RE:RE:RE:None of this makes any sense: Part IIAlthough sales numbers are low as a percentage of total US vehicle sales the growth has been very good. EV sales in the US were as follows: 2016 - 150,000 sold, 2017 - 199,000 sold (up 26%), 2018 - 361,000 sold (up 81%). US EV sales have also been at or over 100,000 per year since 2013.
So let’s crunch some basic numbers. For our example let’s assume EV batteries have a lifespan of approximately 7 years, so just using 2013 US sales numbers as a starting point (ignoring all built before 2013) by 2020 approximately 100,000 EV batteries will need to be recycled. The value of the cathode varies per vehicle and the size of battery pack installed, the base Tesla Model 3 has approximately $1,900 of recyclable cathode material. Other models and battery packs can have a recyclable value of up to $3,500 per vehicle; also depending on spot battery metal prices. So let’s use conservative numbers, 100,000 (spent EV batteries) X $1,900 (low-end recoverable value) = $190 Million worth of recyclable material (lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, etc) in 2020.
Keep in mind this is just US sales numbers. If you just take the 2017 worldwide sales numbers, again ignoring all built before 2017, there were just over 1,000,000 EVs sold. So by approximately 2024, there will be 1,000,000(spent EV batteries) X $1,900 (low-end recoverable value) = $1.9 Billion worth of recyclable material.
There are a lot of assumptions with these numbers, but these are on the basic, conservative side of calculations. They also don’t include EV commercial vehicles, batteries for storage (home and power grid), and consumer electronics. Laptops, tablets, and cell phone batteries are also a huge market.
But given all this, the immediate recycling need is with the battery producers. When producing battery cells there are scrap cathode foil trimmings and defective batteries, somewhere in the 5-10% range, that need to be recycled. Every battery manufacturer should have a recycling plant at or near their battery plant. Take a look at Benchmark Minerals and the work they are doing to track world battery production, supply, and demand from mines to finished cells. They are now tracking 72 battery megafactories in the pipeline waiting to completed or built worldwide. The growth in the coming years will be tremendous. The problem isn’t that car manufacturers are slow to produce EVs, it’s because they don’t have the battery production to fully transition their fleet from ICE vehicles to EVs.
AMY needs this pilot plant to be successful. All they have done so far is prove it at a bench level in a lab. That is why the stock price is where it is and why the pilot plant needs to be demonstrated before we see any price appreciation through partnership announcements, licensing agreements, or even a buyout. Until the pilot plant is successful, AMY remains a highly speculative investment. We are also about 3-months away from the completion of testing for the pilot plant’s 1-5 step process. That is when I expect things to heat up, until then take a breather until end of May early June and we will re-evaluate from there.