Dear Reader,
Most of you have heard of graphene.
It's the super-strong, super-light, super-conductive carbon nanostructure that won its key researchers, Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, the Nobel Prize in 2010.
It was a well-deserved win, to say the least.
Just one molecule thick and arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice, graphene is 200 times stronger than steel yet lighter than standard copy paper.
Lately, however, it's not its structural strength that's been the focus of attention.
One new field of research in particular has some of the most powerful people in tech worried about their livelihoods, and it all goes back to one word: batteries.
According to AZoM, only of the world's leading authorities on materials science, mass-produced graphene aluminum-ion batteries will soon boast properties such as a 60x increase in charge speed as well as a 3x longer service life.
This will allow a coin-sized battery to be recharged in 10 seconds instead of 10 minutes and an AA cell to be recharged in a minute — a fact that should be of special interest to the electric vehicle industry, as current EV battery packs are nothing more than thousands of AA cells wired together.
With the cells feeding simultaneously, the total time at the plug for a Tesla equipped with a graphene aluminum-ion battery pack will be equal to the charge time for a single cell: just around 60 seconds.
That's quicker than filling a standard car's gas tank.
Elon Musk's Next Acquisition?
Now, before you ask the question, let me answer it for you: Yes, Elon Musk knows this, and the rumor mill is already turning out guesses as to when Tesla might make the switch-over.
So far, however, there has been one major hurdle: cost.
Up until now, the cost of production for what could go down as the miracle material of the 21st century has been as high as $15,000 per kilogram.
That's at least 1,000 times too high for graphene to be viable in the mass-production game, but all of that is about to about to change.
An Australian company based in Brisbane has patented a process for manufacturing graphene that may be as game-changing as the material itself.
Using nothing more than natural gas the chief raw material, overhead could be slashed to just a couple dollars per kilogram.
Moreover, with natural gas being widely abundant in North America, the graphene will pose no issues whatsoever in terms of troublesome links in the supply chain.
The same cannot be said for the reigning king of rechargeables, lithium, whose global production capacity has been in the crosshairs of the Chinese Communist Party for years.
Every Lithium Battery You Buy Feeds Our Rivals
Right now, it is completely conceivable that graphene will supplant lithium-ion batteries as the global standard for rechargeable batteries before the end of the decade.
However, for this to happen, the company that owns the patents to this new production method will have to sign a lot of contracts with a lot of battery-makers to license this technology.
Among them, the biggest battery-maker in the world, Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA).
The company behind all this is well on the way to achieving the goals set out by its founders in 2016.
It's already operating a production plant in Brisbane; already producing functioning cells; and already sending out early-run samples to potential clients for testing and evaluation.
The first graphene batteries will be the tiny coin-style units that power many small devices, including the long-term memory storage in your laptop or tablet.
Ultimately, however, this small unknown tech firm hopes to put its technology into every product class in existence, from wireless devices, to cars, to residential and commercial distributed energy storage systems.
Is This Company Tomorrow's Standard Oil?
If this company is successful in penetrating even 5% of today's lithium market, that will represent annual revenues totaling more than 10 times the company's current market capitalization.
Yes, the company is that small — under $300 million (USD) at the moment.
But let's be realistic. If these batteries deliver on their promise, this company won't be taking 5% or even 25% of the market…
It will wipe out the lithium-ion battery market entirely and make current prospective alternatives, like manganese, obsolete overnight.
It will, put more succinctly, become the energy supplier of the 21st century, the same way the oil giants of the gilded age were more than 100 years ago.
Given his penchant for buying, it's fairly safe to assume that Musk will snap up this company and all of its IP outright long before that happens.
Which makes right now the time for risk-tolerant investors to make their mark.
Shares of this graphene battery-maker are already trading on North American exchanges. In fact, you can buy their shares today, right now, if you have access to a live broker or any popular online trading platform.
All you need is the ticker symbol.
But before you make that decision, I urge you to get all the facts and understand all the risks involved.
To make things easier, I've put together all of the relevant data in a single video presentation, which you can view here free of charge and with no registration.
Do your due diligence, but do it quickly. Yesterday alone, shares rose more than 7%.
There's no telling where they'll be at the end of the week.
Don't delay. Get informed now.
Fortune favors the bold,
Alex Koyfman
Check us out on YouTube!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.
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