BATTERY METALS
All the mines
TESLA
needs to build 20 million cars a year MINING.COM’s Frik Els takes a look at how much metal it would take for Tesla to meet its goal for 2030 By Frik Els
Nickel and dimed Ahead of Battery Day, in an investors conference call, Musk had a big shout-out for all the nickel miners out there, wher20 | CANADIAN
MINING JOURNAL
ever they may be in the world (hopefully near some nickel): “Wherever you are in the world, please mine more nickel and don’t wait for nickel to go back to. . . some high point that you experienced some five years ago. Go for efficiency, obviously environmentally friendly nickel mining at high volume. Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time, if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way. So hopefully this message goes out to all mining companies. Please get nickel.” Nickel was languishing below $10,000 a tonne five years ago, not exactly an incentive price, but whatever. Mine efficiently and at high volume? We should give that a try, fellas! Then we can make up in volume what we lose on price.
At Battery Day, Musk also ended the mining lesson with a plea for nickel. Perhaps the world’s miners did not get the previous shout-out because this time Musk said he personally called all the CEOs of the biggest mining companies. Musk did at least end that auspicious day in the Tesla parking lot on a cautiously optimistic note: “It is very important. I think they are going to make more nickel.” They better – a couple of days after the event Musk confirmed in a Tweet that Tesla will reach production of 20 million vehicles per year before 2030. Devil’s copper is in the details MINING.COM used data from Adamas Intelligence, which tracks demand for EV www.canadianminingjournal.com
Photo: Jag cz, istockimages
E
lon Musk and his merry band of executive vice-presidents had plenty of advice for the mining and metals industry at the company’s Battery Day event last September, where the road map to a $25,000 Tesla was laid out. How easy it is to mine lithium (just add salt), just how much of it there is in Nevada (enough for 300 million EVs), how to be environmentally friendly (“put the chunk of dirt back where it was”) and, given these facts, why miners haven’t been trying harder. Since lithium is “just like widely available,” according to Musk and Tesla’s scientists, they have eliminated other hard to come by metals like graphite (replace it with sand, obvs) and cobalt from batteries (at least in theory), Musk’s prime raw material worry is nickel.
