Lithium's hangover and what comes next

Lithium carbonate fell more than eighty percent from its 2022 peak — a collapse that reset expectations across the battery supply chain. The cause was textbook: a price spike attracted a wall of new supply, while EV demand growth slowed from triple digits to merely strong.

The next chapter is more interesting. African lepidolite from Zimbabwe and Namibia is now competitive at current prices. Argentinian brine projects are scaling. Chinese refiners, who control roughly seventy percent of conversion capacity, are using the downturn to consolidate.

For prices, the floor is probably close. For producers, the lesson is brutal: lithium is a commodity, not a technology, and commodity cycles always overshoot in both directions.