What Would Happen If Lithium Got Smart?

Dear Reader,

The lithium battery market is predicted to cross the $270 billion per year mark at some point around the end of the decade — a 575% increase over the $40 billion lithium-ion batteries collectively raked in worldwide during 2020. 

Big as it is, people often won’t bat an eye at this number, because the reality stares them in the face on a day-to-day basis.

The very device you’re reading this on, more likely than not, runs on a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. 

Your next car, as it will be for hundreds of millions of car buyers in the coming years, could well be an electric vehicle. 

Lithium-ion has been the benchmark for portable distributed energy storage since the turn of the 21st century — the first examples appearing in Sony’s iconic Walkman and Discman personal sound devices back in the early 1990s. 

Lithium… The Coal of the 21st Century

In the first decade of the 21st century, Tesla became the first EV maker to put a lithium battery into a production car — the company's debut model, the Roadster. 

Today it powers almost 100% of the over 10 million new electric vehicles hitting the road for the first time each and every year.

Fifteen years after that first Tesla, however, and with the science of lithium-ion batteries apparently nearing its limits, the shortcomings are becoming clearer every day.

Lithium batteries catch fire and explode. 

And when they’re not doing that, they’re slowly, steadily, constantly failing. 

Ever let your phone or EV power supply fall below 20% charge? That’s doing damage. 

Ever charge it past 80%? That’s doing damage too. 

Eventually, after a couple hundred charge and discharge cycles, every lithium-ion battery will fail, and with potentially catastrophic effects. 

Anything That Can Go Wrong… Has

And all of this comes after the catastrophe that came just with sourcing that lithium to begin with. 

Environmentally, lithium is a real bastard to mine and refine, with more than 500 tons of water required per ton of product extracted.

But contaminating water isn’t a problem for the world’s biggest lithium producer, China, because to them, the idea of environmental responsibility is nothing more than a silly western preoccupation — the result of too much comfort and spare time.

That's a stark reality to accept, but we love our batteries too much to do anything about it. 

The Chinese have been planning their lithium-based takeover of the world for decades now, with the initial foundation of the plan laid down by former Chinese premier Deng Xiaoping back in the late '80s. 

Thirty years later, the vertical integration ladder is complete and they are quickly moving toward monopolizing battery production as well.

Even Elon Musk gets his batteries from the Chinese these days.

China's Saudi Arabia Moment

So yes, the problems are big and numerous, yet the market is still sitting on a better-than-20% CAGR between now and the year 2030. 

The truth is, at this point, we need lithium batteries. We need them to be better and to come from better sources, but we need them, and we’re going to continue to need them in greater quantity for years to come. 

Which means that we need a smart solution — now. 

One company based in British Columbia may have already found the answer. 

It's making the next generation of lithium-ion batteries and it's doing it on a nanoscopic level. 

By engineering its cathodes on a molecular scale, it has created some of the world’s best, most structurally perfect rechargeable batteries known to man. 

They boast a higher energy density, are far more reliable, and last longer – as expected.

Smarter Lithium Cathodes = Smarter Batteries

Surprisingly, however, all of this comes not with a cost but with yet another benefit. Because the process for making these new cathodes has itself been radically modernized and streamlined, it’s actually cheaper and less demanding in terms of energy. 

So you get massive performance improvements as well as a simplified and optimized production process that actually cuts cost. 

Now, I cover revolutionary, industry-disruptive companies on a regular basis, but this company has already shown that it’s got what it takes to go from concept to execution. 

When I first laid eyes on this company, years ago, it was trading for less than a dollar, with a market cap of maybe US$70 million.

Today it’s triple that, and the business plan is racing toward execution. The next step should put it into billion-dollar territory. 

Look, we already know that the lithium market is here to stay. Plenty of companies have grown into multibillion-dollar giants off the trend already, and things are only now starting to gain momentum 

In the coming years, things will change more than ever, but it won’t be the established old guard that cleans up on the hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue. 

It will be companies that change and evolve the face of the business… companies like the one I described above. 

Just this week, I released a detailed research presentation on the topic. It’s available for the first time, right here.

The information is free, but the opportunity it could open for you could be life-altering. 

Don’t wait to see this story in Fortune magazine. 

Get it here, while it’s still flying under the radar.

Fortune favors the bold,

Alex Koyfman

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His flagship service, Microcap Insider, provides market-beating insights into some of the fastest moving, highest profit-potential companies available for public trading on the U.S. and Canadian exchanges. With more than 5 years of track record to back it up, Microcap Insider is the choice for the growth-minded investor. Alex contributes his thoughts and insights regularly to Energy and Capital. To learn more about Alex, click here.