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Maybe you missed it, but China is now “The Center of the Lithium Universe”. China is already the world’s largest electric vehicle market, says Kirill Klip, President of International Lithium Corp.
The recent Volkswagen scandal has once again shed light on polluting vehicles and the health hazard they pose to the public and environment. In hopes of ending this tainted legacy governments have began implementing regulations to phase out emission causing vehicles. Respectively, all major automakers have followed suit and pledged to build dozens of electric vehicles in years to come.
BYD, the Chinese company backed by Warren Buffet, is the largest EV manufacturer in the world, thus the Chinese companies are producing the largest amount of lithium chemicals for the batteries required to make them. The market is booming, there are currently 25 companies making 51 models of electric cars in China. Over 500,000 EVs will be sold in China this year alone. By comparison it took GM 7 years to sell 100,000 Chevy Volts since 2009 which was also the total of sales for BYD in a year.
Now there are reports that China is pushing for the very aggressive California style Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program. “8% of new cars to be electric by 2018, 12% by 2020.” Let’s put it into perspective: this year there are just over 1% of new cars sales in China. By 2018 they are talking about a factor of 8x that and 12x by 2020. That’s a 12x increase in the number of electric cars to be produced in China! Let’s digest it all for a moment…
Chinese companies currently control the majority of the Lithium Hydroxide market, a critical chemical product (so-called battery grade lithium) that goes into EV batteries. The same product that also goes into Tesla batteries, which Panasonic makes lithium cells for.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.renewablesinternational.net/china-the-centre-of-the-lithium-universe/150/537/99497/