Tesla announced its first-quarter earnings recently and its revenue grew to over $18 billion. Associated Press notes, "The electric vehicle and solar panel company made a record $3.32 billion from January through March... the Austin, Texas, company made $3.22 per share. That soundly beat Wall Street estimates of $2.26 per share according to data provider FactSet." At this point, Tesla car deliveries could take up to a year due to the ever-increasing popularity of the electric vehicle industry leader. “We are obviously not demand limited, we are production limited,” explained Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
During the earnings conference call, Elon Musk said, "Do you like minting money?" He added, "Can some more people please get into the lithium business?.." Musk also said last week that he had lined up USD 46.5 billion in financing to buy Twitter, putting pressure on the company's board to negotiate a deal. While you are reading this, their go to microblogging site Twitter may be sold to Musk.
Some raw materials are abundant, others are less abundant. In 3-5 years, even the abundant materials are not readily available. Although there is abundance of Iron and Lithium for LFP batteries, the real hurdles are the quality of the raw material, the energy required to extract it, managing the impurity levels, and the investment required to bring the innovation to fruition. The materials base will continue to develop, but unless we see shifts in regulation, coordinated national policy, and new players in the EV battery sector, we will not witness evolved EV batteries.
A patent published in 2021 for Tesla’s structural battery pack reveals that the EV maker did not only look at cost reduction and range improvements when it was developing its next-generation batteries. Tesla also looked at how the structural battery packs could help maintain its vehicles’ safety. This was hinted at in the patent’s detailed description, which reveals that the bottom layer of the structural battery would be created from a strong, stiff material that is also capable of deforming in the event of a crash.
Tesla is in a better position than most in the EV sector. With their resources, they absorb larger parts of the existing material supply chain to feed their growth. Hence, Tesla is interested in mining, and having more and more get into manufacturing batteries.
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