Price of lithium has gone to insane levels! Tesla might actually have to get into the mining & refining directly at scale, unless costs improve.
There is no shortage of the element itself, as lithium is almost everywhere on Earth, but pace of extraction/refinement is slow.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2022
There are deposits of lithium all over the U.S. so Tesla becoming a miner is not very far-fetched. Indeed this was not the first time Musk mused about Tesla going into the mining business. In 2020, Tesla received the rights to mine lithium in Nevada when their deal to buy a mining company fell through.
Sleeper activist Elon
After buying a 9.2% stake in Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) the TWTR stock jumped 25% in pre-market trading. There were insinuations that Musk will join Twitter’s board and instill sweeping changes to the corporate culture as well as introduce new features on the platform.
Nevertheless, Musk decided not to join Twitter’s board which could signal that Musk will actually keep his focus on SpaceX and Tesla for the moment. Perhaps his move on Twitter was disrupted by the change in the geopolitical climate, rising inflation, and raw material prices. There are ample challenges surrounding the EV space which could keep Musk busy and away from Twitter.
Will EV companies integrate into the battery supply chain for raw materials and will this now become a strategic imperative for the industry are questions that analysts will discuss for quite some time. It is however still not clear whether Tesla will be a miner and what kind of implications that might have on the EV industry.
Finally, Finbold reported last week that Lithium stocks plunged as the breaks were applied to Biden electric vehicles push with investors succumbing to pressure as the shares fell as much as 10%.
Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.
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