AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

SPONSOR: Lomiko Metals is focused on the exploration and development of minerals for the new green economy such as lithium and graphite. Lomiko owns 80% of the high-grade La Loutre graphite Property, Lac Des Iles Graphite Property and the 100% owned Quatre Milles Graphite Property. Lomiko is uniquely poised to supply the growing EV battery market. Click Here For More Information

The transportation sector is one of the biggest reasons why the average temperature on our planet is climbing, a phenomenon you probably know as climate change. In the United States, transportation contributes about a third of the carbon dioxide, or CO2, that the country releases into the atmosphere where it traps heat and causes temperatures to rise. Every year, Americans produce about 1.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from driving cars, flying in planes, and shipping things by road, sea, rail, and air all over the country. That’s the weight of more than 20,000 Washington Monuments.

We want to get that 1.9 billion number closer to zero as soon as possible. But we still need ways to get people and products from one part of the country to another. How do we change the way we move ourselves and our things so that we create fewer planet-warming emissions?

Grist has put together some introductory videos and activities to help you understand some of the ways the transportation sector might go green.

Electric Cars

Electric vehicles are an exciting alternative to the traditional, gas-guzzling, combustion-powered cars. Instead of filling up at the gas station, you simply plug your car into an electric socket and charge the car’s battery. In the past decade, electric cars have gotten better, cheaper, and more popular.

So is an electric car right for your family? It all depends on where you live, how you gets around, and what your family can afford.

Activities:

Research: Look up and see if there are electric vehicle charging stations in your area. If you live in an area where there are very few charging stations, it might be difficult to imagine owning an electric car. Think about all the car trips you normally make: school, work, grocery shopping, even weekend trips and vacations. If your electric car could go 100 miles on a charge, could you still easily make most of these trips?

Do: The “greenness” of your electric vehicle depends on how your region generates electricity. You can find out by typing your ZIP code into the “power profiler” sidebar on this Environmental Protection Agency web page. It will tell you how many pounds of carbon dioxide it takes to produce a megawatt-hour of electricity — the energy equivalent of about 28 gallons of gasoline. We can use this number to compare whether an electric car is better than a gas car in your city.

For our comparison, we’re going to use a 2020 Honda Civic as our gas-powered car, and a 2020 Nissan Leaf as our electric car.

Walkable Cities

Have you ever gotten in the car only to drive a few blocks away? You’re not alone. Americans take a lot of unnecessary car trips. If we could get more people to take the bus, hop on a bike, or simply walk more, we could shave off a big chunk of the U.S.’s transportation-related emissions.

Some neighborhoods are less walkable than others. If you live near a busy road or in a neighborhood far from your favorite hangouts, it can be inconvenient or even dangerous to walk. To get more people out of their cars and walking, we need to think about how our neighborhoods are designed.

Activities:

Research: Look up your address on the Walk Score website. This will give you a ranking based on how easy it is to walk to nearby stores, schools, or parks. If you click “About your score,” you can see which categories your home scores low and high on.

What’s your score? Do you agree with this assessment? Why or why not?

Discuss: Think about all the places you go on a regular basis. Where do you shop for groceries, eat food, or watch movies? What parks do you like to visit? Can you find any alternate places to do these activities that are within walking distance?

Bikes

Bikes are fun, healthy, and climate-friendly forms of transportation. But not everyone owns a bike — or it can be impractical to lug one along for certain types of trips. In some cities, companies offer bikes on the sidewalk that you can just hop on and ride.

Activities:

Research: How does the built environment make people more or less likely to bike? Look up your neighborhood’s Bike Score. This tool grades each neighborhood’s bike-ability based on four factors: safe infrastructure (like bike lanes), hills, the number of gathering places within biking distance, and how many of your neighbors also ride bikes.

Observe: Does your neighborhood have bike lanes? Would you feel safe riding a bike in your neighborhood? How many of your favorite destinations — like parks, restaurants, stores, or museums — are within biking distance? Does your neighborhood have a lot of hills? If it does, would a rentable e-bike make you more likely to ride? The Bike Score website believes that it’s safer to ride on streets that have a lot of bike traffic already. Do you see people riding bikes in your neighborhood?

Discuss: Does your city have a bikeshare or short-term rental program? What are some trips you would take using a bike you own or could rent?

Do: Plan a fun fantasy trip you could take on a bike. Where would you want to go? What would you need to bring? How much time would you need?

Trains

Trains have been around for nearly two centuries, and they’re a promising solution for cutting the country’s transportation emissions. They’re also pretty efficient — meaning they only use a little bit of fuel to carry each rider. Some trains even run on electricity.

But in the United States, our trains are pretty slow and outdated. Can we fix them?

Activities:

Research: Think about the most recent plane trips you have taken. Would it have been possible to take the train instead? How much time would it take? How much would it cost?

Discuss: What might make you want to take a train over a plane? How would you make a train trip a more desirable option compared to an airplane flight?

SOURCE: https://grist.org/climate/lesson-plan-transportation-climate-electric-vehicles/

SPONSOR: Lomiko Metals is focused on the exploration and development of minerals for the new green economy such as lithium and graphite. Lomiko owns 80% of the high-grade La Loutre graphite Property, Lac Des Iles Graphite Property and the 100% owned Quatre Milles Graphite Property. Lomiko is uniquely poised to supply the growing EV battery market. Click Here For More Information

Volkswagen plans to have millions of electric vehicles on the road by the end of the decade and that opens up new opportunities for the automaker.

According to Reuters, Volkswagen’s chief strategist revealed the company is exploring new business opportunities related to the energy stored in electric vehicles.

As Michael Jost explained, “By 2025, we will have 350 gigawatt hours worth of energy storage at our disposal through our electric car fleet.” He went on to say that number will increase to 1 terawatt hours by the end of 2030.

That’s a massive amount of electricity and Jost noted it’s “more energy than is currently generated by all the hydroelectric power stations in the world.” This opens up a new opportunity for the automaker as Volkswagen can tap into this energy using vehicle-to-grid technology.

Essentially the opposite of charging, vehicle-to-grid technology allows electric vehicles to send energy back to the electrical grid. This would typically occur during times of high demand.

This represents an interesting opportunity for Volkswagen as they could become a makeshift energy company. While Jost didn’t go into too many specifics, it’s not hard to imagine how such a service would work.

In theory, electric vehicles would be charged at night when demand for electricity is low and so are energy rates. When demand and rates increase, Volkswagen vehicles could sell some of that energy back to the grid. Consumers would likely be paid for this, but Volkswagen could potentially take a cut of the profits.

It remains unclear if that is what Volkswagen is thinking, but it could be a potential win-win situation. Consumers would get paid, while energy companies could tap into affordable electricity. Likewise, Volkswagen could get a slice of the action.

There’s no word on when this capability could be added to electric vehicles from Volkswagen, but a number of companies are exploring vehicle-to-grid technology. Nissan has even demonstrated how electric vehicles could be used to power your home in the event of a power outage.

https://www.carscoops.com/2020/03/vw-appears-to-be-eyeing-vehicle-to-grid-technology-could-sell-energy-from-electric-vehicles/

SPONSOR: Lomiko Metals is focused on the exploration and development of minerals for the new green economy such as lithium and graphite. Lomiko owns 80% of the high-grade La Loutre graphite Property, Lac Des Iles Graphite Property and the 100% owned Quatre Milles Graphite Property. Lomiko is uniquely poised to supply the growing EV battery market. Click Here For More Information

• Automaker plans to launch several electric vehicles with lower-cost batteries within the next three years.
• “Accepted the challenge to transform product development at GM and position our company for an all-electric future”

Detroit, Michigan – General Motors (GM) is promising a wide array of less-expensive electric vehicles (EVs) thanks to battery technologies it is developing, improved product design processes, and plans to scale EV production to the size of its truck business.

“Our team accepted the challenge to transform product development at GM and position our company for an all-electric future,” said GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra. “What we have done is build a multi-brand, multi-segment EV strategy with economies of scale that rival our full-size truck business with much less complexity and even more flexibility.”

The heart of GM’s strategy is a modular propulsion system and a highly flexible, third-generation global EV platform powered by proprietary Ultium batteries.

“Thousands of GM scientists, engineers, and designers are working to execute an historic reinvention of the company,” GM President Mark Reuss said. “They are on the cusp of delivering a profitable EV business that can satisfy millions of customers.”

Ultium batteries use large-format, pouch-style cells that can be stacked vertically or horizontally inside the battery pack. By avoiding rigid, cylindrical cells, GM engineers can optimize pack shapes and layouts for each vehicle.

Energy options range from 50kWh to 200kWh – enough for 400 miles of range on the larger battery side. Motors designed in-house will support front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, and performance all-wheel drive applications.

Ultium-powered EVs are designed for Level 2 and DC fast charging. Most will have 400V battery packs and up to 200kW fast-charging capability. Trucks will get 800V battery packs and 350kW fast-charging capability.

Developed with LG Chem, GM’s joint venture partner on a battery cell plant in Ohio, upcoming cells reduce use of expensive cobalt, a development the companies believe will drive cell cost to less than $100/kWh. At $100/kWh, GM’s 200kWh batteries would cost $20,000, before considering the cost of the rest of the vehicle, so lowering cell costs is critical to affordable EVs.

Reuss said engineers are designing future vehicles and propulsion systems together to minimize complexity and part counts compared to adapting gasoline-powered vehicles for electric drive. GM plans 19 different battery and drive unit configurations initially, compared with 550 internal combustion powertrain combinations.

GM’s technology can be scaled to meet customer demand much higher than the more than 1 million global sales the company expects mid-decade.

Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick will all be launching new EVs starting this year.

• 2021 Bolt EV, launching in late 2020, updating GM’s first mass-market all-electric
• 2022 Bolt EUV, launching summer 2021, larger crossover version of the Volt will be the first non-Cadillac GM to get Super Cruise semi-autonomous driving
• Cruise Origin, self-driving, electric shared vehicle, debuted at shows but no production plans announced
• Cadillac Lyriq SUV unveiling set for April 2020
• GMC HUMMER EV debuted in Super Bowl ads, more details coming May 20, production to begin fall 2021

SOURCE: https://www.todaysmotorvehicles.com/article/gm-battery-tech-ev-plans/

SPONSOR: Lomiko Metals is focused on the exploration and development of minerals for the new green economy such as lithium and graphite. Lomiko owns 80% of the high-grade La Loutre graphite Property, Lac Des Iles Graphite Property and the 100% owned Quatre Milles Graphite Property. Lomiko is uniquely poised to supply the growing EV battery market. Click Here For More Information

• Tesla shares dropped by over 13% yesterday, amid continuing concerns about the coronavirus outbreak and a steep drop in oil prices.
• Musk’s announcement comes at a time when several large automakers are making moves into the electric vehicle sector.

Tesla has produced 1 million electric vehicles, according to the firm’s CEO Elon Musk, who congratulated the “Tesla team” on the milestone via a tweet. News of the landmark figure came after Tesla shares dropped by over 13% yesterday, amid continuing concerns about the coronavirus outbreak and a steep drop in oil prices. The Nasdaq Composite index, on which Tesla is listed, fell 7.3 percent on the day. In extended hours trading Tuesday, Tesla shares were over 10% higher

Currently, Tesla offers four models of electric vehicle: the Model 3 and Model S, which are sedans, and the Model Y and Model X, which are types of SUV. Deliveries of the Model Y are due to start by the end of this quarter.

Musk’s announcement comes at a time when several large automakers are making moves into the electric vehicle sector.

Last week, the BMW Group released details of an electric concept car, the BMW Concept i4. Production of that vehicle is expected to start in 2021.

Towards the end of last year, the German company announced that 500,000 of its electrified cars had been sold. At the time, CEO Oliver Zipse said that the business “was stepping up the pace significantly” and aiming to have one million electric vehicles on the road “within two years.”

And in November 2019, the Volkswagen Group officially started series production of its ID.3 electric car, with the German carmaker planning to launch “almost 70 new electric models” on its platform by 2028.

China’s electric car market is the biggest on the planet: a little over one million electric cars were sold there in 2018, according to the IEA, with Europe and the U.S. following behind.

SOURCE:https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/10/elon-musk-says-tesla-has-now-produced-1-million-electric-vehicles.html

SPONSOR: Lomiko Metals is focused on the exploration and development of minerals for the new green economy such as lithium and graphite. Lomiko owns 80% of the high-grade La Loutre graphite Property, Lac Des Iles Graphite Property and the 100% owned Quatre Milles Graphite Property. Lomiko is uniquely poised to supply the growing EV battery market. Click Here For More Information

It is worth remembering that the first all-electric vehicle to use a lithium-ion battery –  the Tesla roadster – only rolled off assembly lines in 2008. 

And the blue-sky scenarios and exuberant forecasts for electric vehicle demand and mining only really started to make headlines three or four years ago. 

And those headlines came just at the right time for an industry at the bottom of a brutal business cycle and in desperate need of a feelgood news story. 

Not that the feeling lasted all that long. 

All of mining is mercifully free of the ravages of price stability, but even tulip bulbs took longer from boom to bust than EV metals. 

But how does falling prices for lithium, cobalt, graphite and nickel square with demand forecasts that all start in the bottom left corner and end in the top right?

Pedal to the metal

To get a better grip on the nascent sector, MINING.COM combined two sets of data: 

• First, prices paid for the mined minerals at the point of entry into the global battery supply chain.
  
  London-based Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a global battery supply chain, megafactory tracker and market forecaster, provides MINING.COM with monthly sales-weighted price data.
• Second, the sales weighted volume of the raw materials in electric and hybrid passenger car batteries sold around the world.

Toronto-based Adamas Intelligence, which tracks demand for EV batteries by chemistry, cell supplier and capacity in over 90 countries provides the data for the raw materials deployed.

Benchmark has been tracking megafactory construction since Tesla broke ground on the first of its kind in June 2014. Adamas completes the chain, recording all that battery power hitting the road. 

That makes the MINING.COM EV Metals index more than a mine to market measure. More like mine to, er, garage.

The inaugural MINING.COM EV Metals Index shows an industry in better shape than what tanking prices and dismal headlines would suggest. 

In fact, the nickel sub-index is at a record high and cobalt bulls would be happy to know that the metal feeding the battery supply chain had its biggest month in nine.

Click for full size chart

Where the rubber, only the rubber, meets the road

If you take Tesla’s stock price as a guide (and I know a bunch of short sellers who would rather pluck their own eyes out than do that) the essential ingredients of muskmobiles should not be languishing at multi-year lows.

Last year, Elon Musk said getting more Teslas on the road is dependent on scaling battery production and to scale at the fastest rate possible it may be necessary to get into mining, “at least a little bit.” 

The last auto exec to venture into mining was Henry Ford

The last auto exec to venture into mining was Henry Ford. When the equivalent of an over the air update was a hand crank and cars could only be had in black and not four (wow!) other colours like the Model S. 

Crucially, at the time the cost of raw materials had a much bigger bearing on the final price of a car. In EV production the battery can be up to 50% of the cost of production and raw materials the bulk of that.  

A seminal study on EVs by UBS showed the only commodity your average EV (Chevy Bolt) and ICE car (VW Golf) have in equal amounts, is rubber. (Ford, btw, also owned a rubber plantation in Brazil.)    

That’s how much of a change the switch to electric vehicles represents in the auto industry’s raw material supply chain. 

Rocks down to electric avenue

Yet here we are.

Newbie investors are taking a crash course in surviving a sector that can turn on a dime.

Juniors are being scared off. Bodies are piling up among developers. Producers’ grand ambitions have been thwarted. Contracts have been reneged on. 

It’s difficult to see the disconnect on fundamentals lasting that much longer – governments’ green demands and emissions strictures are only intensifying and carmakers’ programs are only becoming more lavish. 

Volkswagen promises 80 all electric models across its brands by 2025. Three hundred by the end of the decade. 

While miners are encountering the pitfalls of vertical integration, the global auto industry is getting a crash course in mining lead times

A year ago already, Wolfsburg said it was allocating $48 billion for EV development.

And then you also read that Audi (a VW brand) and Mercedes Benz had to suspend production due to a battery shortage (long before coronavirus). 

While miners are encountering the pitfalls of vertical integration, the global auto industry is getting a crash course in mining lead times and how tiny markets (annual global cobalt mining revenue is less than what VW collects in a week) can impact giant industries.  

In total, the world’s automakers have committed $300 billion for making rides you have to plug into a wall, Benchmark estimates. Or to use the car industry term, $300 billion for ushering in a new epoch of sustainable mobility.

Neither is there a shortage of government support for the transition. Unlike AOC’s, the EU’s $1 trillion green new deal may actually get off the starting grid, and Beijing has ordered 25% of cars sold must be EVs within five short years. 

Lithium nirvana 

MINING.COM compiled the data for lithium prices from Benchmark and lithium deployment from Adamas going back eleven years. 

It just shows again that the EV raw materials industry is in its infancy.

Click for full size chart

For calendar year 2009, the electric and hybrid cars sold around the world contained a paltry 31 tonnes of lithium in their batteries worth a combined $182K (that’s a K not an m).  

Eleven years later, the industry had grown 3,330-fold for a value of $609m. Ok, that’s just having fun with the base effect, but measured just over the last five years the annualized value of lithium in EVs are up more than 1,000%. 

And that’s despite a contraction in 2019. Lithium price tripled between April 2015 and peaked three years later, only to tumble by 60% in value since then. 

Graphite was the first to peak in early 2012, but has since halved. The value of graphite deployed in EVs is up 370% in three years. And as a percentage of the index, graphite has in fact steadily increased its share.

The bigger picture is one of an industry that is still expanding. And at a breakneck pace.

Cobalts from the blue 

Given its tricky fundamentals, cobalt is always going to be a conundrum for investors and a headache for carmakers. 

It’s the priciest component and the most volatile. At its peak, Co made up as much as 55% of the cost of raw materials for batteries. Despite a plummeting price and ongoing thrifting, it still makes up a third of the input cost. 

 Given that almost two-thirds primary supply is from the Congo and more than 80% of processing capacity is located in China, cobalt’s spike to just shy of $110,000 a tonne in April 2018 was understandable. 

That 15 months later it was below $26,000, less so. 

At the stroke of a pen, Beijing can change market dynamics completely. Its subsidy cuts last year crumpled a market growing at more than 60% the year before. 

In February, Tesla – which in good months sells more battery capacity than its three nearest rivals combined – surprised cobalt and nickel bulls by opting for batteries at its Shanghai plant that forego both.

At the time of writing, the impact of the four Cs – cobalt-Congo-China-coronavirus – is far from clear. But as the graph shows, cobalt bulls had something to celebrate in the second half of last year.

Better than the devil’s copper you know   

Batteries account for only 6% of global nickel demand today, meaning investors buying into the sulphates story also take a hit when Jakarta convulses the nickel pig iron trade. 

MINING.COM’s inaugural index shows nickel setting a new monthly record at the end of last year, despite the sharp retreat in prices since September. 

The increasing use of nickel rich cathodes also means its contribution to the value mix has almost doubled in a year to more than 18%. 

As nickel-rich chemistries increasingly dominate the EV market, the average sales weighted value of nickel on a per vehicle basis is rising sharply – to over $100 in December from $67 a year earlier or from less than a quarter of the cost of the cathode’s cobalt to half that.   

The combined value of lithium, graphite, cobalt and nickel based on sales weighted average deployed per vehicle was under $600. 

When prices were peaking in early 2018 those raw materials cost more than $1,500 per vehicle. Not the battery, just the raw materials.

In the longer run, nickel for batteries could be as big a market as for stainless steel, which would be equivalent to gold’s use in electronics, becoming a $100 billion industry, from an afterthought today. 

Kalahari thirst 

Adamas data shows that NCM (nickel-cobalt-manganese) and NCA (nickel-cobalt-aluminum) cathodes had a 94% market share in December, based on  total battery capacity deployed globally. 

MINING.COM is not tracking manganese as EV dynamics have almost no bearing on its price. 

High-purity manganese sulphate usually sells at a healthy premium, but as a component of NCM batteries, no auto exec is losing sleep over manganese costs or supply.

Likewise aluminum, despite significantly higher use in EVs.

 That said, in an all-EV world battery-grade manganese demand could make the Kalahari desert, home to the oldest population of humans on earth and 70% of global reserves,  a point of contention not unlike cobalt and the Congo (minus the child labour and ongoing violent conflict). 

 We lose money on every sale, but make it up on volume 

 Call them giga or mega, your average battery manufacturing plant is huge.

 There are more than 100 megafactories in the pipeline around the world – 14 of them in Europe. 

MINING.COM’s prediction is that 2019 wasn’t only the first annual fall in the index, but also the last

 Last year battery power deployed rose 30% globally. In Europe, gigawatt hours hitting the road grew 89%. 

To feed those factories to power those cars requires the extraction of lithium, graphite, cobalt and nickel to increase by magnitudes.  

The MINING.COM EV Metals Index shows that the gap between future supply and future demand has become a chasm. 

MINING.COM’s prediction is that 2019 wasn’t only the first annual fall in the index, but also the last.

SOURCE: https://www.mining.com/mining-com-launches-ev-battery-metals-index/