Lithium

Every battery in every electric car needs lithium. Australia mines most of the world's lithium ore. But Australia doesn't refine it. Chinese processors buy raw lithium and transform it into battery-grade material. Then everyone else depends on that Chinese processed lithium. It's a bottleneck. Between twenty twenty and twenty twenty two, battery-grade lithium prices swung from five thousand dollars per ton to nearly eighty five thousand. A four hundred percent swing. Not from scarcity of raw ore. From concentration of refining capacity. The entire electric vehicle industry held its breath every time lithium futures twitched.