Lithium # Batteries = production rate

[Tinker71]

I read an article that Tesla locked up substantial lithium supply 10 years ago when there was little competition. How much could they have locked up? I can hardly believe the production increases in the stationary battery storage market, Tesla plus everyone else. That has got to be a drain on the world lithium supply.

Now TSLA is considering a refining plant in Texas with potential operation by 2024. (not sure what the feed stock is)

I also know the lithium clay mines in Nevada have been put on the shelf to some degree. South America has water problems preventing them from maximizing their resource.

BMW also committed to 46XX form factor. What does this mean? Do they have research that proves this or are they simply trusting Tesla to force the supply to this form factor?

How is the 4680 ramp actually going? Tesla appears to have a skeleton of a long skinny building that looks like the battery day graphics. Do we really know if the Semi is going to use 4680?



There is daily news of reported break throughs in battery tech. If one of these actually pans out it would take 2-3 years to scale up. What happens in the mean time. Does current production plateau?

We know several of the battery gigafactories planned for Europe have already been axed.

We know batteries will be a constraint in 2024, so if your reservation # is over 50,000 or so, this is what you need to be watching.

Battery supply will affect CT production rate and price more than anything else.

Sponsored

 

[JBee]

I'm pretty confident Tesla, and even other car manufacturers themselves, or via their battery suppliers have negotiated long term supply contracts for battery materials. They're likely to factor ininflation, even market trends, and have some trigger clauses on pricing. How well they predicted the worst case will determine if they are worth the paper they're written on.

The only way to get rid of the contractual risk is to vertically integrate the extraction and processing risk instead. That might sound better, but unless you understand the market, resource, licencing, transportation etc, etc you actually end up holding the bag instead.

If Tesla didn't negotiate a minimum take clause, or at least set it very low, they could walk away from any contract to buy it cheaper elsewhere if the price dips, and once it goes up again walk back to the previous contract. It's not nice, but often contracts are biased favourably for the buyer, unless the resource has been monopolised.

As for new battery tech, most are still reliant on lithium for its place on the periodic table for power to weight/volume performance, so whatever variants of new tech exists, typically only gets realised if they solve one or other issue with lithium battery production or use.

Personally, I'm still holding out for iron breathing bacterial batteries that can be grown and fed sugar, and reproduce according to demand, and go dormant when there is none. I joke not.