Thursday 19 January 2017

Lithium Race: Volkswagen Group Plans 8 Plug-in Electric Cars For China.




It looks like China is getting very fast "great again", at least in all things green. I do hope that Elon Musk will be able to save America from being "great again" with steam engines powered by "the clean coal". Now all automakers are anxious to move fast into China with their electric cars. China is The Centre of The Lithium Universe and has become the ground for mass scale testing of the most advanced technologies for the lithium batteries and electric cars. So far Chinese companies mostly were tapping in the very gracious subsidies of the Chinese government. 

These developments will put China in the lead not only in the numbers of electric cars sold but in R&D development as well after the best technology will be transferred from the West in exchange for the access to the largest auto market in the world. While the West will be debating "How can we have the Global Warming if the Weather is cold?", China will start making the best electric cars for millions facilitating The Switch.






Lithium Race Goes Exponential: More Electric Cars Are Sold In China Than In The Rest Of The World Combined.





"Reuters reports from the grounds of The Centre of The Lithium Universe. More electric cars are sold in China than in the rest of the world combined! I will not open the very big secret telling you that these cars are not the best in the world yet and sales are driven by the government subsidies, but just imagine what will happen when really best electric cars will be sold at the prices below $30k ... then in a couple of years below $20k? A BMW 2-type car with much better performance, cheaper and with 10% of the running cost of ownership? Multiply it on the opportunity provided by the largest auto market in the world and state level fight for the survival gasping for the fresh air literally. Then just make a few calculations related to coming California Style ZEV mandates...  


We have the major catalyst in the making in China right now. The whole country is leapfrogging into the 21st century with The New Energy Plan. Implications will be very far reaching and Lithium Market is just one of the signs of things to come when bottlenecks in the supply chains are reflecting the returned appetite from the Dragon. This Lithium Race is going into the exponential part of the S-curve now. Read more."


Lithium Race: China Electric Cars Sales Going Exponential - Up 56% With Record 43,441 In November.






We have just discussed the BMI Lithium Index showing that lithium prices are strengthening again. Now you know why it is happening. BMI Lithium Index is weighted by volumes of Lithium Carbonate and Lithium Hydroxide and gives you the real picture of the supply chain for high-tech applications like batteries. Lithium Hydroxide is used to make cells for the lithium batteries like Tesla is using made by Panasonic now. International Lithium's Strategic partner Ganfeng Lithium supplies Panasonic and BYD among many other battery makers in the Electric Car space. Now you have the picture ...

BYD backed by Warren Buffet is solidly in the lead in the lithium race in China this year. All in all new record of 43,441 electric cars sold in China in November must be put in the perspective. It took GM 7 years to sell 100,000 Chevy Volts from 2009! Two BYD electric cars are leading the sales in China: BYD Tang with 29,895 and BYD Qin with 21,047 units sold respectively. BYD has 4 of its EVs among the top-selling electric cars in China with BYD e6 18,077 and BY e5 13,219 sold by the end of November. And now we can see what I was talking all this year about. China is the Centre of the Lithium Universe now. BYD already sold 92,375 electric cars by December 2016! What took GM 7 years, will be done by BYD in China in just 1 year. 

We also have a very healthy new dynamic in China EVs sales now: Zotye Cloud EV is taking the first place in sales in November with 5,024 units, followed by Geely Emgrand / Dorsett EV with 3,799. Actually, BYD is not among top 5 best selling electric cars in China in November at all. We have the emerging competition in the EV space when the quality and price metrics will be driving the coming tide. The Switch will happen so much faster than anybody is expecting now. There are 25 companies in China which are making 51 models of electric cars in China now. EV sales in China are going exponential now: up 36% from the last October and 56% year over year, pulling the plug-in market share to a record 1.4%, above the Europe (1.2%) and U.S. (1.1%). 

Now you can better understand what is coming next: China is pushing for Zero Emissions Mandates with EVs reaching 8% of all new cars sales by 2018 and 12% by 2020! The Chinese electric cars market is the largest in the world now and will reach over 350,000 new electric cars in 2016 with total fleet of 650,000 estimated by the year end (The whole world had just 1.3 million on the roads in early 2016), it will be followed by Europe with 630,000 and by the U.S with 560,000. It is very important to note that we are talking here only about electric cars. To be precise EVs include electric buses and other utility vehicles like trucks. We are getting very close to my magic 1 million EVs sold just in 2016 and 2 million units in EV fleet on the world's roads. This is what I call The Switch: last 12 months we have almost doubled the amount of EVs in the world. It took us all our history to make first million of electric cars before 2015 and only 12 months to double that amount now.



Electric rEVolution: BMI Lithium Price Index In December Shows Prices Strengthening.




"I will throw a few numbers just to give you a teaser here. The rest is on this blog for those who are ready to learn. The cost of Lithium in your iPhone is $1 dollar, in Tesla's Lithium battery cost of Lithium is 2-3% in the price of the finished product. We are in a generational shift 2 to 7,000: 2 is the number of the batteries in your father's remote control, more than 7,000 is the number of lithium batteries in Tesla Model S. It takes 63 kg of LCE (Lithium Carbonate Equivalent) to build Tesla Model S 70 kWh battery. Every 1% increase in sales of Electric Cars as part of total auto sales brings new demand for 70,000 t of LCE. Total production last year was 160,000 -180,000 t of LCE. During all our humankind history 1,000,000 EVs were sold before 2015. This year alone we can get 1,000,000 electric cars sold. Worldwide we are still close only to 1% of Electric cars in total auto sales. BYD - EV automaker from China where Warren Buffett is holding a 10% stake, will sell this year 100,000 EVs, it took GM 7 years to sell the same amount 100,000 of GM Volts. China is talking now about California style Zero Emissions Mandate: 8% of all news cars to be electric by 2018 and 12% by 2020. Let's digest it for a minute. With sales of EVs now only above 1% mark, we are talking about the factor of 8X in  ... two years time and 12X increase in the number of electric cars produced in China by 2020! Now Goldman Sachs numbers can be really conservative: they are talking about 3 times increase in Lithium Demand by 2025. I am talking about the total disruption of $12 Trillion industries: 4$ Trillion Transportation and $8 Trillion Energy and Utilities. I am talking about all cars being electric very soon. 

Now you will better appreciate the following fact that International Lithium Strategic Partner Ganfeng Lithium has more than doubled its total sales in 2015 in just 9 months of this year!  We are talking here about Energy rEVolution and Lithium is the magic metal at the very heart of it. Only a few experts, as usual, do really know what they are talking about. Joe Lowry, Chris Berry and Andrew Miller from Simon Moores' Benchmark are taking the floor below.







   And The Switch ... The Switch is the coming tide when literally millions of people will be switching very fast (as fast as all those millions of EVs can be made) to the electric cars. GM Bolt will give us the first taste of what is coming. The first two electric cars priced below $40k and with a range of over 200 Miles will change everything. Tesla Model 3 will start the real flood of affordable electric cars which are just better than anything else at the same price from the ICE age. Despite all headlines about Electric Cars on my blog, 99% of all new cars are still powered by the last century technology of controlled explosions and by burning oil in different compositions while killing us all and our planet at the same time. Do you remember the 90s - The World Before The WWW and Information Revolution? Now we have 21st Century and Energy Revolution: The World Just Before The INTERNET. Read more."
 


Green Car Reports:


"As it works to recover from its diesel emission scandal, the Volkswagen Group is rapidly embracing electric cars.
By 2025, the company hopes to be selling 1 million electric cars per year, and plans to launch 30 different electric models across multiple brands in the coming years.
According to a news report, China—for several years, the world's largest single car market—will be a major focus of the VW Group's electric-car activities.

The automaker is planning no fewer than eight new or updated plug-in models for the Chinese market, according to Chinese car website Autohome.
Citing what appears to be an internal planning document, the report shows a mix of battery-electric cars and plug-in hybrids from the main Volkswagen brand, as well as Audi and domestic Chinese brands established by VW and Chinese partners.
The list includes the Volkswagen e-Golf, an updated version of which was unveiled at the 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show with a larger battery pack, a more powerful motor, and minor styling updates.

China will also get a plug-in hybrid version of the second-generation VW Tiguan crossover.
That model may come to the U.S. as well, although Volkswagen has not confirmed anything so far.
The VW Group is also reportedly planning two larger plug-in hybrid sedans for the Chinese market.

One is an updated version of the Audi A6 L e-tron already on sale there, the other is a version of a sedan from local automaker SAIC that shares a platform with the Audi.
China will also get the Audi e-tron electric SUV, slated to start European production in 2018, as well as the production version of the Volkswagen ID concept first shown at the 2016 Paris Motor Show.
The ID is a compact hatchback, but VW also showed an alternate version called the ID Buzz at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show, with styling inspired by the classic Microbus.

Both ID concepts ride on the new Modular Electric Toolkit (MEB) platform, which was developed specifically for small electric cars.
The presentation did not specify
China has traditionally required foreign automakers to partner with domestic firms to win permission to build cars within its borders.

This is to allow local companies to learn from their more experienced foreign counterparts.
But the Chinese government is now considering relaxing those rules for plug-in electric cars.
While the government wishes local firms to be competitive in the electric-car segment, it also wants to get more electric cars on its roads faster—which it has concluded means putting fewer restrictions on the foreign automakers already producing them elsewhere.
[hat tip: Shrawan Raja, Indian Autos Blog]"

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