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(Wallace Refiners) – Tesla boss Elon Musk has been on the wires citing his concern at the lack of nickel in the market. BHP Nickel West asset president Edward Haegel mentioned the possibility of Tesla using BHP’s nickel supply and around 70 per cent of is already used to develop batteries around the world.
Musk Tweeted “Nickel is our biggest concern for scaling lithium-ion cell production. That’s why we are shifting standard range cars to an iron cathode. Plenty of iron (and lithium)!”.
In July (2020), Musk said that a “giant contract for a long period of time” would be provided to a miner capable of sustainably extracting nickel due to the high cost of EV batteries.
Tesla manufacturing industry executive Drew Baglino said the company intended to mine its own battery metals. “We’re going to go and start building our own cathode facility in North America, leveraging all of the North American resources that exist for nickel and lithium,” Baglino said. “Just doing that and localising our cathode supply chain and production we can reduce the miles travelled by all of the materials that end up in the cathode by 80 per cent, which is huge for cost.
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