Musk Back Talking Up Tesla Mining Aspirations – by Glenn Dyer (Share Cafe – May 11, 2022)

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Elon Musk has again raised the idea that Tesla could buy a miner to speed up the supply of metals essential to the production of electric vehicles around the world. It’s not the first time Musk has made such a comment, but so far he has not done anything about it.

Just how that will speed up production was not explained by Musk who continues to try and assemble a group of investors and bankers to finance his $US44 billion takeover of Twitter. The EV industry is getting concerned that there may not be enough supply of lithium, nickel, copper and other metals to match demand later this decade.

That’s also linked to concerns about the rising prices of these metals, particularly lithium which at the moment is essential to batteries. Tesla’s batteries for short term use (city type vehicles) now use a lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistry rather than nickel-cobalt-aluminium which Tesla will continue to use in its longer-range models.

“It’s not out of the question,” Musk told the FT Future of the Car 2022 conference. “We will address whatever limitations are on accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy. It’s not that we wish to buy mining companies, but if that’s the only way to accelerate the transition, then we will do that.”

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