Vanadium. 3. Vanadium
Supercharging the High-Performance Battery Market
The third mineral is vanadium. While iron and titanium have steady industrial demand, vanadium has taken the pole position as a breakthrough ingredient for electric batteries.
First, vanadium grid-scale energy storage is an essential aspect of any intermittent energy source such as wind or solar, and has superior potential versus any current lithium-ion technology.
Second, what could be an even more significant game changer in the global electric car battery market (which could reach $84 billion by 2025)4, vanadium increases the performance of lithium ion batteries. Replacing cobalt oxide cathodes with vanadium disulfide increases storage capacity, power output, and recharging speed. Eventually, this could even have implications for consumer electronics and renewable energy power, but for now the key area of focus is electric vehicles—with intriguing examples such as an Audi A2 equipped with a lithium-vanadium battery that set a new long-distance record. Among the other companies doing R&D on lithium-vanadium-phosphate batteries and could soon put them into production include China’s BYD Auto, Japan’s Subaru Motors and GS Yuasa Corp. (which provides batteries for Mitsubishi Motors), and the United States’ Valence Technologies.5
Vanadium: On the Verge of Revolutionizing Batteries?
It’s well-known that the Achilles’ heel of alternative energies such as wind and solar is that they’re intermittent—only generating power when conditions permit, and leaving fossil fuels to pick up the slack when they aren’t. Grid battery storage remains a difficult problem anywhere green energy is used.
Similarly, the potential of electric cars has been constantly hindered by poor battery life and slow charging—limiting their utility for anything other than short trips within metro areas.
Vanadium is on the verge of solving both issues. In layman’s terms, vanadium redox battery technology exploits vanadium ions in four different oxidation states to store chemical potential energy—creating an emerging solution for grid energy storage.
In car batteries, vanadium is looking like the miracle solution—turbo-boosting lithium ion batteries so that they charge faster, hold more power, and last longer.9
During the last Vanadium run, the market showed how vanadium stocks could soar—for example, Largo Resources jumped 285% while First Vanadium skyrocketed a whopping 616%. Rather than guessing which manufacturer will win the battery race, savvy mining investors know the real value will be tapped by the company that supplies vanadium battery companies with vital raw materials.7