Welcome back everyone, I'm Jordan Geesege, and this is The Limiting Factor. This video is the fourth section of a full two-hour long video on the global lithium supply chain that's currently available for paid supporters on Patreon, YouTube, and X.
In the last video, I walked you through all the potential regions and sources of mined lithium supply and how we might expect lithium supply to exceed the forecast from each of those regions and sources. Today I'm going to take that information and use it to create an updated global lithium supply forecast. From there, we'll explore forecasts for sodium ion battery supply and use that information to develop a full and final forecast for battery supply from both lithium and sodium ion batteries.
With that forecast in hand, in the next video of the series we'll look at what the total global battery supply forecast could mean for Tesla's growth later this decade.
Before we begin, a raft of credits and thanks are in order. Feel free to skip this part of the video and move to the next time stamp if you watched the previous video. I'm including the thanks and credits on each video in the series for the people who haven't seen the other videos. That's because it's not just a thanks, it lets viewers know the quality of my sources and peer review.
First, Viva's Kumar reviewed the draft script. Viva's was directly involved with Tesla's battery supply chain for nearly three years, where he negotiated billions of dollars of material spend and also did strategic analysis and forecasting for battery materials. After that he worked for benchmark mineral intelligence for nearly three years. He's now co-founder and CEO of Mitra-Kim. If you'd like to know more about that, check out my interview with Viva's Anchiro.
首先,Viva的Kumar评论了这份草稿剧本。Viva的在特斯拉的电池供应链上直接参与了近三年的时间,在这期间,他谈判了数十亿美元的材料采购,并进行了电池材料的战略分析和预测。之后他在Benchmark Mineral Intelligence工作了将近三年。现在他是Mitra-Kim的共同创始人兼首席执行官。如果你想了解更多信息,请查看我与Viva的Anchiro的采访。
Next, my sources. Rodney and Howard of ArcAequity, a Lithium Analysis and Advisory firm, spent several hours and long email threads answering detailed questions about mine development. If you're interested in their work, you can connect with them on Twitter with the details on screen or follow the Rockstock channel on YouTube. Cameron Perks of benchmark mineral intelligence walk me through how lithium supply and demand is evolving over time. I recommend following benchmark mineral intelligence and their CEO Simon Moore's on Twitter to keep up to date with the Lithium industry. Lars Lee's doll provided key data for this video around lithium refining capacity versus production. And beyond that, I've used a number of graphs from Ristat Energy over the years. You can also follow Lars on Twitter. Austin Devaney helped me put a finer point on a few topics around hard rock lithium mining. Austin was an executive at Alba Morrow and Rockwood Lithium for nearly 10 years, which is one of Tesla's largest lithium suppliers and now has been at Piedmont Lithium for the past three years, which has an agreement for future supply to Tesla. Bradford Ferguson and Matt Smith of Rebellionair.com reviewed the final release candidate of the video from an investor lens. Rebellionair specializes in helping investors manage concentrated positions. They can help with covered calls, risk management and creating a financial master plan from your first principles. Bear in mind, this video is not investment advice and always do your own research.
接下来,我要谈谈我的信息来源。Rodney和ArcAequity的Howard是一家锂分析和咨询公司,他们花了几个小时以及长时间的邮件讨论回答了关于矿业开发的详细问题。如果你对他们的工作感兴趣,你可以在屏幕上的细节上与他们联系,或者关注他们在YouTube上的Rockstock频道。Benchmark Mineral Intelligence的Cameron Perks向我解释了锂供需如何随时间发展。我建议关注Benchmark Mineral Intelligence和他们的首席执行官Simon Moore在Twitter上以了解锂行业的最新动态。 Lars Lee's doll为本视频提供了关于锂精炼能力与产量的关键数据。除此之外,我多年来还使用了Ristat Energy的许多图表。你还可以关注Lars在Twitter上的动态。Austin Devaney帮助我更好地理解了有关硬岩锂矿开采的几个问题。Austin在Alba Morrow和Rockwood Lithium担任高管近10年,这是特斯拉最大的锂供应商之一,并且现在在Piedmont Lithium工作了过去三年,该公司与特斯拉有未来供应协议。Rebellionair.com的Bradford Ferguson和Matt Smith从投资者的角度审查了视频的最终版本。Rebellionair专注于帮助投资者管理集中仓位。他们可以提供期权交易、风险管理和根据你的首要原则制定财务计划的帮助。请记住,本视频并非投资建议,请始终进行自己的调查研究。
Finally, despite all the input I received from some of the leading experts and information sources in the Lithium industry, all the opinions in this video are my own. There are differing views and forecasts within the Lithium industry that I had to reconcile and combine with my own insights and expectations. With regards to the peer review, it was for factual accuracy and a sanity check rather than for crafting the tone and conclusions of the video.
Overall, my goal was to create the most comprehensive resource out there on how global lithium supply and battery supply will evolve this decade and how that relates to Tesla. So if you feel like I've hit the mark and get value from the video or my content in general, toss a coin to your witcher. Making a video like this takes months and generally, analysis like this would be packaged up by an analyst house and put in a report that costs thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. Generally, I make about $2-600 per video in YouTube ad revenues. That is, it's the direct support that I get from less than 1% of subscribers through Patreon, YouTube and Twitter that makes the channel possible. The details for support are in the description.
Picking up where we left off in the last video, I've made this table showing what I view as the realistic potential upside from benchmark mineral supply forecast data for each Lithium producing region in 2027 and 2030. The benchmark forecast for Lithium supply in 2030 is 3.5 TWh. Based on the country by country walkthrough for mined Lithium supply in the last video, I added 1 TWh from China, 0.4 TWh from Africa and then put in the 0.1 to 0.2 TWh each for the rest of the regions. That means a total Lithium supply of 5.4 TWh in 2030 versus the 3.5 TWh currently forecast by benchmark, which is a 55% increase. So by my estimate, global Lithium supply comes up 29% short of benchmark 7.6 TWh high-case demand scenario in 2030. That's not the end of the world because total Lithium supply will still increase by about 4 times in the next 7 years. It just means that due to a lack of mining investment, we may not see the 5 to 6x growth that could have been possible. Note that so far, we've only covered Lithium-ion batteries and a moment will factor in battery supply from sodium-ion batteries as well.
Before we move on to that, it's worth pointing out some of the assumptions that went into this table beyond what was discussed in the country by country walkthrough. First, for Australia, South America, the United States and Canada, I said that we shouldn't expect large increases in mined Lithium supply in the next 4 to 7 years. I dealt with that by assuming that there would be no additional supply from those countries in 2027 and then 0.1 to 0.2 TWh each in 2030. That's because for those countries, the lead time for a new mine is at least 4 years and we're already more than halfway through 2023. So there's not much opportunity for potential upside in 2027. But in 7 years by 2030, there's a pretty good chance we see some new capacity come online.
Second, I set the 2027 numbers for China and Africa at half the 2030 numbers that we discussed in the country by country walkthrough. That's because I assume they'll see typical S curves for growth where scaling becomes more difficult at higher material volumes.
Third, the 7.6 TWh demand figure is just a guidepost. That's because there'll be actual demand for Lithium and latent demand for Lithium. What do I mean by that? The 7.6 TWh of demand is from factories that have already been announced. If I'm forecasting 5.4 TWh worth of Lithium supply, that means some factories simply aren't going to be built because there won't be enough Lithium to feed them. But beyond that, those factories will need a large amount of other materials, skilled workers and machinery.
So there'll be actual Lithium demand from the factories that get built and latent demand waiting in the wings when enough Lithium other materials, skilled workers and machinery are available. So although with further Gigafactory announcements, latent demand could be over 10 Gigawatt hours in 2030, I've adopted Benchmark's high demand case of 7.6 TWh for 2030 as a guidepost for actual demand. But all we really know is that demand will likely exceed supply. It could happen that skilled workers and machinery end up being the bottleneck instead of Lithium, but in my view, that's unlikely for two reasons. First, because the lead times for upskilling workers and building machinery are shorter than the lead time for building a mine. Second, because the lead times to permit, build and commission chemical processing, cathode production and cell manufacturing are all shorter than mining. Other materials could be the bottleneck as well, but I covered that off in the first video of the series. Lithium is working off the smallest base and has to grow the most. But if I'm wrong and Lithium isn't the bottleneck, the net effect for Tesla and the transition to sustainable energy would be the same. A more linear rather than exponential growth rate.
Before we move on and while we're on the topic of the ways that I could be wrong, I'd like to emphasize that the odds of my forecast being correct here, or even within 5% of correct, is low. With that said, although my primary goal for this video series was to make the best forecast I can, there were also two secondary goals.
First, I laid out my thought process and sources in detail so that if you disagree, you can build on or tweak my thinking based on your own assumptions. I'm not handing down stone tablets here, but rather giving you the tools to make your own.
Second, as much as possible, I've tried to offer useful information and insights to help you understand the Lithium landscape. Which hopefully, if you've made it this far in the video series, you've gotten. However, we're not done yet.
As I've said in past videos, I expect sodium ion batteries to hit the market in force in the late 2020s. There's no telling what the actual ramp could look like, but if sodium ion batteries are everything they're advertised to be, the ramp will be aggressive. Let's look at the production estimates that I've seen for sodium ion from lowest to highest, and then we'll look at my forecast, or more accurately, guesstimate, because everyone is just guessing at this point.
First, Wood Mackenzie, which estimates 40 gigawatt hours of sodium ion production in 2030 for their base case, with another 100 gigawatt hours possible if sodium ion has a good launch by 2025. In my view, that estimate is so low that it can be effectively thrown out. That's because there's already 80 gigawatt hours of production capacity planned by 2025, and about 150 gigawatt hours planned by 2030.
Second is ICC Sino, which is expecting 165 gigawatt hours by 2026. I place the most trust in ICC Sino's estimate because it's directly from a Chinese analyst house that's keeping close tabs on announcements and developments in China.
The third estimate is from Frank Wanderlich, who's an active proponent of sodium ion. Frank is predicting a run rate of 100 gigawatt hours of sodium ion batteries by the end of next year, which is 18 months away, and by the end of 2025, he's predicting a production capacity of 300 to 400 gigawatt hours per year. However, he doesn't state what he expects the actual production rate to be. Given that it'll take time for that capacity to ramp, I would assume the actual production rate would be about 50% of capacity by the end of 2025, meaning 150 to 200 gigawatt hour run rate if things go really well.
ICC Sino expects 66 gigawatt hours of total production in 2025, which would mean a production run rate of about 100 gigawatt hours at the end of the year. That is, Frank is predicting a production growth rate of roughly 50 to 100% wider than ICC Sino, 150 to 200 gigawatt hour run rate by the end of 2025 versus 100 gigawatt hours. In my view, given that the end of 2025 is only 30 months away and we're essentially working from a base of zero, 150 to 200 gigawatt hours is overly bullish.
Unfortunately, neither ICC Sino nor Frank is providing an estimate for 2030. For that, let's turn to my forecast slash guesstimate. My bowl case scenario is for 160 gigawatt hours of sodium ion in 2026. From there, I factor roughly 60% growth per year from 2027 to 2030 for a total of one terawatt hour of sodium ion battery supply in 2030.
Given that sodium is available in huge quantities and therefore sodium ion batteries don't have the same primary constraint as lithium ion batteries, why haven't I forecast a more aggressive ramp? It's because although sodium ion batteries aren't as constrained by raw materials, their growth is still limited by the speed that the entire supply chain can be scaled.
Sodium is plentiful, but it still needs to be refined into high purity battery grade sodium, combined with other chemicals to form the cathode and then manufactured into a battery cell. And that's just on the cathode end. Supply chains are also required for the separator, electrolyte, anode and electrode foils. All in all, each battery cell factory requires two to three dozen factories to support it and every one of those factories has to ramp in unison. Furthermore, as I said earlier, all of the forecasts are dependent on sodium ion delivering on what's been promised by the industry hype. So far, it's untested and unproven at scale. That is, all the forecasts including mine are generously assuming that sodium ion will deliver on all the hype and there aren't any hidden drawbacks for the chemistry that would hamper its adoption.
Moving along, let's take my forecast of one terawatt hour of sodium ion battery production by 2030 and add it to the lithium ion forecast I showed earlier to arrive at battery supply from all sources. The result is 3.8 terawatt hours of total battery supply in 2027 and 6.4 terawatt hours of total battery supply in 2030. That means a relatively reasonable growth rate of about 30% per year for the rest of the decade.
However, it still leaves a supply gap at the end of the decade of about 1.2 terawatt hours despite some pretty aggressive assumptions. Let's review those assumptions before moving on.
First, the sodium ion industry has to grow from non-existent to the size of the current global lithium ion battery industry within 7 years. Second, companies from Australia, South America and North America will have to announce 500 gigawatt hours worth of new Greenfield's mining projects. In order to hit production by the end of the decade, on an aggressive timeline, all that mining capacity will have to be announced in the next 2-3 years.
Third, China will have to build an additional 1 terawatt hour worth of mined lithium production by 2030. That means continuing to expand production at an average annual growth rate of around 40%, which will only happen if lithium prices are high enough for long enough to encourage aggressive growth of Chinese lapitolite production. Fourth, Africa has to go from producing about 70 gigawatt hours of lithium to about 700 gigawatt hours in 7 years. Given the instability and unique challenges of Africa, such as poor infrastructure, that would be impressive. Fifth, politicians, regulators and the general public in each country will have to play ball. It's not uncommon for new mining projects to get caught up in red tape and public pushback for several years, or even blocked entirely.
The odds of at least two or three of these assumptions playing out in support of the 6.4 terawatt hour supply forecast is decent, but the odds that all five well is possible, but unlikely. That is, the 6.4 terawatt hour forecast is on the bullish side. However, the bullishness is intentional. It's to show that even with a bullish forecast, battery production from lithium, sodium and recycled materials still appears to come up short against potential demand.
In the next video of the series, with a strong base of information and analysis in place from the last four videos, I'll walk you through what everything we've learned about the global lithium supply chain could mean for Tesla's growth later this decade. That's all for today, but before I close out the video, as I said at the beginning of the video, if you can, toss a coin to your witcher.
The information I've provided today is, to my knowledge, the most comprehensive video on lithium supply out there. Other reports that are available on the market can cost thousands of dollars, and by comparison, if this video does well, I expect it to make less than a thousand dollars from YouTube ad revenues. It's the supporters who contribute directly that make the channel possible. On that note, a special thanks to my YouTube members, ex-subscribers and all the patrons listed in the credits. I appreciate all your support and thanks for tuning in.