Just a few years ago, we would have scoffed at the idea that electric vehicles could be mainstream anytime soon, or that the global appetite for lithium-ion batteries and mass power storage would be so voracious, and so sudden. Today, no one is scoffing, and lithium is being viewed as our new super-mineral that will catapult us firmly into the next century.
Now Tesla has started buying up Nevada and building its battery gigafactory, with competing gigafactories following suit and competing electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers all throwing billions at this fast-moving market that no one has been able to keep up with.
Not only has the EV taken its first major leap into the mainstream—most notably indicated by Tesla’s phenomenal advance sales of its affordable Model 3—but it’s gone beyond the mainstream.
Electric vehicles will be the rule rather than the exception; and lithium the number one commodity of our time.
Germany has mandated that all new cars registered in the country will have to be emissions-free by the year 2030. And to make this a reality, the government has cut a deal with automakers to jointly spend $1.4 billion on incentives to boost electric car sales. They’re hoping to sell 500,000 EVs by 2020. So they’re subsidizing the EV industry, and giving lithium an automatic boost at a time when it doesn’t even need it.
Norway is following suit as well, working on legislation to outright ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2025. And in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal now reports that the mainstream popularity of electric cars will reduce gasoline demand by 5% to 20% over the next two decades, assuming that EVs gain more than 35% market share by 2035.
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