The Wednesday Energy Absurdity: New Market Developments Do Not Bode Well For The EV Industry

Elon Musk responded Tuesday to the news that General Motors’ sales of electric vehicles during Q4 2021 amount to - wait for it - 26 vehicles!

Not 26 thousand or 26 hundred or even 260: TWENTY-SIX (26) VEHICLES, made up of 25 Chevy Bolts and ONE (1) Hummer EV pickup truck.

Here is Musk’s hilariously understated response to the news:

GM's pathetic EV sales figures come after months upon months of shameless promotions by the company claiming that it is transforming its entire fleet, and after Joe Biden had praised GM CEO Mary Barra for "electricizing [not a real word] the entire automotive industry."

As reported by Business Insider, GM’s 26 unit sales in Q4 2021 compare to the 6,700 EVs it sold during Q4 2020. The company announced in August that it was halting production of the Bolt model due to a flaw in the vehicle’s batteries.

In other GM-related news, 2021 was the first year in a century in which GM did not have the most car sales in America. Toyota actually sold more cars in America than General Motors did during 2021.

Business Insider reports that:

GM said on Tuesday it sold a total of 2.2 million vehicles last year in the US, down from 2.55 million in 2020. Toyota, meanwhile, said it sold 2.3 million units in the US in 2021, a 10.4% jump from 2020.

Musk's Tesla said it sold 936,172 of its electric vehicles in the whole of 2021, delivering 308,600 units in the fourth quarter.

But the news is not all good for Musk and Tesla, and certainly not for the EV industry overall.

Oil, copper, natural gas and coffee all had big gains in value during 2021, but these commodities’ price increases paled in comparison to the single mineral that is most important to the growth of EVs: Lithium.

Oilprice.com reports this morning that the price for Lithium rose by - wait for it - a whopping 477% [!] over the course of the past year.

Here’s an excerpt from the Oilprice.com piece, discussing increasing instances of shortages of Lithium around the world:

Last year, Chile's second-largest lithium producer, Albemarle Corp. (NYSE:ALB), warned that global supplies of lithium were on course for a major shortfall in a few years' time if prices continued to fail to reflect the costs of funding massive expansions amid the  EV boom. Specifically, ALB highlighted the chasm between discount-hunting EV manufacturers and lithium producers who could not meet growing demand at persistently low prices.

But maybe Eric Norris, operations manager for Albermale's lithium business, rushed his fences: lithium carbonate prices have nearly doubled since then.

Despite lithium carbonate prices doubling from those lows, another giant lithium producer has been singing the same tune.

Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium, the world's largest lithium mining company with a market capitalization of $19 billion, says that lithium prices will continue to rally as lithium production struggles to keep up with massive demand for EVs. The Chinese company has some decent street cred--after all, it counts leading EV automakers such as Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) and BMW (OTCPK:BMWYY) among its customers.

Ganfeng Lithium has gone into an acquisition spree as it anticipates an extended lithium boom, as reported by Bloomberg, thanks to a global supply squeeze.

[End]

Given that EVs cannot exist with out lithium-ion batteries and that the critical mineral plays a major role in driving the cost for these cars, this massive rise in price - caused by increasing global scarcity of the mineral itself - will most likely ensure that, for the foreseeable future, EVs will remain what they always have been: boutique vehicles for the wealthy and privileged in our society

That's our energy reality, which as always stands in stark contrast to the fantasy-based energy transition narrative pushed by 98% of our news media.

You just cannot make this stuff up, folks.