$AMBL I am posting this interesting insight from the newsletter “The Electric.” I am long:
Auto and battery makers are heading into scrap hell—and that’s the real reason, and not end-of-battery-life concerns, as companies are claiming, that they are piling into recycling companies. That is, when they make their first year or two of batteries, they are likely to lose 30% and more of their material to defects, rejects and cuttings, until they figure out what they are doing and get their yield rates up. One fact stood out in this column: In the third quarter of 2017, months after Panasonic flipped on the switch at Tesla’s first gigafactory, 84% of its anodes, cathodes and so on ended up on the factory floor. Look for scrap hell in most or all the hundreds of gigafactories going up in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
Steve LeVine
Editor, The Electric