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According to S&P Global lithium demand should grow at least 20% in 2019 compared with 2018, driven by batteries for electric vehicles, Chilean producer SQM said in its annual report. There appears to be an amount of emerging juniors and majors of the lithium mining sector attempting to modernize the industry with advancing and improved abilities to extract lithium at a lower cost and faster pace over the lithium minors of the recent past. In other words, there is now a new level of producers in the markets with lithium demand set to soar once again.
Analysts are now giving way to the notion that the supply-demand balance may just be actually much tighter than prices suggest. A few key demand drivers for the lithium industry starts off the obvious with the Global demand for electric vehicles (EV). According to Argus Media, lithium ion batteries in EVs have increased from 10 GWh to 70 GWh in only a decade, with estimates placing the market to reach 223 GWh by 2025, an increase of 300x from current levels. EVs have been taking off in the United States, with sales increasing by 81% in 2018, though a more modest increase is expected in 2019. EVs take up 2.4% of total vehicles in the United States.
Elon Musk wants 20 gigafactories producing lithium batteries for Tesla EVs by the next decade. Benchmark thinks new factories will be using up 534,000 tons in new demand (on top of current demand of 200,000 tons) by 2028. hen there is the other demand side factor: as the energy storage sector grows, demand for lithium-ion batteries will grow by leaps and bounds. By one estimate, the market could reach $92 billion by 2024, with a CAGR of 16%. The market was worth $21.6 billion in 2018.
A slightly more conservative estimate has the market reaching $40 billion by 2025, but that's still nearly 100% in growth in less than a decade. Another estimate is $60 billion by 2024. Due to declining prices, Bloomberg raised its forecast for lithium ion batteries due to lower than expected prices. While one of the better takes on the industry could come from the estimate from from Global Market Insights, which predicts energy storage and automotive lithium ion battery demand to double by 2024 as well as stating "Beyond electric vehicles and energy storage, the U.S. market will see changes due to the "growing adoption of smart devices coupled with [a] shift toward digitization across industrial and healthcare sector[s]".
