If you just read the headlines these days, you'd come away thinking electric vehicle sales are suddenly going in reverse.
And indeed, a few heavyweight automakers have aided that perception.
Ford cut production plans for the electric version of its F-150, saying growth in the market is coming up short of expectations.
General Motors temporarily suspended sales of its brand-new electric Chevy Blazer due to performance problems.
And last week, Mercedes-Benz said it would delay its goal of becoming an electric vehicle-only brand by 2030. (Though that goal was always an overreach — and a questionable one, at that.)
However, despite these setbacks EV sales are actually doing better than you probably think.
EVs accounted for a fifth of new car sales globally in 2023.
And U.S. EV sales grew 40% in the fourth quarter of 2023, with total sales of nearly 1.2 million vehicles, according to data from Cox Automotive.
That trend was also reflected in individual results of several key automakers who reported strong numbers for the year.
For example, Tesla's sales were up 38% in 2023, and Mercedes EV sales increased a whopping 248%.
There's $322 Billion Worth of Lithium in Northwest Alberta...
Why Can't Anybody Touch It?
For more than 40 years, an oil company has been working a 671-square-mile chunk of northwestern Alberta, producing its lifeblood using brine that's kept in hundreds of massive storage ponds.
These storage ponds have long been known to contain a massive lithium resource, totaling an estimated 4.3 million tons.
Just recently a tiny Vancouver-based technology company, founded and headed by petrochemical industry veterans, figured out a way to extract the lithium from this brine, very quickly and very efficiently.
So efficiently, in fact, that the company can filter this oil field brine, returning it to the pond after processing, with a better than 95% capture rate.
Production of salable lithium will cost between $3,000 and $4,000 per ton, while market rates price lithium at $70,000 per ton.
They know where the lithium is, they know how to extract it, and, as of now, they have an agreement in place to work this giant lithium-rich property.
Commercial production is now projected to be in place by the middle of 2024, with buyers already lining up.
Interested? Enter here to learn more.
So while there have been some speed bumps, the overall EV trend remains very much intact.
In fact, traditional internal-combustion vehicles accounted for 84% of total passenger vehicle sales in the U.S. last year — an all-time low. Conversely, hybrids and electric vehicles expanded their share of the market to 16%.
There's no guarantee that 2024 will be as successful, of course. But there's also plenty of room for optimism.
Specifically, better access to charging stations could help accelerate EV adoption.
After all, that's always been the biggest roadblock — the concern most frequently raised by potential buyers.
But it's improving.
The Biden administration has made a huge effort to promote EVs, expanding the number of publicly available auto charging ports by more than 40% through a $7.5 billion investment.
Secret tech stock set to soar on Apple's Vision Pro Rollout
Apple has unleashed its Vision Pro headset, a device set to transform the tech world.
This is Apple's most ambitious project since the iPhone.
At the heart of this innovation is a small tech firm, collaborating closely with Apple.
Its partnership with Apple puts this tech firm in a prime position for growth.
All the details can be found right here.
Better still, Tesla signed watershed agreements with Ford, GM, Volkswagen, Toyota, Hyundai, and others that gave its competitors access to Tesla charging stations.
That was huge because Tesla has the most robust network of charging stations in North America, with 17,000 Supercharger connectors.
By comparison, the alternative — the Combined Charging System (CCS) — only has 11,000 charging stations available to drivers.
And in addition to being more plentiful, Tesla's charging stations are also faster and better maintained.
Which is to say a recent study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that roughly 25% of the CCS fast chargers in the San Francisco Bay Area simply didn't work at all.
So giving non-Tesla drivers access to Tesla charging stations via an adapter is a massive upgrade.
And that initiative officially kicked off last week, when Ford made the adapters available to its Mustang Mach-E and Lightning pickup truck consumers.
The adapters are free to get until July, at which point they'll start charging $230 for them.
Of course, the biggest winners here are going to be investors — especially those who have subscribed to collect as much $2,850 per month through "Plug-in Payouts."
That's a little-known program that directs charging station revenue to investors — one that generated $563.3 million in income for its patrons last year.
You, too, can be a part of that, but you have to act fast, because the next round of payouts is scheduled for March 19.
So if you're interested, get the full report here before it's too late.
Fight on,
Jason Simpkins
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