processing of Nevada’s critical minerals, help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and contribute to the creation of jobs in our state," she said in a statement.
Lithium is fundamental to the battery technology that is most common in electric vehicles and battery electric storage systems. But many engineers are working on alternative battery chemistries because lithium involves rock mining, which means major disturbance to the environment.
Ioneer is a lithium focused company based in New South Wales, Australia and Reno.
Another new lithium mining project in development in the U.S. is proposed for Thacker Pass by Lithium Americas near the Oregon line. That northern Nevada mine would make millions of tons of lithium available, but it too faces legal challenges. Native American tribes have argued that it’s located on sacred lands near where dozens of their ancestors were massacred in 1865.
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>>> U.S. finalizes $2.5 billion loan to GM, LG battery joint venture
Reuters
Dec 2022
By David Shepardson
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/topstories/u-s-finalizes-2-5-billion-loan-to-gm-lg-battery-joint-venture/ar-AA15aI6e?OCID=ansmsnnews11
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department said on Monday it had finalized a $2.5 billion low-cost loan to a joint venture of General Motors Co and LG Energy Solution to help pay for three new lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing facilities.
Reuters first reported in July the planned loan to Ultium Cells LLC from the government's Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program.
The loan will help finance construction of new lithium-ion manufacturing facilities in Ohio, Tennessee and Michigan, supporting 6,000 construction jobs and 5,100 operations jobs at the three plants.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm plans to tout the closing of the Ultium loan on a visit to Michigan on Monday with Labor Department Deputy Secretary Julie Su, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, United Auto Workers (UAW) President Ray Curry and other officials, automakers and EV battery companies. They will discuss strategies to recruit and retain a diverse and skilled battery workforce, and the Biden administration's Battery Workforce Initiative.
GM and LG Energy are considering an Indiana site for a fourth U.S. battery plant. They are building a $2.6 billion plant in Michigan, set to open in 2024. This month, Ultium said it would boost its investment in a $2.3 billion Tennessee plant by another $275 million.
President Joe Biden has set a goal for 50% of U.S. auto production by 2030 to be electric or plug-in electric hybrid vehicles. GM plans to build 1 million EVs in North America by 2025 and to stop selling gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.
The $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) approved in August included another $3 billion for ATVM loan costs and expanded uses to larger vehicles, maritime vessels, aviation, and other transportation modes.
The Energy Department said the $3 billion would provide an estimated $40 billion in additional loan authority for a total estimated available authority under ATVM of about $55.1 billion before the Ultium loan.
The ATVM loan program in July closed on a $102.1 million loan to Syrah Technologies LLC for expansion of a facility producing a key component for batteries. It was the first new loan finalized from the ATVM program since 2011.
The program previously supported Ford Motor, Tesla and Nissan Motor projects. GM applied for ATVM loans totaling $14.4 billion in 2009 but withdrew the application in 2011.
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Name | Symbol | % Assets |
---|---|---|
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd Class A | 300750 | 7.50% |
Tesla Inc | TSLA | 6.65% |
BHP Group Ltd ADR | BHP.AX | 6.12% |
BYD Co Ltd Class H | 01211 | 4.48% |
NIO Inc ADR | NIO | 4.12% |
LG Chem Ltd | 051910.KS | 3.41% |
Glencore PLC | GLEN | 3.33% |
Mining and Metallurgical Company NORILSK NICKEL PJSC ADR | MNOD | 3.30% |
Samsung SDI Co Ltd | 006400.KS | 2.60% |
EVE Energy Co Ltd | 300014 | 2.18% |
Name | Symbol | % Assets |
---|---|---|
Albemarle Corp | ALB | 13.06% |
EVE Energy Co Ltd | 300014 | 6.47% |
Ganfeng Lithium Co Ltd | 002460 | 5.57% |
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd Class A | 300750 | 5.47% |
Yunnan Energy New Material Co Ltd A | 002812 | 5.19% |
Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment Co Ltd A | 300450 | 4.65% |
BYD Co Ltd Class H | 01211 | 4.39% |
LG Chem Ltd | 051910.KS | 4.04% |
Samsung SDI Co Ltd | 006400.KS | 4.02% |
Mineral Resources Ltd | MIN.AX | 3.88% |
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