Top 5 Electric Vehicle News Stories Week 16 2017

Top 5 Electric Vehicle News Stories Week 16 2017

#1 – Fist full EV VTOL Jet take to the skies

A German startup, Lilium, founded in 2015 with the intent to develop the first fully electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) jet this week completed its first successful test flight. The vehicle, named Eagle, a two-seater prototype completed its first test flight in Bavaria, Germany. The test flight included a range of advanced maneuvers, including its signature mid-air transition from hover mode to wing-borne forward flight.

electric car newsletterLilium’s business plan provides a flying five-seater taxi on demand. The Lilium Jet has a cruising velocity of 300km/h (187mph) and range of 300km. The design consists of a 10-meter wingspan, 36 engines, and works on the canard concept with powered lift.

The company beats industry heavyweights Airbus at its own game. Airbus unveiled the Airbus Pop.up during the Geneva Auto Show in 2017.

#2 – LG-Chem Q1 Sales excels

LG Chem, the Korean battery vehicle manufacturer, this week announced it’s Q1 sales valued at $5.5Bln, showing growth of 33% year-on-year. More impressive though is that the company showed an increase in operating profits of 74% year-on-year. In our view, it provides a safety margin which could point to price decreases in the expected price war, similar the solar panel market as huge new plants is coming online over the next two years.

#3 – Tesla recall a buying opportunity

Tesla this week announced one of its largest voluntary recalls for 53,000 manufactured between February and October 2016. The recall is due to a fault in a third-party supplied component, potentially resulting in the handbrake not releasing. The recall is not viewed as negative and hardly had an impact on the share price as the company closed near its record price of $307.71 set earlier the week, still very well on the way to our first target of $320.
Tesla’s announcement that it would unveil its Semi-truck in September had analyst very excited, speculating that it would add billions to the companies bottom line and disrupt the sector. The company is expected to lease the batteries at $0.25 per mile saving trucking companies the $0.50 fuel charge.

#4 – Q1 EV sales for France, German, and China, two out three ain’t bad.

German (#9 on Top EV list), French (#7 on Top EV list), and Chinese (#1 on Top EV list) EV sales for Q1 was released this week. Both China and Germany saw huge year-on-year increases, while French EV sales flatlined. Read our blogs for a detailed breakdown of the sales.

#5 – More Concept’s and a few production-ready vehicles at Shanghai Auto Show

The New York and Shanghai Auto Show’s provided many newsworthy releases related to electric vehicle strategies, concept cars, and some productions cars. Although the New York auto show had all thirty plus electric vehicles available for sale in the State on view, the Shanghai Auto Show were the place to be for electric vehicle enthusiast. The VW Group teased its Audi eTron SUV and VW I.D. CROZZ concepts, which is only expected by 2019. Tired of all these old auto companies releasing concept after the other without having real competition for the Tesla available? Two production ready vehicles from newcomers Lucid Motors and NextEV‘s NIO brand were unveiled at the Chinese event. NIO’s ES8 seven seater SUV is expected to be available in China by the end of the year. The company also announced that it would add ten more units to its fleet of six EP9 supercars, priced at $1.48 million.

A guide to investing in lithium, nickel, and cobalt used for electric vehicles

A guide to investing in lithium, nickel, and cobalt used for electric vehicles

A guide to investing in lithium, nickel, and cobalt used for electric vehicles as it spurs another gold rush as mining companies scramble for “modern” resources such as lithium (white petroleum as its now aptly called), nickel, and cobalt.

Lithium’s properties include being the lightest metal on the Periodic Table which has the highest electrochemical potential of all metals. Lithium is a soft silvery metal that reacts immediately with water and air. Some analyst predicts that current lithium demand would rise from 16,500 to between 120,000 to 250,000 tons by 2025 to feed the 14 battery mega factories that are developed, mainly in China. Rising lithium prices in the short term are not seen as a threat to the electric vehicle sector, as most large battery manufacturers indicated that they had fixed forward prices when we asked them to comment. Lithium prices are set through direct negotiations, as no terminal or spot market exists for the commodity. Investors should be careful not to get to fixated on sentiment and remind themselves that lithium batteries have been around for some time for use in cell phones and other handheld devices. Batteries for these devices, up till now, make up nearly 90% of demand supplied by the likes of Samsung and LG Chem. Lithium is not a scares commodity, and production capacity should increase over the longer term to keep up with the growth in demand due to electric vehicles. Lithium mining is also not an expensive venture. Lithium carbonate is extracted through an evaporation process from a brine found in salt flats. A risk with lithium is that the biggest deposits are concentrated in South America, especially Bolivia, where a handful of mining companies can control prices.

Commodities that shows a bigger opportunity on the upside include nickel, copper, and cobalt. Analyst comments remained bullish on these commodities at the recent African Mining Indaba, held in Cape Town, South Africa. Although Africa also has lithium deposits, its mostly found in rock and more expensive to extract. These deposits are also better suited for the technical applications such as ceramic and glass industries, than chemical applications such as batteries.  Reuters (February the 14th 2017reports that investors are scrambling for physical stocks in cobalt, a key ingredient for electric vehicle batteries. By adding cobalt to the chemistry of lithium batteries, car manufacturers can gain range. Cobalt is a buy product of copper, where investors are exposed to larger risk and cost if they invest in mining companies, such as Anglo American, Glencore or BHP Billiton to gain exposure in cobalt. Therefore the only direct investment is to buy and stockpile physical cobalt, a process which has a high barrier of entry, excluding smaller investors. A further concern is that most of the world’s cobalt comes from the Eastern Congo, a war-torn region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), close to Rwanda and Burundi, whose rebels also use the region as a springboard for causing trouble. The political environment in the DRC has deteriorated and will not improve soon as the country prepares for elections by the end the decade.

Investors trying to make a mint out of the electric vehicle boom should also keep a constant eye on how technology and battery chemistry change in this new and fast-moving sector, creating new opportunities for certain metals or bubbles for those becoming outdated. Let the history of investing in solar cells not repeat itself for battery investors.

Please leave a comment on your best or worst performing electric vehicle related stock pick below.

Picture – Source NY Times