Kirill Klip: Lithium Race Intensifies: All-Electric Car Sales In France Set New Records In December.

Monday, 18 January 2016

Lithium Race Intensifies: All-Electric Car Sales In France Set New Records In December.

InsideEVs.

IsideEv reports about undeniable trend with sales of Electric Cars. We are going exponentially from very small base and already have "Lithium Market Upheaval" in China. Slowly but surely we are getting there. Recent news about police raids at Renault are not helping ICE Age crowd to spin its "Clean Diesel" any more. Volkswagen, hopefully, made it very apparent: it is quite stupid after all to pay yourself to poison you very own kids with cancer hazard polluting "Clean Diesel" ICE Age rubbish. I do not like Nuclear as choice, but France is very well positioned to embrace electric cars because its energy mix is already "greener" than others (Nuclear is not Green for me personally). All we need now is better and cheaper electric cars and they are finally coming with GM Bolt and Tesla Model 3.

International Lithium Receives Notice of License Renewals for the Avalonia Lithium Project, Ireland

"Mr. Kirill Klip, President, International Lithium Corp. comments, “The Avalonia project joint venture, fully funded by strategic partner Ganfeng Lithium Co. Ltd., (“GFL”), could be of strategic importance to the European Union should a sufficient resource be identified. Clean fuel technologies for motor vehicles are becoming increasingly important to the European Economic Community to tackle climate change and the air pollution crisis in major urban areas. Lithium technology will play a major role when it comes to providing batteries for communication devices, electric vehicles and utility storage systems. Renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind power will also benefit from lithium battery technologies and become more commonplace as the problem of intermittency will be addressed providing steady power from these sources 24/7.” Read more."

Lithium Race: Tesla Model S Leads Top Selling Electric Cars in U.S. 2015.

Market Watch.

"Market Watch has provided us with this brilliant illustration of the trend in Electric cars in 2015 in U.S. Despite being the most expensive one, Tesla Model S is outselling with a very big margin Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt by 49% and 67% respectively. It proves my personal observations: we have seen nothing yet in this Energy rEVolution: electric cars share is 0.7% in U.S. of total car sales! People are buying quality, Tesla Model S is providing such quality in the luxury sector and outselling BMW 7 and Audi 8 in Europe already and is taking on Mercedes S! Now we need quality electric cars for the mass market and GM Bolt is a great electric car to start it. Tesla Model 3 will make this market to happen for real and First EV Price Wars will drive the EV prices down, hopefully, for all of us to benefit. Despite total insignificance of electric cars in market terms now, lithium battery consumption of lithium is already around 40%.Once we will start buying all electric cars, which will be better than "Clean Diesel" or 'Not-So-Dirty" Petrol and with the same or even cheaper price, we will have the Lithium Market Upheaval Joe Lowry is writing about in China all over the world. We are making the dramatic shift from the remote control with two batteries, to mobile devices with 4-10 equivalent and now we are moving to over 7,000 lithium batteries equivalent like in Tesla Model S. Below you can find my chronicles of the Energy rEVolution and Joe Lowry latest information from "Opaque Lithium Kingdom." Read more."

The Economist On Lithium - This Increasingly Precious Metal Powers Your iPhone, Tesla's Cars And NASA's Mars Rovers.

"The Economist presents to us very interesting and deeply researched article on Lithium. Now this magic metal will be getting on the investor's radar screens and recent huge price spike in China will be the best advertisement for this Strategic Green Energy Metal. I will provide a few links for your research on what is actually behind this spike and why my outrages Lithium price prediction for 2016 is already so close.
The key for everybody will be this opening paragraph from The Economist:

"SQM, Chile’s biggest lithium producer, is the kind of company you might find in an industrial-espionage thriller. Its headquarters in the military district of Santiago bears no name. The man who for years ran the business, Julio Ponce, is the former son-in-law of the late dictator, Augusto Pinochet. He quit as chairman in 2015, during an investigation into SQM for alleged tax evasion. (The company is co-operating with the inquiry.) Last month it emerged that CITIC, a Chinese state-controlled firm, may bid for part of Mr Ponce’s controlling stake in SQM, as part of China’s bid to secure supplies of a vital raw material."

China already controls 75% of Lithium Hydroxide production which is used in Tesla Motors lithium batteries and is the largest Lithium Market in the world, now if CITIC will be able to get hold of that stake in SQM we are all going to see consequences very fast and this spike will become not just "local market disturbance", but the reflection of strategic value of Lithium for the Next Industrial Energy rEVolution. Another key fact for you to ponder: the cost of lithium as material in the lithium battery is below 3%. Read more."

International Lithium is building vertically integrated lithium business with Ganfeng.

InsideEVs:

All-Electric Car Sales In France Set New Records In December.

"All-electric car

sales in France set a new

high in December 2015 at 3,036 new registrations (passenger and light commercial vehicles).

A strong 47% growth was noted for whole year at 22,187. 17,268 passenger

cars (up 64%) and 4,919 LCVs (up 10%).

If we look at passenger cars

, December brings a new record of 1.21% market share for electric cars. Separately, electric LCVs stand at 2% in their category. Total average market share for the year stands at 1.16%.

There were also around 5,000 additional plug-in hybrids

sold too, but unfortunately we don’t have accurate numbers due to the inter-mingling of some ICE and plug-in sales together.

BEV Registrations in France – December 2015

Most of the pure electric car sales in France come from Renault, who delivered a record high 10,407 ZOE and 2,836 Kangoo Z.E.

Other popular models are the Nissan LEAF at 2,222 and Bollore Bluecar at 1,191.

And yes, as everyone wants to know about the Tesla Model S, it did decently well in the country as well, notching 709 sales last year – good for 5th…just behind the great ~~Mitsubishi i-MiEV~~ Peugeot Ion sell off of 2015 (725 moved).