Will we see self-driving cars on the roads soon? Or a mass takeover by electric vehicles? I don’t know. I suspect that the technology is farther away from mass-market usability than the optimists make out. But it’s also probably not as pie-in-the-sky as the pessimists warn. A bit like the internet, in other words.
Yet if the enthusiasm for self-driving cars continues, then palladium could be supplanted by a rather less glamorous metal – copper. These self-driving vehicles are probably mostly going to be electric. And electric cars use something like three times as much copper as a standard car.
It is one to keep an eye on if you are looking for a catch-all way to play a transformation in our transportation. You can invest in copper direct, but I would avoid that in favour of picking out some copper miners.
Georgian Mining Corporation (LON:GEO) has 50% ownership of the Bolnisi Copper and Gold Project in Georgia, situated on the prolific Tethyan Belt, a well-known geological region and host to many high-grade copper-gold deposits and producing mines.