Musk hopes Tesla won’t need to enter mining biz: Report

SAN FRANCISCO: While the idea of Tesla entering the mining business is quite exciting, CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company would prefer it if it did not have to enter the industry. In a podcast, Musk, asked if the electric vehicle maker’s mining aspirations are on the back burner, said Tesla does not want to go into the mining segment, partly due to its limitations.

“Well, we do not want to go into the mining industry or the sort of refining industry because the limitation, I think, is actually more. For example, with lithium, it’s more lithium refinement than it is the actual mining. So you better take the ore that contains lithium, and you’ve got to refine it and get it to battery-grade lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate. And it has to be extremely pure. Otherwise, you could have a breakdown in the cell,” Musk had said.