These battery skeptics think cobalt and lithium prices are overcooked - lithium battery price

Call them battery skeptics.
Bets on soaring demand for electric vehicles have made cobalt and lithium a hot commodity, but some investors say the outlook is not optimistic.
While prices have more than doubled over the past three years due to concerns about a shortage of metal used in batteries, Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicts that the lithium market will be "severely oversupplied" and Subaru
Mazda Motor Company
Their focus now is on traditional power cars.
"The madness you see in cobalt will be corrected in many ways," Christoph Eibl, chief executive of asset management firm Tiberius Group, said in an interview.
"There is too much uncertainty about how technologies will be applied in the future, and how many alternatives and alternatives will actually happen.
There will be fewer lithium used by batteries.
"By 2025, producers may add 815,000 metric tons of lithium to the market, more than 460,000 metric tons.
According to Bank of America analysts, including Michael weidmer, demand has increased a lot during this period.
The bank said the expansion in production could cause lithium carbonate prices to fall to $10,000 a tonne, slightly more than half the Asian average so far this year.
In terms of cobalt, Wood Mackenzie Ltd. supply will exceed demand by 652 tons this year and will expand to 20,842 tons next year. forecasts.
According to reports in London, the surplus is expected to cause prices to fall to an average of $62,502 a tonne in 2019, down from this year's forecast
Headquartered in research and consulting.
By 2022, the average price was only $44,585.
To be sure, there are a lot of bullish investors.
Christian luxury life, CEO's enlarged exchange-traded fund, manages an exchange
The trade fund related to battery metal producers said that the excess forecast assumes that the expansion plan announced by the producers will actually be implemented as scheduled, which rarely happens.
Their assumptions do not take into account logistical bottlenecks and financial difficulties --
Improving this often delays projects, he said.
"There will be a classic supply and demand issue that will provide opportunities for investors," Magoon said in a telephone interview . ".
"There is an old saying that the bull market has climbed up the wall of concern and you need to have this kind of reaction. opinion.
I think it's a healthy strategy. opinion.
"Lithium is not traded on the exchange, which limits the choice of hedge positions for users and producers.
Although Cobalt has been traded on the London Metal Exchange for about eight years, the commodity has failed to attract sufficient investor interest, with a total interest of less than 1,000 open positions and less than 5 tin, the least is-
Trading of six major industrial metals on the exchange.
Lack of liquidity is the main reason for DWS Group's $3 portfolio manager, Darwei Kung.
The 3 billion Germany-based Commodity Strategy fund has been away from this special battery metal.
"It's hard to trade," he said in an interview in New York . ".
Kung's other argument against jumping on an electric car
Car trends reflect Mazda's concerns.
Hiroshima, Japan-
US-based automakers do not believe that customers' interest in electric vehicles will pick up soon.
While Mazda plans to launch electric vehicles next year, it says it will continue to focus on internal combustion engines.
This raises doubts about the growth rate of demand for battery metal.
"You see the speed at which electric cars are used is actually very controversial," Kung said . ".
"When the energy prices of traditional cars are high,
The over rate is much higher and much faster.
When the price of energy goes down, you will see that this has been delayed a lot.
"And the mid-range price
Gasoline levels in the United States have climbed by about 14 percentage points. S.
This year, it is still below $4 a gallon, which helps drive sales at Toyota.
Prius hybrid, 2012
From the average price of about $3 to this price.
Nationwide on Sunday, Kung said, it could spur the pace of turning to electric vehicles to accelerate.
Still, he says oil producers may step in and increase supply when the price of gasoline reaches $4, as such a high price tends to dampen demand.
"Even companies looking at electric cars are fully aware that you can't change quickly from the existing cars on the road," Jeffrey Christian, New York --
The general manager of the researcher CPM Group said in a telephone interview.
"I don't even look at the current price because I think the cobalt and lithium are basically overvalued.
They are expected to go into electric cars faster than what is going to happen and bid up.
Hanre Rossouw in Cape Town-
The portfolio manager of Investec Asset Management, which manages more than $190 billion in assets, has benefited from the transformation of electric vehicles by betting on traditional metals such as copper, thus ensuring the safety of investment
He said that no matter how fast the shift is happening, infrastructure spending will increase, including power grids and charging stations, and more copper will be needed.
"Many of the predictions we see for electric vehicles are just too optimistic," Rossouw said in a telephone interview . ".
"These companies are very good at promoting this product.
But we need to take a realistic view. ”Bloomberg. com