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// By David Morgan
EVs – Silver to play a minor or major role? Almost everyone now knows the term EV means electric vehicle. Elon Musk has brought about massive attention to electric vehicles. But it wasn’t an easy ride. Tesla was not an overnight success. The company was founded in 2003 by two Silicon Valley engineers, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who wanted to prove that “electric vehicles can be better, quicker and more fun to drive than gasoline cars.”
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he seeds of the company go back to 1990 when Tarpenning met Eberhard, who at that time was an engineer at Wyse Technology, and they became good friends. The two had much in common, including a passion for starting companies; one that they soon launched was NuvoMedia, which released the Rocket eBook in 1998.
Elon, being the visionary, saw the potential and bought the company. Recently, Mr. Musk has stated he might be interested in buying a mining company. Why? Because EVs take massive amounts of minerals, everything from Rare Earths to silver. Silver is an essential part of electric car parts; silver is used in the EV manufacturing process because of its chemical properties. Silver has a very high corrosion resistance (important for battery making, which involves the use of corrosive acids), and is also a stellar conductor of electricity. Some silver bugs have overstated the case for silver needed as the world is asked to shift to EVs. First, car manufacturers use up to 55 million ounces of silver per year (that’s over 3 million pounds!). It’s
18 MicroCap Review Magazine
estimated that hybrid vehicles use anywhere from 18 to 34 grams of silver per vehicle. But EV’s need as much as 25-50 grams for each vehicle. Some of the key features in EVs that require silver for conducting purposes include an EV’s infotainment system, electric power steering, and even safety features such as automatic braking and airbags. The renewable energy industry might even affect the price of silver as demand increases. It’s predicted that there will be over 120 million EVs on our national highways by the year 2030, which means that carmakers will start becoming more conscious of the way they use silver in manufacturing, which is ongoing. As an aside, solar uses about 100 million ounces of silver per year. However, solar panels are at least twice as efficient as they were in the year 2000. If this “thrifting” (continual improvement) of silver had not taken place, the silver market would be in a very serious deficit by now.
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