Rising, global demand for electric vehicles could send lithium prices to higher highs.
In fact, according to The Economic Times, “A surge in demand for electric vehicles worldwide along with increasing pressure on the supply chain of materials that go into EV batteries has seen an unprecedented rise in prices of those same materials this year. In the first half of this year, prices of lithium have jumped over 7-fold while cobalt prices have more than doubled and nickel has almost doubled. What is worse, this is likely to be a recurring theme in times to come as mass adoption of EVs takes off putting pressure on the supply chain that cannot cope with the demand.”
That’s bullish news for companies such as E3 Lithium (TSXV: ETL) (OTC: EEMMF), Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), Lithium Americas (NYSE: LAC) (TSX: LAC), American Lithium Corp. (TSXV: LI) (OTC: LIACF), and Piedmont Lithium (NASDAQ: PLL).
With EV sales only expected to rise, most lithium producers agree that far more supply is needed. Albemarle, for example, says that to keep up with demand, “existing producer supplying the market today must double every two to three years for the next decade,” as noted by Investing News. Unfortunately, no producer has been able to reliably do that, to date