Thanks to Anaconda for a nice catch and Boxterfan for the link to the article.

Had a good read of Jon Hykawy's article which gives a conservative view of the statements made by Tesla, a few notable statements are quoted below for illustrattion purposes:

- "plans to use only raw materials sourced in North America".

- "cars are manufactured in the most cost-effective manner possible, but also in the greenest manner possible".

A few comments follow.

1. Extrapolation vs Interpretation: The author used the word extrapolation (i.e. "extrapolation people have made" that Tesla will require flake graphite (I would interpret flake = natural). The connotation here is that people have gone beyond the range of validity of the data/information to draw a conclusion. In math or in finance, extrapolation would be allowed, as long as it does not stray too far from the actual information, e.g. extrapolation of drill data, or extrapolation/prediction of future financial performance of the company. However, because of the connotation mentioned above, it would more appropriate to use the word "interpretation".

2. Interpretation: The company has made some statements (illustrated above) which are subjected to interpretations by people (me included, together with other background information). It would appear that people would take those statements as indication that Tesla has in mind a cheaper way to make EV batteries instead of the current use of synthetic graphite, which is quite expensive, say ~$20,000/tonne. The alternative? Incoming the natural graphite (whatelse is there) with various companies doing R&D to show that they can produce high-quality coated spherical graphite (SPG) for making high-end batteries for EVs. There are various recent NRs from graphite companies available from the company websites or from the web (Google search).

3. Cost comparison: Uncoated SPG could fetch ~$3500/tonne while coated SPG could get ~$10,000/tonne ($8500/tonne would be good enough for a good profit margin, if the production cost is low enough, say <$2000/tonne). $10k/tonne for natural graphite certainly has the cost advantage over synthetic graphite (half the cost, and that would knock off a few $k per car).

4. Coated SPG: Hykawy mentioned that coating is important to produce high-end SPG, which is consistent with what several companies are doing. They have produced high quality carbon-coated SPG which is suitable for high-end battery application. Bet that, Panasonic (Tesla partner) has been doing that as well, and presumably with various natural graphite including ZEN's.

Question: Anyone knows if the coating of the "natural graphite core, the SPG", has to be synthetic graphite (Hykawy mentioned synthetic at/near the end of the first page)?

In summary, it's fine for Hykawy to provide some tempered view/interpretation of Tesla's statements. But, as long as people don't go overboard with un-restrained enthusiasm to jump to conclusions that are not supportable by reasonable facts, then it would also be fine to take a more optimistic view.

goldhunter

PS: Forgot to mention

- the green solutions (environmentally sustainable) that have been proposed by various natural graphite company, and this is consistent with Tesla's statements.

- and the raw material in North America. I would leave it there for you to read your tea leaves.