Lithium Batteries: More Dangerous Than AR-15s?

Dear Reader,

Magazine-fed semi-automatic rifles, commonly referred to by mainstream media hysteria-mongers as "assault weapons," are used in a few hundred murders annually in the U.S. 

All rifle types, in fact, account for only between 2%–3% of firearms homicides and an even smaller proportion of total deaths (including accidents and suicides).

This may fly in the face of the picture your mind forms after spending many hours on many days watching the news, but the fact is that this has been the trend for as long as gun violence trends have been tracked. 

Now, don’t get me wrong… An AR-15 in the wrong hands is an absolutely terrifying concept to behold, but given the rarity of its use as a weapon of terror, is it really the deadliest durable good readily available to the American consumer?

Every year in the U.S., lithium-ion batteries cause about 5,000 fires, many of them particularly deadly and destructive due to the speed and explosiveness that lithium-ion batteries combust. 

A Time Bomb in Your Pocket

Nobody knows when or how the next battery will catch fire. What we do know is that it will happen about 15 or so times per day, with the rate increasing each year. 

So while military-style rifles may be deadly in the hands of a psychopath, lithium-ion batteries are deadly in any hands at all, and there are very few regulations on the books designed to deal with the problem. 

Anyone can buy them. Anyone can modify them. Anyone can misuse them. Anyone can take an old and damaged lithium battery, "refurbish" it, and put it back out into the market. 

In NYC, where there are on average about four lithium-ion fires every week, the No. 1 culprit is poorly maintained e-bike batteries — of which an estimated 25,000 roam the city.

The bigger picture, however, is far more disturbing…

According to Statista, as of 2021, there were over 21 billion wireless devices online across the world. 

That’s 21 billion potentially deadly incendiary bombs in the hands of consumers, and that doesn’t even count the bigger-ticket items like electric vehicles, trains, and distributed energy storage systems — all of them running off the same Li-ion reaction. 

The reason modern lithium batteries have this reputation is easy to explain. Within each lithium-ion cell is a liquid matrix called "electrolyte."

Flawed by Design

It’s through this liquid that electrons pass from anode to cathode. 

Unfortunately, when heat is applied to the battery — which happens routinely during charging — that electrolyte can seep oxygen, causing more damage to the battery, which in turn generates more heat during charging. 

This is called "thermal runaway," and once sufficient heat is applied, it will end in a fire.  

The only way to prevent this is a complete redesign of the battery from the ground up — and the race to do that may have already been won. 

A company you’ve probably never heard of, operating out of a Brisbane research facility, has spent the last couple years perfecting a virtually indestructible next-generation battery that has no liquid electrolyte and, in fact, no lithium either. 

These new batteries feature cathodes made from a space-age material called graphene — a material that’s engineered on a molecular scale — resulting in batteries that are on a completely different level in terms of performance. 

Graphene batteries hold more than twice the charge, last for 2–3 times the number of charge cycles, and charge up to 70 times as fast. 

An EV equipped with these batteries could be charged in a minute or less, be driven for two–four weeks between charges, and last for a million or more miles before showing any signs of performance decay.

Charge Your Battery Faster Than You Can Pump Gas

The benefits are too numerous to fully delve into here, but that charge time alone represents a game-changer for the EV industry —whose main stumbling block so far, in terms of mass consumer adoption, has been charge delay. 

Like I said, the company behind all this is still an unknown, but that is about to change. 

Just last month, it signed a collaboration agreement with Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO), a $100 billion mining giant, to develop large-scale batteries for use in industrial heavy machinery. 

If these batteries can tackle needs as demanding as Rio Tinto’s, they will more than exceed any consumer requirements. 

This battery company is already public and valued at a meager US$130 million — about 1/2,000th what the lithium-ion battery market is projected to be worth by the end of the decade. 

Starting to see the opportunity yet?

Is This the Most Underbought Stock in the Tech Sector Today?

There’s a lot more to this story, so to cover all the bases, I had my media production team produce a quick video for me premium readers. 

Today, I’m making that video available to our Wealth Daily readership. 

You can view it right here.

Just remember, last month’s signing with Rio Tinto made headlines. Shares are up 25% in just the last couple weeks. 

Don’t wait another day to get the full story. 

Enter here and get informed today.

Fortune favors the bold,

Alex Koyfman

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His flagship service, Microcap Insider, provides market-beating insights into some of the fastest moving, highest profit-potential companies available for public trading on the U.S. and Canadian exchanges. With more than 5 years of track record to back it up, Microcap Insider is the choice for the growth-minded investor. Alex contributes his thoughts and insights regularly to Energy and Capital. To learn more about Alex, click here.