Comments by "ke6gwf - Ben Blackburn" (@ke6gwf) on "Jim Cramer: There are three 'battlegrounds' in electric vehicle competition" video.

  1. The problem is that lithium and the other materials are, quite literally, Commodities. In other words, if demand spikes and lithium etc prices spike, driving the stock price of producers up, that will encourage others to enter the market, driving the price back down and replacing the existing suppliers with a bunch of new competitors. And since commodities are based on price, the existing producers have no long term advantage. On the other hand, the EV manufacturers have a brand name and a unique product, and the ability to grow exponentially if they have the best product. The miners have already been bought up with high prices, so there's not much space to grow. Also, once Redwood Materials etc ramp up and refine the recycling process, the demand for virgin commodities will reduce, and the prices will drop.
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  2.  @bernardbarry447  When you say it can take 3-5 years to bring a new project on line, are you talking about opening a mine or a processing plant? I agree that new mines take time to open, but in the near term, most of the existing mines could increase output relatively easily without much delay, and so you should be able to increase raw mineral output as fast as Tesla is ramping production. As for processing, that traditionally is done as part of the project with opening a mine, and they grow with the mine, involving years of planning and getting loans and investments in it, and then the usual pace of contractors getting such things done. But we are in the Tesla world now, and if the existing processor plants are unable to produce enough high grade minerals, and are taking too long to expand, Tesla can take a few billion out of the bank and build a processing plant as fast as motivated contractors can put it up, and be able to handle as much unprocessed ore as needed. And in the mean time, the new projects slowly get started, including lots of new players across the world who now have a large enough market to be worth opening mines, and the ability to raise funding for it. And with factories opening in many countries, it will be natural for the raw materials to be mined and processed in that country to save on shipping costs. Meanwhile, the existing suppliers will be looking like small players in comparison to the world supply. Don't expect that things will stay at the same slow pace when the demand is taking the S curve up, people can move MUCH faster when properly motivated by fear or greeed or vision.
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