Thread by @AukeHoekstra

Unfortunate news: battery prices will probably not go down for a few years as the price of metals (especially Lithium) soars. We really need new mines!
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lithiumstoragebattery.com/news-lithium-b…

Several manufactures have indicated that they will increase prices.
greencarcongress.com/2021/10/202110…
mineralprices.com/electric-car-b…

This was predicted already of course (e.g. by @JamesTFrith of @BloombergNEF), since improvements in manufacturing mean that the biggest costs are now to be found in the cathode material that now accounts for more than half of the battery cost.

Or as the @IEA aptly puts it: "'Sustained' rise in battery metals prices without new mines"
spglobal.com/marketintellig…

Still I'm not that worried in the long term. I still remember how everyone was predicting the end of cheap solar because silicon prices where spiking as solar cells overtook the chip industries demand.

Turns out new mines did come and slashed the price of silicon for solar cells. (Partly because solar needs a bit less pure silicon than the chip industry.)
Also, market prices don't tell the whole story as many manufacturers have long term contracts off the market.

Will the high prices wake up the mining industry and will we see new mines opening or not? I think we will see them faster than expected but I'm far from certain how this will play out.

Interesting times!
/end

@alexjadecove @MinviroLtd You are the experts. Any thoughts on this?

Many of my nerdy followers point out silicon is not mined and the problem was the factories that create silicon from raw materials were lacking. They are right. Sorry!

But my main point was that the supply chain needed upscaling, that caused problems, but they were temporary.

By the way: there are alternatives for nickel and cobalt (e.g. LFP batteries) but less so for lithium.
Still, sodium batteries are positioned as alternative for lithium by nobody less than CATL, one of the worlds largest battery manufacturers. scmp.com/business/compa…