The Tesla Gigafactory: A Clean Energy Planet
The Tesla Gigafactory: A Clean Energy Planet
Tesla Motors is currently building a gigafactory. Some of you may be confused about what that is exactly, and why Tesla may need such a huge facility. When finished, the gigafactory will be the largest building in the world in terms of footprint, with 5.5 Million square feet. This will be second only to Boeing’s Everett factory (4.3 Million square feet). The endeavour is also very expensive, with an estimated cost of US$5 Billion. In line with Elon Musk’s goal to transition the world to renewable energy, the gigafactory will be entirely self-sufficient and powered by solar panels. The entire roof of the factory will be covered with solar cells, which are expected to produce 70MW of power. To give you an idea, the largest rooftop array in the world right now produces 11.5MW (in India).
A clean planet
Elon Musk recently stated in a Ted Talk that his ultimate goal is to make the world run entirely on renewable energy. To make this happen, he aims to produce 500,000 electric vehicles per year. This cannot be done economically if the parts have to be transported halfway across the world several times before the product is finished. Thus the need for a centralized facility, where the materials come in one end, and the finished vehicle comes out the other.
The gigafactory has already started producing the most innovative and crucial element of these cars: their lithium-ion batteries. And Tesla’s new 2170 battery cell is not only more efficient, but also cheaper than most on the market. The 2170 is around 10 per cent larger than its predecessor (the 18650 cell), but can store up to double the charge. It will also drop battery production cost by 25 per cent.
The essential element
In these super-powerful batteries is a crucial element: cobalt. For example, there is approximately 22.5 kilograms of it in Tesla’s Model S. The metal is currently mostly mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); where labour conditions are generally problematic and child labour is frequent. Consequently, Elon Musk has stated that all cobalt used by Tesla will only come from North America. Some have pointed out that it may be difficult to find enough ethical cobalt at feasible prices. But there is cobalt in North America, and King’s Bay (TSV:KBG, FSE:KGB1) is looking for it at the Lynx Lake Property in Labrador (Canada). The company is confident in the preliminary samples from the asset: “Grab samples from gossanous areas of the eastern rock pit have yielded assays up to 0.94{92d3d6fd85a76c012ea375328005e518e768e12ace6b1722b71965c2a02ea7ce} Co”. For the preliminary Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic (VTEM) results, have a look at King’s Bay’s latest news release.
About King’s Bay
King’s Bay is a Vancouver based company focused on the exploration of cobalt, and other high-tech metals in North America. The company believes in this emerging fast-growth sector, and will continue to seek out and evaluate properties that show promise for development. King’s Bay Gold Corp is operating as “King’s Bay”.
Juliette Benard
Media Relations Director
- Published in Blog, Energy, King's Bay, Mining, Technology
The Cost of Climate Change
The Cost of Climate Change
Annual costs for natural disasters in Canada pegged at almost $5 billion
Canada has just experienced extensive flooding in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. The complete cost of the disasters won’t be added up for some time; but you can bet that this past spring is going to be one of the most expensive on record. In Canada and throughout the world, we are being battered by increasingly numerous weather events, both extreme and not-so-extreme. The climate is changing.
Trying to get a handle on just exactly how much we are paying for climate change is difficult. The Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer has tried. In its Estimate of the Average Annual Cost for Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements due to Weather Events, released on February 25, 2016, it comes to $4.92 billion. This is the total annual cost from hurricanes convective storms, winter storms and flooding. But this, of course, does not take into account the lost productivity resulting from weather events.
The May 9, 2017 edition of Canadian Underwriter noted that in the United States, the bill for severe flooding in April would reach the multi-billion dollar range. Severe weather in America continued to be the largest factor in global insurance losses for 2017. While extreme weather or – as they like to say, weather events – continue to get worse, we in North America have comparatively little to worry about. Consider the plight of those low-lying Pacific Ocean nations that face the prospect of disappearing; if the ice in the Arctic and Antarctic continues to melt, and the oceans continue to rise.
It has been demonstrably and scientifically proven that climate change – the gradual warming of the earth’s surface – is to a very large degree driven by the fossil fuels used to heat our homes and drive our industry and vehicles. The very sad fact behind the spectre of increasing temperatures and increased hurricanes, is that we have the technology to prevent further damage.
One rewarding characteristic of humans is that we seldom throw in the towel, and so ideas that may have seemed farfetched or even ridiculous a generation ago, sometimes have their place in the sun. The green roofs of Toronto are a good example of this. In May 2009 Toronto City Council passed a bylaw that requires that new residential, office and industrial buildings have a green roof. While the idea of building roof-top gardens is as old as the hills (think of the hanging gardens of Babylon), doing so for ecological reasons is a relatively new concept.
The simple fact is that by going green you make money by saving money.
The Toronto bylaw applies to buildings that contain 6,000 square meters of floor space or more. The percentage of the roof to be green ranges from 20{92d3d6fd85a76c012ea375328005e518e768e12ace6b1722b71965c2a02ea7ce} for buildings with a floor space of 6,000 square meters, to 60{92d3d6fd85a76c012ea375328005e518e768e12ace6b1722b71965c2a02ea7ce} for buildings with over 20,000 square meters of floor space. Residential buildings shorter than six storeys or 20 meters in height are exempt. Toronto based its green roof policy on studies conducted by professors at Ryerson University, that showed potential annual cost savings of $37.1 million dollars. The largest cost-saving category was commercial building energy. The category showed a potential cost reduction of $21.56 million annually. The comfort benefit is hard to calculate, because how do you quantify mitigating the heat sink caused by our predilection for creating concrete canyons? As you might imagine, green roofs have also been cited as a partial solution for some of the flooding that has recently occurred. This is because of the green roofs’ ability to absorb rain and reduce water runoff. Oddly enough, building green roofs can also prolong their lifespan.
If we are to avoid the rapidly approaching climate Armageddon, it is vital that climate change deniers and vapid naysayers learn the real truth about green energy and efficiency. Simply put, energy efficiency is going to be one of the leading industries of the future because it makes you money by saving you money. As the Toronto study shows, green roofs save you money by reducing heating and cooling costs. Tesla, the electric car company, is now worth more than Ford. In an April 3, 2017 story CNN Money stated that Tesla was worth US$48 billion while Ford was valued at $45 billion.
Another energy-efficient way to go about saving the environment while saving money can be found in the ingenious technology of Burnaby-based International Wastewater Systems (“IWS”). IWS has developed a way to recover the heat usually lost in wastewater. Hot water from showers, baths, dishwashers and laundry goes down the drain. But IWS builds, installs and monitors closed systems that are used to heat the hot water supply in buildings. On May 10, 2017 the company announced that it had won funding and a contract to install five systems in Scotland through its wholly owned UK subsidiary SHARC Energy Systems. The contract is worth 9.8 million pounds. The five sites are the first of 750 locations targeted for conversion in Scotland.
In some ways the system is as simple as your own furnace. In the typical household furnace, natural gas or fuel oil is used to power a heat exchanger. The heat exchanger, in turn, warms the water in a radiator system, or the air in a forced air system. The genius in the IWS system was to develop a filtering system fine enough to prevent waste from clogging the heat exchanger. The system is completely sealed to ensure that there is no risk of water contamination, and continuously monitored to prevent any problems.
The return on investment (“ROI”) varies. A hospital in Boston, for example, that used electric boilers to heat its water had an IWS system installed. It cost $800,000, but the new system will save the hospital approximately $2 million per year and pay for itself within six months. IWS heat recovery systems can be installed in institutional, multi-residential, and industrial buildings. As described in a September 2016 interview with James West of the Midas Letter in the Financial Post, the payback period for residential buildings with 200 or so units is usually two to three years. If you are now telling yourselves this seems too good to be true, the real kicker is that the recovery systems have an anticipated lifespan of 40 years.
By Noel Meyer
- Published in Blog, Energy, Green Technology, International Wastewater Systems, Technology
Lithium supply to outweigh demand by 2018, cobalt to remain tight: CRU
Lithium supply to outweigh demand by 2018, cobalt to remain tight: CRU
Dublin (Platts)–26 Apr 2017 952 am EDT/1352 GMT
Lithium supply was expected to outweigh demand as early as next year, UK-based consultancy CRU’s Rebecca Gordon said Wednesday, while the cobalt market should remain tight well into the next decade on continued supply shortness.
While massive growth in battery demand was set to see consumption of both metals soar in coming years, new lithium supply was expected to match demand by 2018, reaching a peak of 25{92d3d6fd85a76c012ea375328005e518e768e12ace6b1722b71965c2a02ea7ce} of total supply by 2022, Gordon told a Minor Metals Trade Association meeting in Dublin.
“The 2016 lithium cost curve shows why prices had to rise so sharply,” Gordon said, referring to lithium carbonate and hydroxide spot prices of over $10,000/mt in 2017, having doubled in less than 12 months on rising expectations of a demand boom from battery metals and tightness in supply.
“By 2020, the picture has changed, with brine expansions and new hard rock production keep prices in check and $6,500-7,000 the new cost level.”
By that time, China’s brine resources in Tibet and Qinghai were expected to come online, reducing unit costs, while spodumene resources in Sichuan and lepidolite resources in Jianxi were “committed and probable”, Gordon said.
Even modest demand forecasts see annual lithium output growing to 500,000 mt by 2020 from around 200,000 mt currently.
BENCHMARK BATTERY PRODUCTION
According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence’s Andy Miller, also speaking in Dublin, lithium-ion batteries developed in “gigafactories” around the world, such as Tesla’s in the US, were expected to top 175 GWh by 2020, up from around 30 GWh now.
Tesla has recently said it will reach total production by 2018, in which time it will produce more lithium-ion batteries than were produced worldwide in 2013.
With electric vehicle production expected to be around 500,000 cars per year by the end of the decade, Tesla alone will require all of current lithium production.
But the story is bigger than Tesla. Over 60{92d3d6fd85a76c012ea375328005e518e768e12ace6b1722b71965c2a02ea7ce} of battery production in 2020 was expected in China, compared with around 20{92d3d6fd85a76c012ea375328005e518e768e12ace6b1722b71965c2a02ea7ce} in the US, Miller said.
“The lithium-ion industry is a China story,” Miller said, with Europe far behind.
Unlike CRU, Miller did not foresee supply outpacing demand in coming years and although he expected new spodumene supply to fill any deficit in the short term, prices should remain high on tightness.
The story for cobalt was similar, he said. Also a component in cathodes for lithium-ion batteries, prices have surged over 60{92d3d6fd85a76c012ea375328005e518e768e12ace6b1722b71965c2a02ea7ce} in the past 12 months on expectations of increased demand and supply tightness.
But whereas lithium supply has increased markedly in anticipation of greater demand, cobalt supply remained restricted.
Although traded on the London Metal Exchange, it is hard to access supply. Production is largely a byproduct of other metals such as nickel, so it is hard to get financing for projects based on cobalt prices, despite the recent spike.
The metal also comes nearly exclusively from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which brings with it significant supply risk, given issues around mining practice, including child labor.
CRU expected a deficit in both mined and refined cobalt supply this year and next and although stocks should be able to meet much of the increase in demand in the short term, new supply will be needed by 2020.
Artisanal supply was expected to play an important role, especially as a swing producer when supply is tight.
CRU has identified a number of processors located in the DRC around Kolowezi, Likasi and Lubumbashi, that sell concentrates believed to be derived from local small scale and artisanal operations, Gordon said.
Gordon estimated these produced around 10,500 mt of artisanal cobalt in 2015 and around 8,500 mt in 2016. She forecast around 10,000 mt this year.
At the same time, recycling remained a concern for both lithium and cobalt, accounting for a tiny proportion of refined supply currently.
With a 7-8 year life, electric vehicle battery recycling volumes should start to pick up after 2021 and producers such as Apple and Nissan have talked recently about the importance of battery recycling.
Both speakers agreed that more work was needed in terms of regulation or industry best practice in battery recycling to secure supply.
–George King Cassell, george.king.cassell@spglobal.com
–Edited by Dan Lalor, daniel.lalor@spglobal.com
- Published in Blog, King's Bay, Mining, News Home
Renewable Energy Defining Point Reached As Economies of Scale Kick In And Tesla’s Elon Musk Bets He Can Save South Australia from Power Shortages
Renewable Energy Defining Point Reached As Economies of Scale Kick In And Tesla’s Elon Musk Bets He Can Save South Australia from Power Shortages
Are Cobalt Shortages In The Future?
Image source: WIRED
Tesla billionaire Elon Musk says he can install battery farm within 100 days or it’s free.
There’s more than just a little irony in the air these days. Just as Donald Trump plans to reduce energy efficiency standards for cars in the United States, a defining point in the history of renewable energy has been made in the form of a bet between billionaire Elon Musk and the State of South Australia. It is the moment that economies of scale kick in driving down and making the cost of grid scale renewable energy rollout feasible.
An energy crisis has been brewing for some time in sunny South Australia leading to blackouts and price spikes. As the debate raged on about how to solve it Musk stepped in during early March and offered to solve the problem by installing 100-300 MW hours of renewable energy electric grid scale battery storage within 100 days of signing the contract.
When Mike Cannon-Brookes tweeted to ask if Musk was serious Musk replied that if he couldn’t do it within 100 days of signing the agreement it would be free of charge. Cannon-Brookes was interested because he is Australian. He is also the co-founder of Silicon Valley start-up Atlassian which builds software development tools. Being Australian, Cannon-Brookes asked Tesla for a “mates rate.” Although contract figures have not been released Cannon-Brookes told the Australian media that Musk offered to almost halve the cost of the project.
Tesla has just finished building a battery farm in southern California that can provide 80 MW Hours of storage at a cost of $100 million in 90 days. Musk is a high-tech visionary who has made his visions pay. In February 2017 his net worth was calculated at $13.9 billion. He co-founded PayPal, Tesla Motors, Solar City and founded SpaceX, the commercial space transportation business.
Long a renewable energy advocate Tesla has built a second business in residential, commercial and electric grid storage batteries under the Tesla Powerwall banner and SolarCity, which he cofounded with a cousin to provide residential battery storage solutions. Musk has frequently noted that he is in the process of changing Tesla from a car company into a clean energy company. Tesla has also recently launched a roofing product designed to take the ugly out of solar panels by producing solar panel roofing shingles that look like slate, in a variety of attractive colours.
Musk’s ability to fulfill his promise to South Australia lies in the fact that on January 17th, 2017 Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, located near Reno, started production.
The Gigafactory has already supplied the batteries for a battery farm in southern California. Tesla has grid scale battery farm projects on the go in the UK, Connecticut, North Carolina, Hawaii and New Zealand. Only a third of the 4.9 million square foot Gigafactory which will cost $5 billion and is part of a partnership with Panasonic is up and running but by 2018 it will have doubled global lithium-ion battery production. Two of the most commonly used lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, including Tesla’s, use cobalt as part of the mix.
Large scale rollouts of solar, wind and water energy have been held back by the high cost of storing the electricity generated. Tesla’s Gigafactory and his consequent offer to South Australia are a game changer indicating that although battery storage costs have been falling for years, now they are about to tumble, thanks to economies of scale. It is estimated that Tesla’s lithium-ion batteries which also use nickel and cobalt are about a third less expensive than other batteries. This also means that the cost of electric vehicles and hybrids will begin to drop.
Last year IHS predicted the electric grid scale utility storage battery market to hit US$19 Billion during 2017. Taiyou Research predicts a US$ 30 Billion market in rechargeable Li-ion batteries by 2020.
If you don’t believe that clean energy will become a very viable industry in the near future you should bear in mind that if this year’s game changer is Tesla’s Gigafactory and the economies of scale that will play in strengthening the renewable energy rollout then last year’s may very well have taken place when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson, Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Chairman of the Board of trustees, Alwaleweed Philanthropies, Saudi Arabia, among others announced the creation of a clean energy investment group, The Breakthrough Energy Coalition. The coalition is made up of 28 high net-worth entrepreneurs from ten different countries.
Entrepreneurs who have changed the fabric of modern life are already on board. Warren Buffet, through Berkshire Hathaway has invested US$1 Billion and Bill Gates is investing US$1 Billion of his personal money and US$2 Billion through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in renewable energy.
Battery and cobalt demand won’t just be driven by smartphones and Tesla. According to Rockstone Research the Germans are building a battery factory twice as large as Tesla’s, the Chinese are building four that are bigger than the Nevada Gigafactory, the Japanese are building two and the South Koreans are building one.
Savvy retail investors may be wondering how to take part in this emerging market and one perspective may be to look at it as a commodity market. Lithium stocks went through a gold rush period a few years ago propelled by the rechargeable battery market and now thanks to the amount of cobalt in a car battery and in laptops and smart phones it looks as if cobalt is set to takeoff. The battery pack for Tesla Model S, for instance, contains an estimated 22.5 Kg of cobalt.
Another factor that comes into play is secure supply and ethical sourcing. The refined product market is largely controlled by China, which has a history of trade embargoes and tariff walls when it comes to protecting resources and products for itself. The majority of raw cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo where much of the mining is done by child workers.
Nobody wants to drive a car or use a cell-phone powered by child labour and so the hunt is on for ethically sourced, securely supplied cobalt. Elon Musk has said that he is going to source the raw materials for his batteries from North America. At the moment there are no producing cobalt mines in North America. Exploration, however, is being fast tracked. Cruz Cobalt is one of the junior mining companies that may benefit. Commodity research house CRU has predicted cobalt demand to rise by 16{92d3d6fd85a76c012ea375328005e518e768e12ace6b1722b71965c2a02ea7ce} annually through 2022.
The LME has predicted that by 2020 the amount of cobalt used in rechargeable batteries could equal the total amount refined in 2015.
In a recent press release announcing the acquisition of the Chicken Hawk Cobalt Prospect in Montana, Cruz Cobalt, (CUZ—TSXV, BKTPF—OTCBB, A2AG5M–FSE), Cruz Cobalt President James Nelson stated:
“This new prospect now makes 9 cobalt prospects within North America that Cruz has secured. Cruz has also secured one of the largest land packages, consisting of 4 separate cobalt prospects, all located in the Cobalt/Silver district of Ontario surrounding the city of Cobalt. Cobalt prices continue to trade to new 5 year highs and have been on a significant uptrend over the past 12 months. Cruz is fully funded to commence operations on all of its 9 cobalt prospects and management expects to be on the ground very shortly.” If Cruz is successful then early investors will benefit accordingly. As of March 17, CUZ traded at $0.205 and has a total of 55,065,386 shares and a market cap of $11,288,404.
Another promising Canadian company exploring for cobalt is Kings Bay, (TSXV: KBG) which over the last year has acquired five prospective cobalt properties, two in Newfoundland Labrador and three in Northern Quebec. Kings Bay was recently reported on in the Financial Post where CEO Kevin Bottomley stated that the company’s Lynx Lake project near Happy Valley Goose Bay had shown initial results with very high cobalt numbers. The company has recently acquired a highly prospective cobalt property on Trump Island in NL. Their three properties in Quebec were worked on by Falconbridge around 2000 and Bottomley describes them as having initial positive results. Bottomley was previously associated with mining incubator Zimtu Resources and as a result has access to a network of European investors eager to invest in Canadian resource projects. Kings Bay traded at $0.18 on March 17, 2017 and has 41 million shares and a market cap of $7 million.
By Noel Meyer
- Published in Blog, Cruz Cobalt, Energy, Green Technology, King's Bay, Mining, Technology
Cobalt gets ready to shine from Tesla, Apple, Samsung demand
Cobalt gets ready to shine from Tesla, Apple, Samsung demand
The lesser known mineral component of batteries, cobalt, is gearing up to have its year in the sun, with hedge funds stockpiling the commodity in preparation for the “Tesla boost”, ethical dilemmas tainting existing supply and miners exploring the developed world.
Prices for the mineral are starting to see a conspicuous recovery; low-grade cobalt was at a high of $US16.50 ($21.84) a pound on the spot market on Thursday, up more than 80 per cent from lows in December 2015, according to Bloomberg data.
“If last year was lithium’s time, for 2017 its battery peer cobalt may be the one receiving more attention,” a Macquarie analysts wrote in a recent note to clients.
“Prices have accelerated to levels last seen in 2011, and with demand from the core portable electronics sector recovering and supply growth relatively stagnant, this can be fundamentally justified.”
The hard, grey mineral has piqued interest in recent years for its potential widespread use in smartphones and the lithium-ion batteries used in Tesla vehicles. As an efficient electrode, cobalt can help store power for longer.
Analysts expect the likes of General Motors and Volkswagon, in addition to smartphone makers Apple and Samsung, to soon crank up demand as they experiment with their own electric cars.
According to commodity researcher CRU Group, this is set to boost demand for the nickel byproduct on average by 16 per cent annually through to 2022.
The supply issue
Cobalt is particularly contentious, however, given it is largely mined in the strife-riddled region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to an Amnesty International report released last year, a fifth of the DRC’s cobalt is derived from small-scale operations that rely on child labour.
China is the main refiner of cobalt, buying up the commodity from both ethical and conflict zones, refining it and then on-selling it to the likes of Apple, Samsung and Tesla.
“The problem is it all gets mixed together, so you don’t really have an option to buy clean cobalt,” said Matthew Langsford, portfolio manager of the natural resources fund at Terra Capital.
At this year’s African Mining Indaba, which finished up last week in Cape Town, cobalt sprung up at numerous booths, with companies turning their exploration sights towards the commodity which is usually found as a byproduct of nickel.
However, investors seem to be leaning towards more transparent sources of cobalt.
“It’s a chilling fact for a lot of people that the smartphone in the pocket probably contains cobalt produced through child labour,” Edward Lauer, head of portfolio optimisation at Eurasian Resources Group, told a panel during the conference.
“It’s a complex supply chain and a challenging issue; thankfully, a lot of groups are bringing various stakeholders together.”
Opportunists
Investors could once get exposure to cobalt through nickel and copper shares, but there are more companies popping up exploring in developed countries.
ASX-listed Clean TeQ, backed by Regal Funds Management, has a scandium deposit in central New South Wales, with high-grade nickel and cobalt features. Billionaire Canadian investor Robert Friedman has taken an almost 20 per cent slab of the company’s stock and is a vocal proponent of the cobalt story.
Another high-profile investor, Paul Matysek, recently joined the board of Equator Resources and is in the process of renaming the company Cobalt One. The microcap stock hopes to exploit Mr Matysek’s track record of finding difficult deposits and is in the process of raising capital.
“These kinds of companies are looking to add to the cobalt supply from developed countries which will take some of the pressure out of the DRC,” says Mr Langford. “While the deposits there are so rich it’s unlikely cobalt will stop coming out of there, these other plays give investors more options.”
But there are also other methods of gaining cobalt exposure. In readiness for this spike in demand, some fund managers have begun to stock pile the commodity in preparation for the price hike.
“By buying physical stock, you actually own the metal that’s going into the batteries,” Anthony Milewski, a managing director at Pala Investments, told Bloomberg recently. “It’s a much more attractive option, and we’re not the only fund out there doing this.”
But getting one’s hands on the commodity is not easy. About 100,000 metric tons is produced annually, though 65 per cent of refined supply comes in a non-metal form, like the chemicals used in jet engines, drilling tools, pigments and smartphones.
As such, only around 35,000 tonnes comes in metal form, worth around $US550 million ($713 million).
Traders haven’t had it much easier, struggling with the lack of liquidity in markets like the London Metals Exchange.
Before November last year, the average volume was just 24 contracts a day; by comparison, copper trades around 140,000 contracts a day. But increased market attention has seen these contracts jump to an average of 162 a day, with some sessions reaching 600.
By Jessica Sier
- Published in Blog, Cruz Cobalt, Mining
2017 PREVIEW – LORD COPPER: Electric vehicle sector could be the driving force for metals commodities
Electric vehicle sector could be the driving force for metals commodities
Metals – or commodities generally – are no longer the pariah class, as funds once again dip their toes into the pool, Lord Copper asserts as he looks to the year ahead with cautious optimism.
2016 finished on a quietly positive note. Through the second part of last year, we saw metal prices stage a rally (of sorts: not, I concede, what we became used to during the boom period that now lives only in the memories and bank accounts of those who were there at the time, but a rally nonetheless), which has served to give a boost to the confidence of commodity investors.
Cyclicality has had a part to play here: nothing goes in one direction for ever and things that were out of fashion come back into focus as part of the natural order of the world. But that’s not all. As I suggested would be the case at the beginning of the year, selected mining equities have indeed pointed the way, with that sector of the FTSE powering the index to its new record high. (Incidentally, I noted a couple of weeks ago that Danny Fortson, in the Sunday Times, rated Rio Tinto a definite sell on the back of its (well-publicised) problems. I’m not an analyst, so my views are strictly those of a slightly educated outsider, but I’d still put that company among the best of the bunch, given where it sits on the cost curve in the majority of its products. I certainly wouldn’t dream of giving advice, but neither would I sell Rio from my portfolio.)
So what are we really looking at? The major influence – both up and down – in recent times has been China; this time, though, I’m not sure that it is as central as we have come to expect. Certainly, we all correctly and keenly watch that economy for signs good or bad, but at the moment the signals seem a bit fuzzy. The property market remains a problem, but on the other hand the government is projecting stimulus which should aid the commodity markets. But there is still overcapacity, and where does it go? All the aluminium can’t end up in the Mexican desert; and what does the Trump ascendancy presage for trade relations between the world’s two largest economies? Looked at coldly, unfortunately I can’t see a clear signal of a consistent China once again driving the commodity freight train.
My optimism comes from a slightly different direction, and one where we have to be very cautious, as this is more commodity-selective than China’s overall appetite. As often in the past, technological development holds a key position for the market. One of the hottest topics in scientific research right now is the work being done on the storage of electricity – in other words, better, smaller and cheaper batteries. This is being driven principally – but not exclusively – by the increase in demand for electric vehicles. The beneficiaries of this demand will be lithium (obviously), cobalt and nickel – as the cathode and anode – and also copper, not directly for use in batteries, but because an electric vehicle uses something like four times the copper of a conventional one. And, of course, one should also bear in mind the increased copper usage that will come through the continuing development of charging networks.
One of many charging points for Tesla electric vehicles
For an idea of how that will roll out, look at the growth in the network of petrol stations in the first part of the 20th century. (As an aside – for those who are interested – have a look on catch-up TV for the 2016 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, where Saiful Islam, a chemistry professor from the University of Bath, is talking precisely about this issue of power generation and storage; it’s interesting stuff.)
So, I’m not a scientist, but I can see the way the world is going, and it’s towards an environment where the renewable generation of electricity and its storage will become of increasing importance. Lithium is a clear beneficiary; right now, you would bet on nickel and cobalt, but beware – battery technology may change to use other metals…. And copper, still the most effective means of power transmission, looks very secure.
I don’t expect a boom again, but a selective investment in metals could be the right way to go in 2017.
- Published in Blog, Deep South Resources Inc., King's Bay
Tesla’s whole year depends on their ability to deliver
Tesla’s entire year hinges on answering one big question
Matthew DeBord – Business Insider
Tesla reports second-quarter earnings on Wednesday after the close and CEO Elon Musk will hold a conference call with analysts after the numbers are released.
We’ll be covering the earnings announcement and the call, so check back.
Everyone is going to want one huge question answered: Will Tesla be able to deliver 55,000 vehicles this year?
In the first half of the year, the company delivered less than half that total. So the pressure is on.
Tesla’s actual financials in the second-quarter are expected to be a downer.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Tesla lost money in the quarter — $117 million net, translating when adjusted to $0.59 per share.
Last year during the same period, Tesla made $0.11 per share.
In the second-quarter, Tesla is expected to see a big jump in review, to $1.17 billion, the Journal reported.
Tesla is spending a huge amount of money right now to expand operations and to develop and introduce new vehicles, as well as bring online a massive battery factory in Nevada and create an energy storage business.
So the combination of increasing revenue and declining profits shouldn’t surprise anyone. Musk and his team already informed the investment community that they’re prepared to spend a “staggering” amount to vindicate the company’s $33-billion market cap and lofty stock price.
There also won’t be much suspense around how may cars Tesla sold in the quarter. The company has begun reporting deliveries on a quarterly basis (the rest of the industry reports monthly), so we know that 11,507 vehicles made it to customers in Q2, a jump of 52{92d3d6fd85a76c012ea375328005e518e768e12ace6b1722b71965c2a02ea7ce} from last year. Combined with the first quarter, Tesla sold 21,537 vehicles through the first half of 2015.
Can Tesla build enough Model S sedans?
Everyone who follows Tesla is obsessed with whether the Model X crossover SUV will launch on schedule this quarter. But Model X sales aren’t expected to make a major contribution to Tesla’s 2015 goal — probably less than 5,000 vehicles, assuming the launch goes off without any hitches.
That means delivering over 25,000 Model S sedans by the end of the year is critical.
Last year, Tesla was able to build all the cars it said it would — 35,000 — but about a thousand deliveries slipped into the first month of 2015, and that weakness sent Tesla stock into a funk that it has since recovered from.
Investors will want to know if they’re in for a rehash of that script in 2015, so Musk’s comments on the earnings call will be more important than the earnings themselves. If he and Tesla’s leadership can confidently declare that 55,000 deliveries are in their sights, shares may not stage a retreat. But coming through on Model S deliveries while starting to roll Model X SUVs off the assembly line is a tall order. It’s uncharted territory for Tesla, which has effectively spent the past few years building one car.
AP
Tesla may have to run flat out for the next six months to meet its production and sales goals, but 55,000 vehicles still isn’t out of the question. However, if there are any indications of wavering on that target, Tesla could wind up being punished by the markets.
Other aspects of Tesla’s business will be copiously scrutinized on Wednesday — there will undoubtedly be a lot of questions about cyber-security in the aftermath of the hacking of a Jeep sold by Fiat Chrysler, especially since Tesla is the most wired of automakers — but executing on Model S through the remainder of 2015 is the biggie.
History lesson
It’s worth bringing a bit of history into the picture here. Tesla is building a new kind of car — all electric — and with the Model S and a lesser extent the Model X, aiming for an affluent buyer. The Model 3 mass-market car won’t arrive until 2017, at which point Tesla needs to producing cars much more quickly.
Production doesn’t have to be hard. When Ford introduced the Model T 100 years ago, production ramped up quite rapidly, roughly doubling every year before taking off in year five (1913).
Henry Ford’s mass-production techniques made this possible. So Ford wasn’t ever meaningfully constrained on the production side.
Tesla’s problem has always been production (demand for its vehicles, at least in the US, has historically been robust). This was understandable as the company established the Model S in the market. But now it’s starting to be a conundrum. Musk wants to build half a million cars by 2020. So why is his company still struggling to build 55,000 in 2015?
This is, after all, a car we’re talking about (we understand that Musk’s other company, SpaceX, builds rockets, which are slightly more difficult). Tesla is a startup by the standards of the auto industry, but other car makers seem to be able to assemble vehicles at a fierce clip. General Motors sold 272,512 in July alone.
Within the next 2-12 months, Tesla is going to need to reassure the world it can operate like a typical car company (even it wants to be seen as anything but typical) and meet established production objectives. This is where the auto industry is a pretty simply business: it’s hard to sell cars you can’t build. Musk is sensitive to making customers wait for new vehicles, so it’s reasonable to expect that he’ll be very focused on this challenge for the balance of 2015