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Metals and Manufacturing

Driving to lower carbon living: Elon Musk and his electric car (Nickel Magazine – July 2014)

https://www.nickelinstitute.org/

Tesla Motors and the driving force behind it, Elon Musk, have captured the attention of the world. Tesla is taking a 20th century idea and shows every sign of turning it into a disruptive force in the automotive world in the 21st century. The man and the machine collectively constitute a game changer, for which nickel is essential.

Battery Evolution

The battery industry is in a prolonged period of research, development and end-use specialization. At the same time, ‘nickel’ is disappearing from the name of the dominant battery chemistries in favour of ‘lithium’.

That, however, disguises the reality that nickel continues to contribute its unique qualities to most lithium-ion chemistries. Sometimes it will be a supporting role (the electrode tabs, for instance) but sometimes it is an essential component of the chemistry itself.

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Top Palladium Miner Rebuffs Risk of Tesla Electric Car Boom – by Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – May 16, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

The rise of Tesla Motors Inc.’s electric cars won’t be enough to change the market for conventional vehicles or dent demand for the precious metals used to filter exhaust fumes, according to GMK Norilsk Nickel PJSC.

The lack of infrastructure to charge them and the pressure on power grids means that in the long term, the vehicles may comprise just 15 percent of the total auto market, according to Anton Berlin, head of analysis and market development for Norilsk. In the next five years, the market’s size will be limited to about 2 percent.

Norilsk is the world’s biggest producer of palladium, which are used along with platinum in catalytic converters that reduce car pollution. While the company would lose some business if electric cars, which don’t produce toxic emissions, becomes a significant part of the auto industry, it would benefit from more demand for nickel, which is used in the batteries.

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Can Elon Musk reinvent the wheel with Tesla’s Model 3? – by David Olive (Toronto Star – May 14, 2016)

https://www.thestar.com/

The excitement over the Model 3 has no equivalent since the anticipation of Lee Iacocca’s Mustang more than half a century ago. For weeks now, lineups several metres long have formed at the Tesla Motors Inc. kiosk at Yorkdale Shopping Centre. These are Tesla enthusiasts putting down a $1,000 (U.S.) deposit on an advance order for Tesla’s latest electric vehicle (EV), the Model 3.

The excitement over the Model 3, which holds the potential of making EVs a mass-market product for the first time, has no equivalent since the anticipation of Lee Iacocca’s Mustang more than half a century ago.

And the upfront cash from the faithful at Yorkdale and Tesla’s other sales outlets worldwide meant that when Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk took the wraps off three Model 3 prototypes at a convention centre last month, he already had $115 million in advance-order cash in his back pocket. By now, that figure is about $400 million.

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Tesla Shakes Up Market for Lithium, Other Metals – by Stepanie Yang and Biman Mukherji (Wall Street Journal – May 5, 2016)

http://www.wsj.com/

‘In order to produce half a million cars a year…we would basically need to absorb the entire world’s lithium-ion production,’ Elon Musk said in March

Tesla Motors Inc., shaking up the auto industry with its battery-operated cars, is now reshaping metals markets, too. Tesla and other electric-vehicle makers are swallowing up lithium, a lightweight material that some call “white petroleum” for its use in lithium-ion batteries that power electric cars.

Lithium carbonate prices rose 47% in the first quarter compared with the average price in 2015, according to the most recent available data from data provider Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. In 2015, when most other metals and commodities still were in the doldrums, lithium prices rose 28%, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence said.

Orders for the soft metal show no sign of abating. A report from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says lithium demand could triple by 2025 to 570,000 tons, driven principally by smartphone and electric-car applications. Telsa isn’t the only consumer, but its voracious appetite for lithium is getting significant attention.

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Lithium juniors outperform on expected future demand – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – April 19, 2016)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – In the wake of Tesla Motors’ introduction of the ‘Model 3’ mass-market electric vehicle (EV), lithium development and exploration company share prices have exploded.

This was despite Tesla not having sold (or even built) a single Model 3 yet. Tesla would also not have it on the road for years, and the company continued to haemorrhage money, according to Chris Berry, writer of the Disruptive Discoveries Journal.

“The $1 000 refundable reservation fee is simply a free option for a potential car buyer and gives Tesla an opportunity to defray dilution,” he stated in a recent market commentary. Berry noted that in the wake of this news, lithium developers were “making hay while the sun shines” through some truly impressive capital-raising efforts.

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IN DEPTH: Tesla electric car demand energizes plans for N.W.T. lithium and cobalt mines – by Ollie Williams (CBC News North – April 17, 2016)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

Companies hope to mine N.W.T. for vital elements in electric car batteries

Can the buzz around electric vehicles inject new energy into Northwest Territories mining? As pre-orders for Tesla’s latest electric car surpass 300,000 in a week, owners of N.W.T. lithium and cobalt projects — two elements found in Tesla’s batteries — say their time has come.

Getting these projects off the drawing board would mark an increasingly rare mining good-news story for the territory. But there are unique challenges ahead. Tesla calls it a “gigafactory.” Billionaire Elon Musk’s car manufacturer is constructing a vast production facility for its vehicles’ lithium-ion batteries outside the aptly-named Sparks, Nev.

Tesla boasts this one factory will, by 2020, make more such batteries in a year than the entire world produced in 2013. More factories, serving more companies, are planned. “Now is the time. If there was ever a time, now is the time,” says Adrian Lamoureux, who wants to start a lithium mine in the N.W.T.

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Tesla And Other Tech Giants Scramble For Lithium As Prices Double – by James Stafford (Oil Price.com – April 12, 2016)

http://oilprice.com/

Demand for lithium—the hottest commodity on the planet and the only commodity to show positive price movement in 2015—is poised to continue on its upward trajectory, becoming the world’s new gasoline and earning the moniker of ‘’White Petroleum’’. And the battle for market share in and around this commodity has everyone from major tech players to trend-setting investor gurus vying for a foothold.

Driven by the rise of battery gigafactories and game-changing Powerwall and energy storage businesses, the world now finds itself at the beginning of a lithium super cycle that is all about securing new supply, much of which is poised to come from lithium superstar Argentina.

We have Tesla in the far corner, building its battery gigafactory in Nevada, for which it needs tons of lithium at a reasonable price, and just last week Tesla announced its plans for the Model 3, which has already hit over 300,000 pre-orders. To give you an idea of just how meaningful this is, Tesla produced less than 50,000 cars last year.

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Tesla may disrupt portfolios more than it shakes up the auto industry – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – April 9, 2016)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

ROME — Sergio Marchionne, the Italian-Canadian chief executive officer of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, is the only car company boss who will take a swipe at Elon Musk, the founder and genius madman who turned Tesla Motors into one of the best-known auto brands on the planet in less than a decade since the launch of its first electric machine.

In a CNBC interview last autumn, Mr. Marchionne professed his love and admiration for Mr. Musk, then casually and subtly suggested there might be less to Tesla than meets the eye. He called Mr. Musk “a greater marketer” than disrupter, then dug a littler deeper: “As much as I reiterate my affection for Elon, there is nothing that Elon does that we cannot do.”

You could dismiss Mr. Marchionne’s remarks as sour grapes. Tesla, which plans to sell no more than 90,000 cars this year and has sold only somewhat more than 110,000 cars in its short history, has a market value of $30-billion (U.S.).

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Motor Mouth: Why I’m not drinking the Tesla Kool-Aid – by David Booth (National Post – April 9, 2016)

http://www.nationalpost.com/

If anything is to be learned from the Model 3 hysteria, it’s that Tesla is now a religion, and Elon Musk is its unquestioned messiah

Like seemingly everyone else on the planet, I tuned in to Tesla’s online launch of the Model 3. I watched with appreciation as Elon Musk worked his showmanship and was nothing short of gobsmacked with the stories of loyalists lining up just for the right to buy a car. It was unprecedented. It was incredible. It might have even been uplifting.

It was also, for those of us who trumpet reason over emotion, a little disturbing. Lining up for three days to buy a car? Seriously? For a car you might not take delivery of for four years?

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Tesla driving frenzy in lithium resource sector – by Nelson Bennett (Business Vancouver – April 5, 2016)

https://www.biv.com/

Electric car maker’s 500,000-vehicle ambition sparks spike in lithium demand.

If you owned shares in Lithium X Energy Corp. (TSX-V:LIX) on February 17, you were probably pretty happy on February 18 – and doubly happy now, as long as you didn’t sell.

Lithium X shares spiked more than 1,200%, from $0.07 to $0.95 per share on February 18, following the news that it had acquired a lithium property in the Clayton Valley in Nevada – one of the world’s lithium hot spots.

Shares continued to move up when the company announced March 3 that it had entered an agreement to acquire 50% of a lithium property in Argentina and were trending in the $1.20 per share range last week. They closed at $1.61 per share on April 5.

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Tesla secures 180 000 orders for new EV in 24 hrs, drives auto sector demand for lithium – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – April 1, 2016)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Twenty-four hours after launching, US electric vehicle (EV) maker Tesla Motors has secured more than 180 000 orders for its new Model 3 vehicle, making it the biggest driver of potential lithium demand from the auto sector to date.

By Friday afternoon, that figure had risen to above 198 000 orders, according to South Africa-born entrepreneur Elon Musk.

“Thought it would slow way down today, but Model 3 order count is now at 198k. Recommend ordering soon, as the wait time is growing rapidly,” he posted to Twitter. “The numbers are really incredible. That’s over $7-billion of potential revenue in one day,” UK-based Benchmark Mineral Intelligence market analyst Simon Moores told Mining Weekly Online.

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Apple Says Supply Chain Now 100% Audited for Conflict Minerals – by Emily Chasan (Bloomberg News – March 30, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Apple Inc. has reached what it’s calling a milestone in supply-chain transparency, saying it’s now auditing 100 percent of its suppliers for the use of conflict minerals linked to violent militia groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The iPhone maker has been working since 2010 to remove minerals connected to these groups from its supply chain, and while it isn’t yet declaring its products totally conflict-free, the company said all of its 242 smelters and refiners of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold are now subject to third-party audits. That figure is up from about 88 percent at the end of 2014 and 44 percent in 2013, according to an annual filing the company will release Wednesday.

“We could have very easily chosen a path of re-routing our supply and declared ourselves conflict-free long ago, but that would have done nothing to help the people on the ground,” Apple Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams said. “We chose to engage with as many smelters as possible because the only way to have an impact here is to reach critical mass.”

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STEELIER THAN STEEL: A new kind of metal could make nuclear reactors stronger and last longer – by Akshat Rathi (Quartz.com – March 21 2016)

http://qz.com/

Despite opposition and safety concerns, nuclear power remains a big part of the world’s energy mix—providing about 10% of world’s electricity. And since nuclear reactors typically last 40 years, there are still hundreds of decades-old reactors around the world that must be maintained.

Most of those reactors are made up primarily of some form of stainless steel. But steel is showing its limitations—primarily that it can weaken or become defective over time, and in extreme cases break apart. This is an even bigger concern in newer reactors that run at higher temperatures and have more fast-moving neutrons.

So scientists have been on the hunt for metal alloys that are stronger and can last longer, and researchers in Finland and the US may have found a new category of such alloys.

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Tesla in stand-off over lithium supply – by Henry Sanderson (Financial Times – December 15, 2015)

http://www.ft.com/

On the edge of the Nevada desert, Tesla, the electric carmaker, is building the world’s largest battery plant.

The mile-long, so-called Gigafactory is expected to boost demand for lithium, the raw material used in the batteries that power most electric cars.

But the company has yet to announce any lithium supply deals with big producers, leaving it unclear where it will source the lightweight natural material it will need to start producing batteries by 2017 with Panasonic, its partner.

The Gigafactory is set to supply batteries for the 500,000 cars Tesla hopes to produce by the end of the decade, as well as to power homes.

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End of Russian palladium exports may result in world market shortage – by Eugene Gerden (InvestorIntel.com – November 18, 2015)

http://investorintel.com/

Russia may significantly reduce exports of strategic rare earth elements to foreign markets during the next several years, despite the recently announced state plans for a significant expansion of their domestic production.

It is planned that at the initial stage such restrictions will apply to palladium, huge reserves of which were accumulated by the country during the Soviet era, which allowed Russia to become one of its world’s largest exporters of the metal in recent years.

In recent years exports of palladium from the reserves of Russian State Precious Metals and Gems Repository (Gokhran) has been varied in the range of 14-15 tonnes, however there is possibility that they might be completely stopped already starting from 2016.

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