Cost of copper Quadrupeled?

[aviken]

We are in the process of building our dream home now, and our electricians bid came back to us at a whopping 103k. Our builder agreed this was too high on our home...so he put out others, and got it down to about 50k. He said that all of the bids he is receiving now are to be "reviewed" at time of install to allow for changes in raw material costs, mostly copper. He also said that many electricians are not putting the wire in until the last possible moment - as apparently it has become quite profitable for criminals to pull the wiring from new construction and sell the copper as scrap.

I've been concerned with the cost of batteries being driven up by the big automakers sucking up resources - lithium, etc - and now I am concerned about the cost of Copper with the influx of more electric cars / hybrids.

So I tried to look up the historical price of Copper, and I think I found a site that show this, but it is not as clear as I had hoped (I don't know if this is the standard source or not for this info).

http://www.lme.com/copper_graphs.asp
(you have to select the dates to get a chart)

Anyway, here's what I found, that Copper was selling for about $1,700 a ton in 2003, and now is just over $8,000 a ton. If I am reading this chart right, Copper has gone up over 4 times it's value in just 5 years.

I would think something as abundant and mature as copper would not quadruple in price in 5 years. Has anyone else noticed their EV conversions costing more than say a few years ago because of this?

[ev-supply]

The price of steel is even higher than copper.  I think a lot of it is due to the fact that China is demanding a lot more of the available scrap metal, which is driving the prices up.  I know that most of the steel scrapped in Seattle goes right into a container destined for China.

[Stephen_J]

Yeah, the price of copper has indeed gone up. I've wound up buying various sections and colors of 4/0 cable for my EV and the price has been steadily increasing.  My father volunteers for a trolley museum and they keep getting their overhead wire stolen so they are finally installing an alarm system.  Locally, Brown Bear carwash got a bunch of their copper "bear" sculptures stolen.

At this rate, maybe I'll use silver instead of copper in my next EV, its a bettery conductor anyway heh, heh.