The easiest way to play the electric vehicle story on the ASX is either through a specialist fund or through individual “battery metal” stocks.
For fund investors the extraordinary strong share price from Tesla until very recently often underpinned similarly outsized performances from specialist funds.
ACDC- Battery Technology and Lithium is an exchange traded fund from ETF Securities that topped the field as the best performing (ungeared) ETF on the local exchange in the year to March, rising by 96 per cent.
This calendar year to date ACDC is also performing very nicely, racking up a 14 per cent increase in six months.
In the global market, a fund among the most favoured by Australian investors is the EV-heavy Ark Innovation Fund, run by Cathie Wood and which managed to double in price last year. This year, however, it has barely moved. There is also a range of technology funds – both active and passive – that have strong interests in EVs and battery metals.
For local investors there is no electric car stock of any significance just yet. That’s probably why Tesla remains the most widely held offshore stock among Australians.
After that, we get into the battery metals. Theoretically this involves a range of metals such as carbon, nickel and even copper – an electric car uses about five times more copper than a petrol car.
However, so far in the Australian listed mining sector, it is nearly all about the metal they call “white gold”: lithium.
Key lithium stocks have been mostly biding time this year after a rewarding 2020. The arrival of interests connected with Gina Rinehart catapulted Vulcan Energy into the big league. It is up 6 per cent year to date after rocketing from less than $1 to more than $7 in 2020. After that spectacular price lift, the German-based supplier to the European EV industry was able to rank with mainstays of the game such as Galaxy, Piedmont and Orocobre.
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