Recharge Jan26 (2025 review and outlook thoughts)

Hi, my name is Matt Furnley, Editor of Battery Materials Review, and here's all the key news in the world of battery materials this month. [Music] So welcome to January's edition of the Recharge Podcast. Before we start, some important news from me, as some of you might know, last year battery materials review merged with RK equity. As part of the evolution of the combined platform, BMR is now transitioning to quarterly, not a monthly schedule. I only state that because over the past few years, BMR has provided many of the talking points for the recharge podcast. But fear not, we're going to crack on with recharge on a monthly basis just as normal, and I think looking at what's going on in the industry at the moment, there should be plenty for Kormack and I to talk about. And we would hope to have some guests joining us as well over the course of the year. So without further ado, let me welcome my co-presenter, Kormack O'Lara, MD of Electoral Senergy, and let's get cracking. Hi Kormack, happy Western New Year. Yeah, happy New Year. I already got a couple of happy New Year's, year to horses though, which I thought was a bit early, but New Year. Okay, brilliant. Yeah. So very interesting, yeah, 2025, I think I would say is a year of two halves, very much a year of two halves. You know, I've got my Outlook piece for 26 just published on the RK equity blog system this morning. We had a very interesting interview last week with YJ Lee, who's been one of the big bulls on Lithium with his assumptions for 26. Let's talk a little bit sort of more sort of downstreamy on raw materials demand and maybe start off with EVs, which started 2025 as the key sector, and ended 2025 as not the key sector. But yeah, so big developments really in many countries over the course of the year, but let's start off in China. And yeah, what do you think about the development of the EV space in China over the course of the last year and going forward into 26? Oh, interesting question. You know, probably at the start of the year when you mentioned EV, we're talking about one system, but the end of the year now, you know, a lot of the releases are PHEVs, EVs and your favorite type, E or EVs. And a lot of the most recent models released in China, are these long range E or EVs, which is, you know, again, we're seeing the Americans slightly transition towards the more hybrid solution. And there's a battle between a lot of the EV startups in China and the E or EV SUV type of vehicles. I think we saw one released recently with a 1700 mile range. Yeah, I mean, that's very interesting because over the course of 2025, I mean, at the end of 24, I was very excited about E or EVs. We thought, you know, the PHEVs, E or EVs were going to be big tech in 25. And then we didn't really see that. We actually saw B, Vs regaining some market share. But now you think that 26 may be the year of the E or EV and the PHEV. Yeah, I mean, these are gigantic vehicles. I certainly goes against your 2023 sentiment about small EVs. I mean, there's some monster EVs coming out of our E or EVs in China at the moment. All seven, eight cedars. And like we saw some similar with Ford's announcement, right, with the the lightning F-150 lightning, they will now road back. Well, they bring out the E or EV version of it. Which is, you know, as we highlight the time, the CEO of Ford is a big fan of E or EVs. And he really, I think, really sees the potential. But it, it amazes me with the E or EVs. That what we've seen is, you know, a move into these monsters, you describe them E or EVs. Rather than what many of us sort of in the industry thought would be the solution for E or EVs, which is like, you know, medium-sized EVs with very small batteries used as a range extender. And maybe that's a reaction to the fact that lithium prices and cell prices have been so, so low over the last 12 to 18 months. Yeah, I mean, they've been building bigger battery, integrating bigger battery packs. In China also, there's a shift towards the large battery packs, again, which is kind of interesting. But you know, Chinese government just released the new policy on PHEVs where the minimum range, the V needs is 100 kilometers on battery, pure battery alone, I mean, on battery. And we're seeing, you know, competition between the PHEV makers now to who can, who can have the largest already longest range PHEV battery pack. So we're seeing, although the standard is 100 kilometers, they're all pushing out PHEVs with a range of 200 kilometers, which is, that's a bit bigger than the score. So this is the competition, you know, every, every new technology comes out, the, it's fierce competition to gain edge and, you know, it's not good enough just to be up to standard. So they're pushing the envelope on PHEV range as well, which is coming up to what we were seeing in EVs about five years ago. So, I mean, when you think, when you think you've reached a commodity type level, the industry just keeps changing. So, you know, if we can think back to ICEs, there's basically one solution where EV industry does not rest at all. It's a constant innovation to get competitive edge. And it's worked out for some of the Chinese EV makers. I was seeing Neo so well on sales, Xiaomi, we mean they came out of nowhere and they're good, anticipated producing half a million cars this year. And, but not so good for companies like BYD that have seen their market share in China really being eroded and reliant very much on exports now for, for, you know, gains in sales. Yeah, I mean, BYD is a good example. You know, there's going to be, they're having a tech day at the end of February. So, so basically relaunches some of the projects, products, but they just had a tech day in November. So, I don't get it, but BYD has gone heavy into your EVs as well. They've revamped some of their models. They have, they've, they've removed some of the smaller EVs that we saw earlier that was one of the successes. I think they're feeling the competition more on the upper end of the market rather than the lower end, which is, you know, which was their mainstay for many years. It's hard to push into the top end when BYD or more known for being mass-market GBV and now, you know, the selling 100 grand EVs. But it's very interesting, because in the last sort of couple of months, we've actually seen a return of things like the Wooling Hongguan MiniV to the top 10 lists, you know, in a way that we hadn't really seen for, for many months, should we say. So, we're actually seeing, you know, for instance, in November, the Wooling was the top selling model in China, you know, the G-L-E G-O, I can't even pronounce that, G-I-N-Q-I-N, G-I-N-Q-I-N, something like that. That was the number three position. So, we're, we're, we are seeing, you know, segment A and segment B EVs selling very well, even though you're, you know, the Tesla cars continue to perform well as well and some of those. Yeah, some of those as well, yeah. But it's a big slide off between BYD and the others, right? So BYD is like 4.5 million, and then after you get past third place, you don't know like 50,000. Yeah, it's a big, big drop off there. But, you know, I think I said it to you before, you won't see any Woolings in any of the major cities. That's the one of the tail tail science for me. Yeah, but I mean, it is amazing. I mean, if we look at the first 11 months of the year, and I'm, you know, I'm looking at the data from, from a clean technique here, the top three selling, you know, vehicles in China are the G-L-E G-I-G-1, which has a 3.7% market share. That's the segment B car. The Wooling Hunk-1 Mini, which is a segment A car, which is a 3.5% market share. And then the Tesla Model Y, which is a segment D car, 3.1% market share. Then we've got like four BYD cars. The Xiaomi, as you said, another BYD, and then the Tesla Model 3, rounding out the top 10. But, you know, you've got small cars dominating the top two positions. So it's still, you know, it's still clearly a very important area, you know, segment in China. And it's going to be really interesting to see what happens now that the subsidies are starting to roll off a little bit. Yeah, I mean, yeah, so there could be a nice little push to start before Chinese New Year on the EV sales in China. That's what the feedback is. But, yeah, we've been here to subsidies roll back for five years straight. Every time there's a little dip in demand, then they revisit the subsidies. But it looks like they're serious this time though. So, well, I mean, we certainly see a slowdown in not sales, but sales growth. So, you know, in the first 10 months of the year, 9 or 10 months of the year, EV sales in China were up sort of something like, you know, what, what, what, 20 or percent year on year, just trying to find my data here. You know, yeah, in the first six months of the year, EV sales were up sort of 15, 20 percent year on year every month. And then in the in the second or the last five months, you know, EV sales are up, you know, two, three, four, five percent year on year. So, definitely seen a slowdown in the rate of growth in the last four or five months or so. And that coincides with some of the subsidies sort of, you know, dropping out in some of the larger cities and provinces. So, it's going to be very, very interesting whether to see, as you say, whether the Chinese government stick with with that roll off or go, oh, you know, what a nightmare, you know, we better re-target EV sales. Yeah. Well, I didn't know. You know, there's a few things behind here. Deantying and evolution is one over capacity. The other is, you know, there's a, and this is right across the American all materials. To a certain extent. And put, I mean, there's a few reasons behind it, of course. But yeah, I can find my exact data here. But you know, if you look individual module models versus, you know, car makers, you know, it's all sorts of ways to analyze that data. Oh, yeah. You can you can always cut the data in a different way. I know I've been at Alice for 25 years. I know all about that. Anyway, moving swiftly on. So that's the Chinese market, I think, very interesting set up for 26. Let's talk about some of the other sort of mature markets now. The US market was very, very interesting in 25 going in. I was expecting sales to come off much earlier than they did. They actually, when he started to come off in the in the fourth quarter. But now, obviously, we have a situation whereby, you know, sales in October and November were at levels last seen in 2022, when, you know, EV sales and the states were materially lower than they were in in 2024 and looked like they're going to be in 2025. So are we going back to sort of 2022 sales levels in the US? And then in Europe, I have to hold my hand up here and sale was wrong on Europe in 25. Sales growth was much higher than I was anticipating. So we're probably looking at about 15 to 17% for the year. I think I was anticipating about a 5% growth rate. So interested in your thoughts on those two markets, particularly bearing in mind that China's companies, particularly BYD, are getting significant traction in Europe. And obviously, they're completely shut out of the US market. Yeah, that's one way of putting it, completely shut out. But not the North American market, right? I mean, yeah, not in Mexico. Don't know about Canada though. But yeah, it's interesting because 2025, I think, as you said earlier, was tipped to be a stronger year for EV sales in US. But there's a lot more going on there. I mean, it's still 1.5 million or something like that, which is. Yeah, it'd be also monthly sale in China. But obviously, the problem is that in 22, it was just over a million. So that's the concern. And obviously, if we hit the sort of rates that we are sales that we hit in October and November, then that's the sort of level we'd be looking at in 2022. Yeah, I mean, we had the. The subsidy, our tax rebate removed. We had Elon and Trump at the beginning of the year. That wasn't good for the main driver sales Tesla. And then we, you know, typical story in the tire of some Chinese materials. I mean, that's going to slow a lot down. Slow much so, the US that we've had battery companies, you know, mothballing some of their plants in US or converting them to the hotter market, which is energy storage, of course, which I'm sure we'll talk about later. And we have, as you talked about earlier, a Ford. You know, I don't know how the guy still has a job to be honest with you. The Ford CEO, as you mentioned earlier, this guy has burned money. And now he's just pivoting into the next hop topic. So, you know, we should be talking about later. But yeah, US, it was bad here for EVs in US, no doubt about it 2025. And Europe, I mean, you know, in the UK, we're seeing the Chinese gain massive market share, particularly BYD, into the UK. And similarly, into some of the big markets in Europe, what are you seeing in Ireland? Yeah, the Europe's, you know, I went to a couple of EV conferences in Europe during the year. And I mean, it's just night and day difference between what you see in China. Europe is all about, I mean, Europe's all about innovation, long road, long roads of, so a lot of exhibitors were innovators, our tech startups would long road plans on, you know, bringing in lithium metal or exotic ways to recycle batteries. I mean, still the focus didn't seem to be on the here and now there. So, I'm not surprised. But, you know, as you said, Europe was a surprise for you on EV sales. And, you know, the doors have been open for China now. We have EV, we have all the major Chinese battery makers coming in with the big BYD factory in Hungary. I mean, the doors wide open, we got Stellantis and CATL, I think. And this is the opportunity that US miss that we'll see Europe continue to have better sales than US, because we have. Well, and also, I mean, the retail, the consumer embraces EVs much more in Europe than in the US. I mean, in the US, you're still seeing those works, sort of second car sort of, you know, situation, whereas in Europe, I think the consumer is really, you know, supportive of EVs, demographically and also from the point of view of embracing the the thematic on climate change. So, I think in Europe, there's much more, you know, grassroots support for EVs as well as government support for EVs. And consumer, right? Because consumers, in Europe are more than willing, I'd say much more than US to take cheap Chinese EVs. That is your your small EVs for cheap price. Europe will hoover those up with the, you know, the kind of city infrastructure we got in Europe much different to US tight roads, tight parking spots, congestion charges. I mean, so it's a really, it really fertile market for the kind of EVs that China want to sell. And, you know, there's been a bit of a little bit of a road back on the tariffs, our EV taxes on the Chinese imports, which is going to be necessary. Talking about road backs in Europe, I'm interested to get your perspective on this. Obviously, one of the big road backs in the back end of the year was the rollback on the 2020, 2035 emissions targets. My view is probably not about relevant because I think everybody knew that there was not a hope in hell of hitting those 2035 emissions targets anyway. Do you have a different view? No, I think at that time that we were not confident that we're going to hit the emission targets. It was just too much, too soon. And in one way, it could have sunk the whole European automotive industry. So, you know, you remember, it was that when the emission targets came about 2019, 2020, yeah, it was just around the pandemic, wasn't it? And it was a brave new world and everything was going to be brilliant. No, I see sales beyond 2035, I mean, I was scratching my head at the time, but you know, this was a government policy again as it continues to do to not really have a firm grasp of what's required in this market. I know we focus more on materials and but that's just another example of completely missing the boat that they're going to retool all the automotive factories for batteries without having any batteries or the materials to satisfy somebody requirement. So, you got the European Commission on the other end asking for, you know, 40% locally sourced materials and you're like, okay, good luck with that boys as well. Yeah, I mean, there was a little bit egg in the face, a little bit of a roll back, but you know, the automotive guys gives them a little bit more breathing room, I guess, but you know, they've had enough time and they still haven't been so very successful and European OEMs in building out what's required. And now the Chinese are in town with their big factories, their partnering with them and the battery factories and we'll have the EV factories as well. And I think the other thing that goes under a lot of people's radar is also the cathode and anode factories that are going in in Morocco. So, you know, the EU again hasn't been overly successful in investing in the midstream infrastructure, but there's a lot of investment going into Morocco as an LFP factory going into Spain and stuff like that. So, you know, we are seeing through value chain investment around the European ecosystem, not necessarily directly in the European ecosystem, but it is good to see, I think. Well, yeah, wait, that's a lot of help from Hong Kong and that, right? Nearly there is EVs trying to IPO and Hong Kong's exchange at the moment. This, the battery, Chinese battery companies and materials companies are really thirsty for international capital and by IPO and Hong Kong. We saw CTOs had a very one of the best IPOs ever in Hong Kong. Yeah. Hong Kong's exchange. Yeah. Primarily to build the Hungarian and Spanish factories. Yeah, I was actually about that. You know, I was on the buy side for what, 60 years, five and a half years, desperate to play CATL. And just as I left the buy side, they went and listed in Hong Kong. So, I was absolutely gassed by that. My God. It's been, and like unusual for battery IPOs, that's continued, the stock price continues to grow. Yeah. I mean, it's stable or ungrowing. The rest of them haven't been as successful. I noticed that, you know, this, you know, we could get into it a little bit, but, you know, all of your tier two guys are, you know, panicking now with the tax rebate removal in China. Well, yeah, I mean, let's talk about that because that obviously just came out in the last few days. Yeah. And I mean, it shows, to me at least, it shows that the Chinese are pretty serious about this, you know, strategies that they've gotten out to minimize over capacity. And there's no doubt that some of the, you know, some manufacturers and solar manufacturers have been utilising the tax rebate to shove, you know, low cost material outside the Chinese market. So, so what do you think this means for the, for the Chinese family? It's going to have a big effect coming up to April when it comes in. Like, I'm getting a lot of calls ready for my clients wanting to go to China secure, primarily energy storage batteries for while the rebate's still in play, good pricing, so we're going to see a lot of drawdown on the stocks there, which is what China wants in a way. And it will cease maybe. So a lot of these, this is 9% tax rebate. That is a margin for a lot of these companies, the Chinese tier twos. And we might see some of this extra capacity being muckballed as well in China in terms of tier twos, where you see ATLs, you B-YDs aren't particularly worried about it because they weren't relying on that tax rebate to operate the business. So we're seeing, yeah, we're going to see huge demand energy storage batteries in the West, so hoovering up whatever capacity. I got the feeling China needs a lot of energy storage batteries themselves. I got to feeling if some of this is to keep the batteries aren't sure in China. Absolutely certainly. I mean, that's how we've seen the Chinese government acting in the past, you know, in primary raw materials. So remove the export rebate. And that removes the attraction of putting this stuff into the export market. You've got to leave it domestically and bang, it's more available for the domestic market. So I'm absolutely certain that that's what the Chinese government is doing. They want to maintain this stuff domestically and not have producers exporting Chinese resources. Yeah, I think that's the media plan. China has a very large energy, renewable integration and beyond renewable integration as well in terms of just standalone energy storage in the next two years in China. They're going to need a lot of that capacity. But the build out and energy storage capacity is what we're seeing is over the line. I think landing exactly. It was the word you were looking for. This capacity did not exist two years ago and they're turning on, they're doing what they do well, which is building battery factories quickly, producing high quality products. But they're not standing still that out, right? Because now there's like 16 and an amp hour batteries coming out, you know, the fierce competition in terms of the cells between the energy storage makers, which makes it very hard to plan for Western companies, integrators to plan, you know, if they're building best units, what cells are going to have available to them. So one of the things I did want to ask you and they may not have an answer to it and it might be a hospital pass for which I apologize in advance. But one of the things I'm tracking is that cell prices for small AH batteries like those used in sort of EVs and whatnot and small ESS are increasing off the back of the lithium price rise. But cell prices for large AH batteries aren't increasing to any great extent yet. Do you think that that is a do you think that's a factor of raw material inventories in the system or well, you know, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Larger AH, you know, Larger AH north of 100 AH. Okay, that's all right. I thought you were talking one of those 500, 600 amp hours. No, no, no, no. Anything north of 100. We're not really seeing cell prices increase yet, but less than 100 we have started to see cell prices increase. Yeah. No, there's a demand for the 100 amp hour cells because they're not really made anymore and a lot of energy storage integrators want the 100 amp hour cells, not U280s, not U320s. They want the 100 amp hour for UPS, home energy storage, you know, the only 1000 amp hour cells to that. And so countries like Japan and Korea really want the 100 amp hour cells. And you talk to any Korean battery energy storage manufacturer and if you want to design a unit, they'll they'll suggest using the 100 amp hour cell rather than the other cells. So there's a bit of a kind of underground market for 100 amp hour cells. Right. And then of course, here's 70 amp hours for your EVs and stuff is really can be affected by the price of lithium carbony. But you know, over the last month, we've seen a 9 10% increase in generally across the board on cells and there's a lot of warnings coming out from battery makers by price increases. I mean, you haven't mentioned it yet, but the lithium carbony price has jumped 50, you know, 100% in the last two months. Yeah. I mean, you know, this is this is a big issue for me and it's something I talked about in my outlook piece. It's not just the lithium carbonic price that's increasing. I mean, nickel prices are increasing. Co-well prices went up a lot last year. Manganese prices are increasing across the board. So, you know, my feeling is that we saw the lowest price for battery raw materials in the middle of last year. We've also seen the trough price for cells. I think cell prices will start to increase from here. And then the big question is, what is the putepoint? Where do we start to see demand destruction because cell prices are starting to rise to significantly. And I don't have an answer for that. Do you, I mean, do you have an answer? That's a dangerous game. We all knew, I think, you're correct, I should say. I mean, we all know these prices weren't the real price of the cells. This, what happened in 2025. Battery makers, EV makers did all they could do to keep the market going. And the only way to do that is to lower the costs, cheated detriment of some companies, requiring the more successful to fully back integrate in the whole supply chain. I just read the other day, see a tailboard, another LFP cam making company, our investors, sorry, I shouldn't say a bad, or a game partner with, is probably even better. But yeah, I mean, the prices weren't realistic. It's going to be interesting CBNFs price graph next year. But I mean, I definitely wasn't on the bandwagon that we're going to watch these prices go all the way down to 30 USD per kilowatt hour. Yeah, but you know, the industry's been working hard to get the cost to 100 USD per kilowatt hour. Yeah, that's about eight years. I think during the year. But then I heard it, according to being, it could be 70. I was just being, yeah, I was just being. That's very unlikely big. But you know, I should say the sales purchasing I was involved in, I never saw things. People call me a basket, where do you get the 60 USD per kilowatt hour ESS sales? Any of the deals we're involved in, we didn't see much lower than 80. Well, I mean, that's interesting because obviously in the previous cycle, I mean, even though Lithium prices, nominally, when spot prices went to sort of $80, $80 a kilogram, actual traded prices really didn't go above sort of $60 a kilogram at any large volume. So it wouldn't be a surprise if you weren't actually seeing actual sell prices below $80 a kilowatt hour. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. You know, so you have the spark market and GFX kind of at the same price right now. But you're not seeing that actually translate into the, I guess, it might be a bit early, but into the material. I think there's a flow through because, I mean, one of the issues that we've always had, are they pressing each other off each other? I can't tell what's the, well, I think they're pricing. I don't think they've played that. But I mean, the other thing is, obviously, is how long the supply chain is. So how big were, you know, lithium carbon inventories at cell makers and a cathode makers and how long does it take for the higher, you know, lithium carbonate prices to flow through the supply chain? And my gut feeling is, you know, in the, in the previous cycle, it took six to 12 months in this cycle, it's going to take less time because the supply chain is shorter than it was, but it still is likely to be a matter of months. So, you know, it won't be, we won't see sort of ESS sell prices start to ratchet up probably until after Chinese New Year. Until CETL failed to pinch, right? Apparently, they're not going to get that, uh, Junksy, uh, mine often going to the mid 2026 now. I remember it was, wasn't this supposed to be September then December? It was September then it was December. Yeah, yeah. But you don't, you don't surprise me. Yeah, I mean, uh, but you know, those pricing, right? You're, you're, uh, working running through the system, but you know, you got the biggest maker CETL and BYD. I mean, they're not buying spot, uh, and they're not buying GFX long contracts either. Well, if CETL haven't got that mine off rating, they are buying spot. Yeah, that's what it's going to be. That's what it's going to be. So, yeah, that's going to be interesting. But yeah, no, I think, you know, I think ESS is, is very interesting. And obviously, you know, we talked, uh, last months part about the inventories and usage you weren't seeing in any inventories. And I went back and checked the numbers. And it's clear that the inventories are at the consumer level. They're not at the producer level. Um, so, you know, that is another, uh, another unnerable because obviously, if consumer, consumer inventories are high, uh, and then cell prices start to go up, do consumers just say, well, actually, we're going to run through our inventories for a little while and see if we can, um, if we can lower, you know, the, the impact of, um, of cell prices rising. So it's going to be, it's going to be a really interesting sort of next six to nine months in that ESS base, I think. Yeah, I mean, yeah, like, it's a bit of a hype train again, of course, like everything else. Uh, now, you know, apparently, if you read, if you read, uh, certain analysts, you know, the lithium prices right at the sweet spot where, uh, sodium is going to take over the, battery storage market. So they might price themselves out of it. Yeah, I mean, never say never, but it, I mean, it takes, as it did with lithium, it's going to take some time to sodium in to, to, to ramp up and it's all very well to say, you know, well, CATL's bought this, built this 20 gigawatt hour factory and it's got another one under, you know, under construction, but how big is the ESS market? And, you know, it's, it's a lot bigger than, than, uh, a market that's going to be impacted by a couple of sort of 15 to 20 gigawatt hour factories at the moment. So, you know, how fast can sodium iron ramp up? And, um, by the way, guys, even though sodium is potentially cheaper than lithium, uh, you still need to use transition metal, uh, cathodes in, in sodium iron. So, um, you know, there's still, there's still a cost. Well, that's good for the nickel guys, right? Yeah. The iron phosphate guys are finished, but back in comes nickel and cobalt and, uh, manganese, yeah, manganese big part of it. Um, yeah, you know, I, I'm kind of bearish on sodium myself. Um, so, but yeah, well, we'll, we'll see. I mean, my, my gut feeling, I mean, I think the thing about the ESS space that is so fascinating is, you know, a lot of people who don't look at the space, just look at the, um, the increase in cell prices and go, oh, you know, the fast increase in cell prices, cell prices are $5 a kilowatt hour. That's not going to impact very much. But the big issue, the big word for ESS is duration, of course. And, you know, the duration of your average lithium iron system is about two hours. Um, but, um, we've been using lithium iron and ESS because we've been doubling up, uh, and tripling up on the amount of, of lithium iron cells to extend durations to four hours or six hours. So, so really, you know, the increase in cells needs to be doubled, or tripled up. And if you've got a $5 per kilowatt hour increase in cells, actually, you're talking about the 10 to 15 dollar kilowatt per kilowatt hour increase in cells. So if that starts to, to, you know, if the increase in cell prices starts to, uh, be substantial, then the increase in ESS costs will be much more substantial. Yeah. I mean, uh, I think there's a limit to, they're not limit, but there's only certain markets that you can apply eight hour and 10 hour energy storage and most of them are in the, oh, yes. I bet, but I mean, it is also noticeable. If you look at the, you know, the duration of, um, um, installations over the last sort of 12 to 18 months, it has risen. So on average, it used to be like two hours. It's now sort of closer to four hours, which means that there is a substantial, you know, subset of installations, which are probably around six or seven hours. Yeah. I mean, yeah, we mean, it depends, all right. The, when you dig into it, of course, it's how many times can you cycle those batteries a day to make money? I mean, so 10 hours, you probably only do once a day, maybe four, you could do twice, but, uh, and the best times and, you know, there's a lot involved, but yeah, I think the other thing is that, that people in the industry tend to see, you know, chemistries as an either or, I don't see it that way. I see batteries as hybrids going forward. I think the solution to a lot of these things is hybrid batteries. So not sodium iron or lithium iron, a mixture of sodium iron and lithium iron, not lithium iron or flow batteries, a mixture of flow batteries and lithium iron and potentially sodium iron. So I think, yeah, that's true. I mean, battery energy storage is not going to be just lithium iron. The reason I'm very shunsodium is because it's just one more thing I don't want to track. But, uh, yeah, I'm with you on that. It's going to be hybrid solutions. Because, you know, I know they all say this lithium iron is a Swiss army, but, you know, you're going to need a bit of a bigger hiking backpack. I think there's a lot more tools that can be used. And now we have other uses for, you know, with the data centers that, you know, this, you know, lithium iron batteries aren't the ideal solution for that either. So you need something else that can charge and discharge, you know, a little quicker and be more responsive. And so, and obviously, I mean, the other thing that, I mean, we haven't really talked about long duration in a couple of years. But obviously, the other thing is if lithium iron prices do go up, if sodium iron prices do go up, does that then bring, you know, flow battery chemistries back into the conversation. They're all quite large durations. So, you know, when we talk about hybrid batteries, are we going to get flow batteries coming, coming back in? And it, you know, it's fair to say we were talking about VR, VRFBs very excitedly in 2018, 2019. We're talking about them considerably less excitedly now. And, you know, is, is the second half of this decade going to be the time for the flow batteries? I think yeah, red China now put a one gigawatt hour flow battery in. Yeah, they did last year. And yeah, I think another one, I just read, it might be the same one that they just turned on or whatever, but yeah, I mean, it's the first sort of major launch scale flow battery application, I think, globally. I mean, there's been a flow battery in Japan that's been running, I think, for 10 years, 10 or 15 years now. And there have been some small flow batteries, but I think it's the first gigawatt hour application. Yeah, if you look at the Chinese grid, I mean, they have compressed air, which is quite interesting. They have every type of energy storage at large capacity deployed, not just lithium-ion, every type of energy storage technology. I mean, they're trying everything in the grid. And I'm developing and pushing it along, but you know, I remember last year, first Q1, compressed air was the most deployed technology on their on their energy storage on the grid, which was reducing a lot of that outside China. No, and obviously, you know, when we talk about energy storage, you know, for a lot of places, pump Tindrow, it is the key energy storage technology, but in a lot of places, it's not viable. So, you know, hence the the emergence of batteries. So yeah, I mean, I think it's a very interesting, interesting space. Yeah. And the S also is kind of a, not just a global market. I mean, it's, there's only niche countries that would need something that can store energy for months or, because, you know, as you can't use lithium ion because you can't put it in a field and leave it for three months, you're not going to make any money and it's going to cost you, right? Yeah. And so, but you know, that's actually one of the misnomer's while I long, Jewish energy storage can be discharged, trickled discharged during, you know, every day, not just during an event once every three months. But yeah, well, I mean, I'm, you know, you hear that some of these sort of CNI batteries, they're running these sort of twice a day. So not just running them in the evening, they're running them in the morning as well, which obviously doubles up the the economics. So, you know, I think the industry is evolving and I think the other thing, obviously, to be aware about ESS is that the economics are different in different countries, different countries and different regions within different countries, states and provinces have different rules and everything. So, you know, what's viable in, for instance, uh, caught in the US, yeah, not viable in Germany, may not be viable in, you know, uh, Shanghai, China. So, um, yeah, Erkott is obviously to test bad, right? For everything, uh, it makes sense there. Yeah. I'm just thinking of some of the, some places in Europe aren't Texas. I mean, they don't have the solar, they don't have the wind, and they don't have these devastating, uh, you know, every, every couple of years storms, you know, that when I stormed, they had a few years ago, took down the whole grid. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting. But yeah, you're, what I'm hearing a lot, people discussing is LDS. I guess it was big a couple of years ago. Now it's coming back in again, because yeah, as you said, the, uh, they're kind of reaching the limit on the four hours. I mean, you know, people argue about it online all the time, but let's say you can top out at eight to 10 hours. And definitely the cutoff point for LITEM, and the price is going up, right? The only reason LITEM suits that is because, uh, the price, sell, sell prices were cheap. If they go up, then the usage case goes down. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Um, so that's, um, sort of, uh, thoughts for 26 and some takeaways for 25. Um, for you, what are the most interesting drivers for 26, 27, going forward that perhaps the market isn't aware of at the moment. So you, you, you talked last month, I think, in the part about sort of the EV toll, um, you know, other drivers that perhaps people outside China aren't really thinking of at the moment. Yeah. Um, I think we're going to see, uh, I think we're going to have to see the Western OEMs, kind of as we mentioned earlier, step into EOR EVs and maybe a greater way. Are also going to miss that market already. China probably has PhDVs covered, the EVs covered. Um, so I think, uh, a market that is picking up is the semi trucking, the classic. Uh, yeah. That is, if that really comes online, that is going to be a huge draw on lithium. Uh, it could be, could be double. We have today needed this massive, but you know, be difficult to see that market go 100% to EV of course, but then it's, it's huge. And then we're seeing, you know, more, if you talk about, you know, uh, bullish look out for lithium, you know, see, it tells doing a lot more in electrifying shipping, you know, not completely electrifying ships or anything, but you know, more uses for batteries, board chips. Uh, you know, that'd be huge demand as well. I mean, there's, you know, uh, uh, as the industry grows, we see more and more applications, but yeah, right now the exciting one we're getting, most inquiries is EVTAL, high energy density batteries. Uh, and that is of course, uh, the NMC type batteries, high nickel. Uh-huh. But you know, uh, one of the, uh, I think you talked about four on, uh, with rock stock, guys is, uh, you know, energy storage. And that requires 30% more lithium per kilowatt hour than EV battery. So that's what we're seeing. Everyone's saying energy storage is the, is going to outpace, uh, EV battery demand for lithium carbonate itself, but the, the other, the other thing I would just throw in there and I'm probably, uh, it's not a 2627, um, driver, but potentially beyond that is humanized robots. Um, and potentially that's going to be a big user of batteries. All right. How much are you willing to pay for a dancing robot in your living room? I would if it says my job. It'll do your job for you. Yeah. And your job too. I pay for 10 of them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, I mean, I saw the one released by Boston Dynamics and CES. So a couple of videos. I mean, uh, it looks pretty handy, a little bit of kit. I could see, I think they already have a trial than a few Hyundai factories in US. I mean, uh, if you can pick up boxes, I mean, when I've been to, to car factories, you know, over the last two or three years, I think, you know, one of the, the, the takeaways that I, I, I, I definitely have is that the number of industrial robots has increased substantially. And I mean, you go to some of the, the, um, you know, the factories in China, car factories, battery factories, manufactured goods factories. Um, you don't really see too many human C stays. Um, so the growth of, you know, maybe not human or robots, but industrial robots and, and going forward human or robots is very, very substantial. And of course, you know, they are, uh, lithium and battery intensive. So I think that is an area which, I think that people aren't paying enough attention to that's going to be very, very important going forward. Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, it might be an area where you say China's not really pushing the envelope in terms of, you know, having companies like Boston, the dynamics or what, what Tesla is doing. I mean, I've seen a few Chinese ones roll out, which, you know, Boston, the dynamics have been on a long time. They started off the dog. You know, they, they, I think the highlighted robot in CS is that it worked like a very cool human. I don't know if that, you know, that's, that's the peak of the tech. I'm not so worried about walking. It's more sort of loading the dishwasher and doing the kick-kicking and doing the cleaning and stuff like that. But so, I mean, we'll, we'll see. Um, but I, I think, um, I mean, increasingly that's going to be a driver. So that does happen. It's the last 40 million humanoids by 2040. I mean, uh, yes. You know, being, you know, haven't seen what batteries they use. I don't think anything like that's being discussed. Yeah. But who are the battery makers? It's just, yeah, they might actually, uh, good point. You know, we might see more divergents in the, in the battery, where we had, you know, just battery makers before and they kind of shifted towards EVs. And then a couple of years ago, we had energy stores, specific manufacturers who don't make battery CVs. And I think we'll probably see EV or sorry, EV tall and more energy dense, bespoke style batteries, probably small or not like a thousand. But it's coming back towards almost like more of a consumer battery again. Yeah. And the industry made the way from consumer batteries might end up moving back towards consumer batteries. Yeah. Uh, well, you know, 18, 18, 650, 21, 700 batteries are still popular. Yeah. And for everything else that is not EV or energy storage. And so, yeah, or it could be a post-south, of course, but yeah. Okay. Okay. Great. Well, that's a good, a good recap. Uh, look forward, look forward to your takeaways from the future minerals conference in Saudi Arabia and other places you're going to in the next month. And, uh, yeah, look forward to speaking to you on February. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we'll have some of the finalized numbers in 2025 to get stuck into, but, uh, yeah, talk to, uh, February. Brilliant. So that brings us to the end of the podcast for January. 2026 looks like being a fascinating year for the sector. And we'll be discussing it every inch of the way. Thanks for joining us. I'm Matt Furnley, editor of battery materials review. And this has been Recharge. Thanks for listening.