http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0e091ff8-fd5a-11e5-b5f5-070dca6d0a0d.html Copper miners pin hopes on electric cars as China falters April 8, 2016 Henry Sanderson
The world’s copper miners and traders are pinning their hopes on increased demand for the metal from the makers of electric cars, after Tesla Motors revealed more than $10bn of pre-orders for its mass-market vehicle, the Model 3. Robert Friedland, billionaire founder of Ivanhoe Mines, showed a picture of a Tesla vehicle at the annual copper conference in Santiago this week, saying it will consume 65 kg of copper per car. Friedland’s HPX exploration company is working “very closely” with Tesla, he said. “Copper is the king of metals,” he said. “Just based on world ecological and environmental problems every single solution drives you to copper — solar power, wind power, electric cars, you name it.” While demand for copper could increase because of its uses in electric cars and in renewable energy, other analysts say this is unlikely to make up for weakness in demand from China’s construction and infrastructure industries, which are slowing ... In the short term, miners and traders gathered in Chile said the copper price is likely to fall further without a recovery in demand in China and amid growing global supply from large mines brought on stream during the boom years. Batteries in electric vehicles are likely to use 927,000 tonnes of copper a year by 2030, according to forecasts by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That amounts to around 5 per cent of total production in 2014. Still, miners in Santiago remained hopeful. Each electric vehicle requires four-times as much copper as its gasoline counterpart, before including the copper used in recharging infrastructure and electricity generation, according to John MacKenzie, executive chairman of Mantos Copper, which bought two copper mines in Chile last year as part of a consortium. “Copper remains the best electrical conductor available and this will be more and more important in a world where energy efficiency is a priority,” he said in Santiago. “Sales of electric vehicles, together with other drivers such as renewable energy, will provide added impetus to future copper demand.” But in the meantime global copper supply has grown by 3 per cent this year and, if there is no pick-up in demand in China, copper prices need to fall to below $2 a pound ($4,400 a tonne) before production cuts occur, Mr MacKenzie said ... [© THE FINANCIAL TIMES 2016] For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-Miners-pin-hopes-on-Electric-copper-cars-tp4681513.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
