The Investment Potential in the Lithium Battery sets off a Goldrush for Lithium
To the metallurgical investor, for decades, investment in lithium was for the mentally unstable - literally. About the only use anyone could think of for the rare metal, was in the medication that people who suffer from bipolar disorder took. A mining investor, could hardly find a market for this product, if he bought mine for it. Things began to look up when laptop computers began to take over the world, just barely 20 years ago. Today, with laptops outselling desktops, and mobile phones selling three to every person on earth, lithium, the very light metal for the mentally unstable, has a decent chance at rewarding its investors quite well. Everyone who has heard of electric cars (or EV's to those familiar) may have seen news of the first plug-in all-electric supercar they've brought into actual production, the Tesla roadster. The Tesla roadster runs on laptop batteries too - only, it's got 6000 lithium battery units inside. Investors needed numbers like these to actually begin to look up and take notice. Now that mass production brands like Nissan and Chevrolet are the verge of releasing popular models that will be household names before long, lithium, the metal for the unstable, is suddenly everyone's favorite bet. And people are plundering the earth, looking for better and richer mines.
There are staggeringly large deals being cut all over - most of them all over South America. Toyota is entering into partnership with a major mining firm in Australia and pouring $100 million into mines in Argentina; a parts supplier for the new Ford focus that will be exclusively battery-powered, is betting the farm on another lithium project in Argentina. There are new projects opening up in Central Europe, in the deserts of Nevada , New Mexico, and in Northern Europe and China. Lithium is the new petroleum, and no one is about to let go of a chance to invest in the oil fields of this millennium. Of course, all these investing deals need to pay attention to one little detail - the promise of the plug-in electric, is still only promise. The major brands and models aren't going to actually be on the market for another year. All of these deals being cut and the forces being arrayed, have to do with predicting demand - not answering existing demand; and they do have to be careful of making sure the promise will actually materialize.
The petroleum lobby is very powerful; they'll make sure that the taxes, the distribution, the public image of the industry remain favorable. Lithium doesn't actually have a lobby yet; and they have so much they need to get done. Their entire business model depends on making sure that electric cars become popular. But electricity still remains expensive, and charging away from home is still quite inconvenient. If you live in an apartment complex, charging at home becomes iffy too. There is a lot the lithium industry needs to accomplish, if all the promise of their investment is to pay off.
New superpowers are emerging in the whole lithium goldrush. Most of the world's supplies are in the little country known as Bolivia, a communist country that has very unstable governance. The good news is, that lithium doesn't necessarily have to be mined there. In places like Bolivia that are rich in the metal, there are surface deposits, that are dissolved in the water. They just have to drill for water, pump it out and evaporate it for some pretty good lithium silt that comes off as a result. A great way to get some lithium, lies also in the recycling of dead cell phone and laptop batteries too. It still doesn't cost anywhere near what petroleum does - no more than $5000 for a ton. But everyone has their money on lithium for now. They don't believe that it is going to stay that low this time next year.