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Alternative Energy Storage Stocks: Review and Outlook

<<Over 75% of the cost of a typical battery is raw materials. Each raw material has a fixed electrochemical constant that cannot be exceeded. Most battery chemistries are already within a couple of percentage points of perfection. Moreover, fundamental economic laws state that as demand for scarce materials increases, so does the price. So if you can't improve the basic chemistry and you can't slash your materials costs, where the heck are the economies of scale going to come from...

But truth is a funny thing. It's truth whether we like it or not.>>


John,

You're conveniently ignoring the "truth" of falling NIMH prices as well as the dynamics of commodity pricing and the relative abundance of lithium,
which happens to be the one of the most common elements on earth.
I've seen the arguments for lithium scarcity--one guy named Kahlil--and they strike me as bogus and poorly supported by fact. The fact is lithium is NOT a difficult element to harvest and never will be. It takes some natural reserves, which are abundant, a drained lake, and lots of sunlight. Supply will meet demand as demand increases and prices will fluctuate as all commodity prices do.

Separately, your quote regarding the reduced capacity of the 3rd gen Prius battery pack only tells me that Toyota has learned how to increase the cars' fuel efficiency while simultaneously cutting battery weight and probably cost. This is utterly typical of the Japanese and one of the big reasons they continue to make the best cars on the planet. It's no secret that weight reduction is a key factor in fuel efficiency, and Toyota has worked hard to make the newest Prius lighter, with major weight savings in the hybrid drivetrain as well as the battery.

<<It's also no darned fun telling
> people that the economic numbers for Li-ion powered EVs don't work.>>

All I can say is the Chinese car maker BYD appears to be telling us the opposite with its $22K PHEV that claims up to 60-mile all-e range and is available today in China. I'm not so naive as to buy that range number until it's been verified, but even if the range is half that, this is a remarkable achievement. Warren Buffett believes enough in this company to own 10% of it. How do you explain the price point here, which to me looks extremely competitive? Seems to me if this car is even close to the specs advertised and the selling price not massively subsidized by the mfgr, your entire argument about lithium HEVs can be thrown out the window.

Follow the money, my friend--and tell us why you're smarter than Buffett, Toyota, Carlos Ghosn at Nissan, Shai Agassi, and all the other auto and battery makers that are pouring billions into lithium research and production as we speak.