12 ms·

We May Not Have Enough Minerals to Even Meet Electric Car Demand

29 points by phr4ts 9y ago

pmoriarty 9y ago
This reminds me of the helium shortage and the long-predicted oil crisis.
- tristanj 9y ago
  The oil crisis was real though. If it wasn't for the growth in supply from unconventional oil in the past 10 years, today's oil price would be over $150/barrel.
  - WaxProlix 9y ago
    Don't bother, these are the same people who see (or don't see) herculean feats made to thwart things like Y2K, oil shortages, or the forestalling of climate change and say to themselves, "Aha, I was right - there was no catastrophe at all. Those fools, scurrying around spending tons of effort and money!"
    - smnrchrds 9y ago
      Also acid rains and air pollution in general.
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    But that's precisely the mechanism by which supply crises are resolved. A shortage leads to a sharp rise in the price of the material, which creates a profit opportunity for the development of unconventional supplies. The increased supply then resolves the crisis. You can't assume the lack of innovation when our whole economic system is built to encourage innovation where most needed.
    - giomasce 9y ago
      You cannot even assume that innovation can automatically fix supply issues: unconventional oil extraction is possible because unconventional oil is there in the first place. This might not happen with other minerals.
      - nostrademons 9y ago
        The great thing about capitalism is that it's agnostic about the solution, though. If the unconventional oil isn't there, there's a strong incentive to develop other energy sources like solar. The previous energy crisis - Peak Whale Oil - was resolved that way. We didn't end up discovering a new source or species of whales. Instead, we found that this 300M year old black gunk that comes out of the ground could be refined into all the products that we used whale blubber for, plus several others. And there was much more of it available, and it took a lot less labor.
        giomasce 9y ago
        Very good, as long as it works. There have been cases in the past when people did not find the innovation they needed at some point, and have experienced extinction or close extinction. I would like to not risk that again, also because that would be the first time where the extinction risks to be global, not just local. I liked very muche Collapse by Jared Diamond. He discusses some cases of this type, starting from the iconic history of Easter Island.
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        It's true for most minerals, though. We're mostly mining the easy stuff. I'd guess that for just about all rocks we're much closer to the easy end than we are with oil, with no real worry of running out.
- Kadin 9y ago
  Those are both nonrenewable, use-once resources with fixed (on human timescales) supplies. Metals are different; they're not really consumed, just tied up in manufactured products during the life of that product. After the product's lifespan, they can be reused. Different calculation entirely.
arvind3199 9y ago
Why isn't a electric road or a overhead third rail a viable alternative to batteries? Batteries - become depleted, are expensive, heavy. With a grid - unlimited range, that can be supplemented by smaller batteries. Are there technical limitations more than cost.
- paulsutter 9y ago
  The Boring Company has you covered, power supplied by the track: https://www.geek.com/tech/musk-shares-first-image-of-boring-companys-sub-la-tunnel-1721086/ https://www.geek.com/tech/musk-shares-first-image-of-boring-... People are really underestimating the impact of lower cost tunneling.
- lcr 9y ago
  There is no technical reason why it can't be done[1], it isn't without its challenges though; How would you deal with the fact that roads are used by vehicles with wildly different heights? What about underpasses, is there enough space to fit the overhead wires? You would also need to make sure that vehicles in one place can connect to the grid on other places. It seems like overhead wires will probably be the best solution, but will only be implemented on highways for use on freight vehicles, not on cities or for personal vehicles. Ground level power supply systems also exist[2], but would require you to tear up the entire road network in order to implement them, are expensive, and apparently prone to water clogging (which could perhaps be mitigated) without mentioning the fact that they would probably require either an autonomous or guided vehicle in order to reliably maintain contact with the rail. So, not really, the limitations are mostly about cost and political capital. [1]https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/products/mobility/road-solutions/electromobility/ehighway.html https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/products/mobility/roa... [2]http://www.alstom.com/products-services/product-catalogue/rail-systems/Infrastructures/products/aps-ground-level-power-supply/ http://www.alstom.com/products-services/product-catalogue/ra...
  - Johnny555 9y ago
    Your first point is already dealt with by electric railroads that run different height trains -- the wires are set at a level that the tallest train can fit under, and shorter trains have a higher pantograph to reach the wires. And since the pantograph is flexible, it can deal with varying wire heights. Gaps in the wire for intersections and underpasses could be handled by having small battery packs in the cars. This also helps with the last-mile -- only large arterial roads need to be electrified and cars could drive the short distance on city streets on battery power. One solution for in-road charging would be wireless inductive chargers like: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/qualcomms-inductive-charging-road-could-change-the-way-we-build-evs/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/qualcomms-inductive-charg... Though as you say, the real problems are price and politics. In the SF Bay Area, Caltrain has taken decades to get funding for electrification and has faced a lot of resistance from some communities for the construction and visual blight of overhead electrification. And that's just for one set of tracks, electrifying all of the freeways would be much worse.
Dylan16807 9y ago
> while demand for nickel keeps increasing, half the world’s nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries. Well that article sure disproved its own thesis quickly. If we can't even be bothered to purify cheap nickel, then we are definitely not facing a shortage.
- Kadin 9y ago
  Yeah I didn't really get it. It sounds like there's a lot of nickel, just not ... as much cheap nickel as we'd like? Or maybe as much as some people who own certain nickel mines would like? I'm not sure. It's like any other nonrenewable resource; there's going to be an extraction cost that increases over time as the easily recovered deposits are used up. But unlike oil, which can only be used once and is then gone forever, nickel and other metals get brought out of the earth and into circulation, and can then be used over and over. So the price of both recycled and virgin nickel will increase until demand is met. I'm curious when it starts to become advantageous to mine old landfills for all the stuff we used to throw away and not recycle...
  - giomasce 9y ago
    I am curious of that too; however, given that it does not happen yet (or, at least, so I think), I am brought to believe that it is not that easy, or at least not easier than mining ores (which still requires some degree of purification). That probably also applies to using the cheap nickel mentioned by the grandfather comment: it is not necessarily easy to purify it.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      It might cost mere pennies, but mining happens to be cheaper. It's hard to imagine it being prohibitively costly.
epx 9y ago
Difficult to believe. Cars are being churned day and night for decades, all of them use a lot of minerals. At least (in my understanding) the rare minerals that go into electric cars and their batteries are recyclable. Once the fleet is built, just recycle. Of course, I'd prefer a future with electric trams in every street and fewer cars, all electric, all small and light to save in materials and energy.
- vvanders 9y ago
  In addition the "rare" materials are low in usage compared to carbon and other components for batteries. If I were to guess copper is probably of the largest concern.
shmerl 9y ago
What about asteroid / other planets mining?
- mbid 9y ago
  What about the philosopher's stone? Surely with enough research in alchemy and Elon Musk's support, we could tweak it so that we can conjure all metals from thin air. Dude.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    I guess some don't mind imagining such thing: http://deepspaceindustries.com http://deepspaceindustries.com
    - crush-n-spread 9y ago
      It's too expensive to mine minerals and send them back to Earth. Until we are launching hundreds of rockets a day, we can forget about this.
- philipkglass 9y ago
  Deep sea mining seems more likely. The most valuable component of ferromanganese crusts, or manganese nodules, was the cobalt, even in the 1970s. More so today. I don't think that the concept of asteroid mining is totally ridiculous, but I think it needs to be uncrewed, slow, with low delta-v. So even if you had a target asteroid and a robotic mining system all ready to go today, the products wouldn't reach terrestrial markets before a couple more decades passed.
wallace_f 9y ago
Every article I see on modern transport problems reminds me that I can't understand why we don't have more public infrastructure invested for cyclists? It really seems like the lowest hanging fruit, but there is not enough profit-motive or politcal incentive to really push it forward? I would love to bike to work and take a shower on arrival--daily exercise that I need anyways, avoids stress & danger of driving, feels great to do. It's also a lot better for the environment than electric cars, and saves me a lot of time. It could help with congestion, pollution, obesity, healthcare costs, and possibly improve social morale. I really think it is an issue where no business or politician has enough incentive/ability to capture profit, so it doesn't ever get much traction, but the public benefit is quite large. From what I understand Holland's bike infrastructure is seen as a gold-standard among transportation economists on how to reduce congestion and pollution--no?
- mynegation 9y ago
  There are people who don't know how to ride the bike. Shocking, I know, it was for me too. It might work in SoCal, but in temperate climates in winter, biking through ice, snow, and sludge is a non-starter for most. I, personally, don't do it during the summer either, because I sweat a lot and there is no shower at my workplace. Bikes get stolen all the time. The bikes stationed throughout the city for rent are heavy, with low centre of gravity and have only 3 gears.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  Reasons why there isn't more public infrastructure for cyclists: 1) someone has to pay for it 2) it gets in the way of my car That's it. Seriously. It's no more complicated than that. I have watched bike lanes make their way into major cities and those are literally the only stumbling blocks. But really it's just #2. I don't know why people are downvoting this. I know the people who fought for 6 years to get one cycle track in Baltimore. Residents are still fighting it because it made them drive less fast and park differently.
  - bklaasen 9y ago
    Anecdata: a few years ago I was at a party hosted by an acquaintance who's a town planner. He'd invited a bunch of his town planner workmates. I asked each of them if they owned a bicycle. None of them did. They all had luxury marque cars, paid for by the state.
Johnny555 9y ago
Sounds kind of like how we're running out of oil -- we're definitely using up the easy to find deposits, but as oil prices rise, the less easily available oil becomes marketable, so the oil keeps coming. Eventually we'll run out, but making it harder to find just makes it more expensive. (well, that and the political problems caused by wealthy middle eastern nations running out of their liquid gold)
ZenoArrow 9y ago
Cobalt and nickel are not the only materials that can fulfill the functions they cover. There are a couple of things worth noting here: 1. "Lithium Ion" describes a family of batteries, with varying chemical compositions. As an example, the battery in the Nissan Leaf uses no cobalt in its cathode: https://qnovo.com/inside-the-battery-of-a-nissan-leaf/ https://qnovo.com/inside-the-battery-of-a-nissan-leaf/ "It uses a different material for the cathode called lithium-manganese-oxide with nickel oxide (LiMn2O4 with LiNiO2) that is inherently safer than the lithium-cobalt-oxide cathode material" 2. There are other battery chemistries outside of the Lithium Ion family, in varying states of maturity, that could (in time) become competitive with Lithium Ion in the electric car market. To give one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery
randyrand 9y ago
I dont understand this phrase. It's completely incorrect usage. If demand can't be met, then the price will raise naturally until demand is met. I can guarentee that for a raw material, this is bound to happen. I suppose they could fix it just by saying "at the current price" at the end.
- rvense 9y ago
  Err, I imagine what they mean is "to replace the conventional cars that people rely on".
peterwwillis 9y ago
This brings to mind two horrifying futures, thankfully neither of which will ever happen: 1) we use those big lines full of electricity hanging adjacent to the road to power vehicles, 2) we stop using cars
Animats 9y ago
Cobalt is probably not a problem. See the annual USGS report for cobalt.[1] The main problem with cobalt mining is that it's usually obtained as a by-product of nickel. So nickel demand drives cobalt supply. Direct mining for cobalt is possible but not done much yet. Right now, there's a mild cobalt oversupply, because nickel refining produces more cobalt than is really needed. This is expected to change soon. Potential supplies in the US, Canada, and Australia are substantial. Not a fundamental problem for the next century. Also, much cobalt is already recycled. [1] https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/cobalt/mcs-2017-cobal.pdf https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/cobalt/mcs...
madza 9y ago
The current demand for high quality nickel used in batteries is very small in comparison to overall world nickel production. This will continue for the foreseeable future. Nickel is trading at very low prices historically and most producers are losing money at current prices. This would imply that the current supply of nickel is more than sufficient for the worlds needs and that some producers need to shut down. (Why they don’t is fascinating on its own) Most of the worlds nickel production is low quality ferro nickel used in the production of stainless steel. Despite this we are not seeing larger premiums for high quality nickel products which would indicate that there is more demand for high quality nickel. High quality/ high cost nickel producers know that their only chance to survive the over supply of cheap nickel in the world is if we see the same over exuberance as which we have seen with cobalt trading in recent months. The only problem is that nickel is a much larger market than cobalt and as such is not as susceptible to small market changes, and as the article points out nickel does not face the same geopolitical supply risk as cobalt does in the Congo. We are unlikely to see a shortage of Nickel.
polskibus 9y ago
Finally, a reason to go into space!
bmcusick 9y ago
Remember Peak Oil? Good times.
teilo 9y ago
Time to invest in Nickel ETFs.

29 points by phr4ts 9y ago

pmoriarty 9y ago

This reminds me of the helium shortage and the long-predicted oil crisis.

tristanj 9y ago
The oil crisis was real though. If it wasn't for the growth in supply from unconventional oil in the past 10 years, today's oil price would be over $150/barrel.
- WaxProlix 9y ago
  Don't bother, these are the same people who see (or don't see) herculean feats made to thwart things like Y2K, oil shortages, or the forestalling of climate change and say to themselves, "Aha, I was right - there was no catastrophe at all. Those fools, scurrying around spending tons of effort and money!"
  - smnrchrds 9y ago
    Also acid rains and air pollution in general.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  But that's precisely the mechanism by which supply crises are resolved. A shortage leads to a sharp rise in the price of the material, which creates a profit opportunity for the development of unconventional supplies. The increased supply then resolves the crisis. You can't assume the lack of innovation when our whole economic system is built to encourage innovation where most needed.
  - giomasce 9y ago
    You cannot even assume that innovation can automatically fix supply issues: unconventional oil extraction is possible because unconventional oil is there in the first place. This might not happen with other minerals.
    - nostrademons 9y ago
      The great thing about capitalism is that it's agnostic about the solution, though. If the unconventional oil isn't there, there's a strong incentive to develop other energy sources like solar. The previous energy crisis - Peak Whale Oil - was resolved that way. We didn't end up discovering a new source or species of whales. Instead, we found that this 300M year old black gunk that comes out of the ground could be refined into all the products that we used whale blubber for, plus several others. And there was much more of it available, and it took a lot less labor.
      - giomasce 9y ago
        Very good, as long as it works. There have been cases in the past when people did not find the innovation they needed at some point, and have experienced extinction or close extinction. I would like to not risk that again, also because that would be the first time where the extinction risks to be global, not just local. I liked very muche Collapse by Jared Diamond. He discusses some cases of this type, starting from the iconic history of Easter Island.
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      It's true for most minerals, though. We're mostly mining the easy stuff. I'd guess that for just about all rocks we're much closer to the easy end than we are with oil, with no real worry of running out.
Kadin 9y ago
Those are both nonrenewable, use-once resources with fixed (on human timescales) supplies. Metals are different; they're not really consumed, just tied up in manufactured products during the life of that product. After the product's lifespan, they can be reused. Different calculation entirely.

arvind3199 9y ago

Why isn't a electric road or a overhead third rail a viable alternative to batteries? Batteries - become depleted, are expensive, heavy. With a grid - unlimited range, that can be supplemented by smaller batteries. Are there technical limitations more than cost.

paulsutter 9y ago
The Boring Company has you covered, power supplied by the track: https://www.geek.com/tech/musk-shares-first-image-of-boring-companys-sub-la-tunnel-1721086/ https://www.geek.com/tech/musk-shares-first-image-of-boring-... People are really underestimating the impact of lower cost tunneling.
lcr 9y ago
There is no technical reason why it can't be done[1], it isn't without its challenges though; How would you deal with the fact that roads are used by vehicles with wildly different heights? What about underpasses, is there enough space to fit the overhead wires? You would also need to make sure that vehicles in one place can connect to the grid on other places. It seems like overhead wires will probably be the best solution, but will only be implemented on highways for use on freight vehicles, not on cities or for personal vehicles. Ground level power supply systems also exist[2], but would require you to tear up the entire road network in order to implement them, are expensive, and apparently prone to water clogging (which could perhaps be mitigated) without mentioning the fact that they would probably require either an autonomous or guided vehicle in order to reliably maintain contact with the rail. So, not really, the limitations are mostly about cost and political capital. [1]https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/products/mobility/road-solutions/electromobility/ehighway.html https://www.siemens.com/global/en/home/products/mobility/roa... [2]http://www.alstom.com/products-services/product-catalogue/rail-systems/Infrastructures/products/aps-ground-level-power-supply/ http://www.alstom.com/products-services/product-catalogue/ra...
- Johnny555 9y ago
  Your first point is already dealt with by electric railroads that run different height trains -- the wires are set at a level that the tallest train can fit under, and shorter trains have a higher pantograph to reach the wires. And since the pantograph is flexible, it can deal with varying wire heights. Gaps in the wire for intersections and underpasses could be handled by having small battery packs in the cars. This also helps with the last-mile -- only large arterial roads need to be electrified and cars could drive the short distance on city streets on battery power. One solution for in-road charging would be wireless inductive chargers like: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/qualcomms-inductive-charging-road-could-change-the-way-we-build-evs/ https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/qualcomms-inductive-charg... Though as you say, the real problems are price and politics. In the SF Bay Area, Caltrain has taken decades to get funding for electrification and has faced a lot of resistance from some communities for the construction and visual blight of overhead electrification. And that's just for one set of tracks, electrifying all of the freeways would be much worse.

Dylan16807 9y ago

> while demand for nickel keeps increasing, half the world’s nickel supply is too low in quality to use for car batteries. Well that article sure disproved its own thesis quickly. If we can't even be bothered to purify cheap nickel, then we are definitely not facing a shortage.

Kadin 9y ago
Yeah I didn't really get it. It sounds like there's a lot of nickel, just not ... as much cheap nickel as we'd like? Or maybe as much as some people who own certain nickel mines would like? I'm not sure. It's like any other nonrenewable resource; there's going to be an extraction cost that increases over time as the easily recovered deposits are used up. But unlike oil, which can only be used once and is then gone forever, nickel and other metals get brought out of the earth and into circulation, and can then be used over and over. So the price of both recycled and virgin nickel will increase until demand is met. I'm curious when it starts to become advantageous to mine old landfills for all the stuff we used to throw away and not recycle...
- giomasce 9y ago
  I am curious of that too; however, given that it does not happen yet (or, at least, so I think), I am brought to believe that it is not that easy, or at least not easier than mining ores (which still requires some degree of purification). That probably also applies to using the cheap nickel mentioned by the grandfather comment: it is not necessarily easy to purify it.
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    It might cost mere pennies, but mining happens to be cheaper. It's hard to imagine it being prohibitively costly.

epx 9y ago

Difficult to believe. Cars are being churned day and night for decades, all of them use a lot of minerals. At least (in my understanding) the rare minerals that go into electric cars and their batteries are recyclable. Once the fleet is built, just recycle. Of course, I'd prefer a future with electric trams in every street and fewer cars, all electric, all small and light to save in materials and energy.

vvanders 9y ago
In addition the "rare" materials are low in usage compared to carbon and other components for batteries. If I were to guess copper is probably of the largest concern.

shmerl 9y ago

What about asteroid / other planets mining?

mbid 9y ago
What about the philosopher's stone? Surely with enough research in alchemy and Elon Musk's support, we could tweak it so that we can conjure all metals from thin air. Dude.
- shmerl 9y ago
  I guess some don't mind imagining such thing: http://deepspaceindustries.com http://deepspaceindustries.com
  - crush-n-spread 9y ago
    It's too expensive to mine minerals and send them back to Earth. Until we are launching hundreds of rockets a day, we can forget about this.
philipkglass 9y ago
Deep sea mining seems more likely. The most valuable component of ferromanganese crusts, or manganese nodules, was the cobalt, even in the 1970s. More so today. I don't think that the concept of asteroid mining is totally ridiculous, but I think it needs to be uncrewed, slow, with low delta-v. So even if you had a target asteroid and a robotic mining system all ready to go today, the products wouldn't reach terrestrial markets before a couple more decades passed.

wallace_f 9y ago

Every article I see on modern transport problems reminds me that I can't understand why we don't have more public infrastructure invested for cyclists? It really seems like the lowest hanging fruit, but there is not enough profit-motive or politcal incentive to really push it forward? I would love to bike to work and take a shower on arrival--daily exercise that I need anyways, avoids stress & danger of driving, feels great to do. It's also a lot better for the environment than electric cars, and saves me a lot of time. It could help with congestion, pollution, obesity, healthcare costs, and possibly improve social morale. I really think it is an issue where no business or politician has enough incentive/ability to capture profit, so it doesn't ever get much traction, but the public benefit is quite large. From what I understand Holland's bike infrastructure is seen as a gold-standard among transportation economists on how to reduce congestion and pollution--no?

mynegation 9y ago
There are people who don't know how to ride the bike. Shocking, I know, it was for me too. It might work in SoCal, but in temperate climates in winter, biking through ice, snow, and sludge is a non-starter for most. I, personally, don't do it during the summer either, because I sweat a lot and there is no shower at my workplace. Bikes get stolen all the time. The bikes stationed throughout the city for rent are heavy, with low centre of gravity and have only 3 gears.
peterwwillis 9y ago
Reasons why there isn't more public infrastructure for cyclists: 1) someone has to pay for it 2) it gets in the way of my car That's it. Seriously. It's no more complicated than that. I have watched bike lanes make their way into major cities and those are literally the only stumbling blocks. But really it's just #2. I don't know why people are downvoting this. I know the people who fought for 6 years to get one cycle track in Baltimore. Residents are still fighting it because it made them drive less fast and park differently.
- bklaasen 9y ago
  Anecdata: a few years ago I was at a party hosted by an acquaintance who's a town planner. He'd invited a bunch of his town planner workmates. I asked each of them if they owned a bicycle. None of them did. They all had luxury marque cars, paid for by the state.

Johnny555 9y ago

Sounds kind of like how we're running out of oil -- we're definitely using up the easy to find deposits, but as oil prices rise, the less easily available oil becomes marketable, so the oil keeps coming. Eventually we'll run out, but making it harder to find just makes it more expensive. (well, that and the political problems caused by wealthy middle eastern nations running out of their liquid gold)

ZenoArrow 9y ago

Cobalt and nickel are not the only materials that can fulfill the functions they cover. There are a couple of things worth noting here: 1. "Lithium Ion" describes a family of batteries, with varying chemical compositions. As an example, the battery in the Nissan Leaf uses no cobalt in its cathode: https://qnovo.com/inside-the-battery-of-a-nissan-leaf/ https://qnovo.com/inside-the-battery-of-a-nissan-leaf/ "It uses a different material for the cathode called lithium-manganese-oxide with nickel oxide (LiMn2O4 with LiNiO2) that is inherently safer than the lithium-cobalt-oxide cathode material" 2. There are other battery chemistries outside of the Lithium Ion family, in varying states of maturity, that could (in time) become competitive with Lithium Ion in the electric car market. To give one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery

randyrand 9y ago

I dont understand this phrase. It's completely incorrect usage. If demand can't be met, then the price will raise naturally until demand is met. I can guarentee that for a raw material, this is bound to happen. I suppose they could fix it just by saying "at the current price" at the end.

rvense 9y ago
Err, I imagine what they mean is "to replace the conventional cars that people rely on".

peterwwillis 9y ago

This brings to mind two horrifying futures, thankfully neither of which will ever happen: 1) we use those big lines full of electricity hanging adjacent to the road to power vehicles, 2) we stop using cars

Animats 9y ago

Cobalt is probably not a problem. See the annual USGS report for cobalt.[1] The main problem with cobalt mining is that it's usually obtained as a by-product of nickel. So nickel demand drives cobalt supply. Direct mining for cobalt is possible but not done much yet. Right now, there's a mild cobalt oversupply, because nickel refining produces more cobalt than is really needed. This is expected to change soon. Potential supplies in the US, Canada, and Australia are substantial. Not a fundamental problem for the next century. Also, much cobalt is already recycled. [1] https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/cobalt/mcs-2017-cobal.pdf https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/cobalt/mcs...

madza 9y ago

The current demand for high quality nickel used in batteries is very small in comparison to overall world nickel production. This will continue for the foreseeable future. Nickel is trading at very low prices historically and most producers are losing money at current prices. This would imply that the current supply of nickel is more than sufficient for the worlds needs and that some producers need to shut down. (Why they don’t is fascinating on its own) Most of the worlds nickel production is low quality ferro nickel used in the production of stainless steel. Despite this we are not seeing larger premiums for high quality nickel products which would indicate that there is more demand for high quality nickel. High quality/ high cost nickel producers know that their only chance to survive the over supply of cheap nickel in the world is if we see the same over exuberance as which we have seen with cobalt trading in recent months. The only problem is that nickel is a much larger market than cobalt and as such is not as susceptible to small market changes, and as the article points out nickel does not face the same geopolitical supply risk as cobalt does in the Congo. We are unlikely to see a shortage of Nickel.

polskibus 9y ago

Finally, a reason to go into space!

bmcusick 9y ago

Remember Peak Oil? Good times.

teilo 9y ago

Time to invest in Nickel ETFs.