The Conversation (0)
Luke Burgess of Energy and Capital recently published a piece exploring palladium’s connection to the lithium revolution. He argues that hybrid vehicles, which still need palladium for catalytic converters, will gain market share more quickly than purely electric vehicles, meaning that palladium demand could still be set to rise.
Luke Burgess of Energy and Capital recently published a piece exploring palladium’s connection to the lithium revolution. He argues that hybrid vehicles, which still need palladium for catalytic converters, will gain market share more quickly than purely electric vehicles, meaning that palladium demand could still be set to rise.
As quoted in the publication:
All plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), which burn either gasoline or diesel, require catalytic converters.
In other words, PHEVs will require both lithium for their energy storage batteries and palladium or platinum for catalytic converters.
The only cars that don’t require catalytic converters are battery electric vehicles (BEV), which don’t burn any hydrocarbon fuel.
Now, the BEV market is an extremely profitably industry right now. But that’s because BEVs still only hold about 1% of the total global vehicle market share — and that market is growing like wildfire.
However, even the most optimistic outlook on the BEV market doesn’t expect that the global market share for battery electric vehicles will cross 10% until at least 2030.
The majority of the “electric” vehicles are expected to be hybrids — which means the world is still going to need a lot of these babies.
