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Battery demand
Taking a closer look at the battery side of things, Stormcrow drew attention to predictions made by Avicenne regarding battery demand growth. It noted that while there’s plenty of excitement in the lithium space over Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) gigafactory and other similar projects, Avicenne ”appears to have remained grounded in the principle that lithium demand depends on end-user battery demand, not on the scale of the factory constructing the batteries.”
Importantly, Stormcrow also noted that battery costs are not dominated by the cost of raw lithium, and found that a rising lithium price won’t translate to vastly higher battery costs – an important concern for those who might be worried that rising costs could hurt demand. “ [A]ssuming reasonable margins in the production of lithium-based battery cathode chemicals, even a large increase in the cost of lithium should result in only a very small cost increase in the batteries themselves,” the report stated. “Clearly, while not welcome, an increasing lithium price does not represent an insurmountable hurdle for the battery industry. ”
Furthermore, the firm doesn’t see another disruptive technology taking over for lithium in the near future. It pointed out that lithium ion batteries were “essentially invented in the 1970s, and have only truly become ubiquitous in the last few years,” and that even if a technology capable of outperforming lithium batteries arose, it would have to contend with the substantial cost reduction enjoyed by lithium cells due to manufacturing scale.