Sydney — Just as electric cars seem to be taking over, an element inextricably tied to the fortunes of the internal combustion engine is surging. Palladium hit a 16-year high of $1,094.51 an ounce on Tuesday and is 1.5% away from breaching its 2001 record of $1,110.50 an ounce, after doubling in price over the past two years. Having traded for a fifth of the cost of platinum as recently as 2009, palladium is now worth more than its sister metal’s $943.65 an ounce. To understand what’s going on, it’s worth looking to the long shadow cast by Volkswagen’s diesel-testing scandal and the growing toll of diesel emissions on European cities. Palladium owes its place in the commodity pantheon to catalytic converters. In the 1960s, it was seen as an exotic but useless alternative to platinum, which occurs in the same handful of mines in SA, Russia and North America and was at the time principally used for showy jewellery such as Marilyn Monroe’s wedding ring. As catalytic converters were ado...
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