It is reported that Elon Musk discussed with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa about the possibilities of Tesla building a battery factory in South Africa.
The conversation between Musk and Ramaphosa was reported to have taken place earlier this year, but has now been reported by Bloomberg.
According to the report, Musk approached his country's president to loosen regulations and allow Starlink, his satellite-based Internet service operated by SpaceX, to operate in the country.
South Africa has laws that require Starlink to be at least 30% black to operate, which may require SpaceX to work with local people.
How does Tesla play this?
According to the report, Musk and Ramaphosa discussed Tesla's ability to build a battery factory in South Africa as part of an agreement to encourage the country to relax its regulations so that Starlink can operate in the region.
It is not clear what kind of “battery industry” they are talking about.
Tesla produces its battery cells at the Gigafactory in Texas, but production is limited, and the company still has mounting problems. The cells are currently only used in Tesla's Cybertruck.
The company also produces battery packs for its electric vehicles and its energy storage business, the latter of which is growing much faster than its EV business. Tesla has been building what it calls a “Megafactory” to produce its Megapack energy storage.
Tesla has been rumored to be in talks about building factories in South Africa since 2016, but nothing has come out yet.
Electrek's Take
I would take this report with a grain of salt. I doubt that Tesla is currently seriously considering a “battery industry” in South Africa. At best, maybe they talked about a Megapack factory, but even so, I can see Tesla building such factories in other markets before South Africa.
If Elon is indeed talking about the Tesla factory to allow Starlink to work with looser requirements, that raises interesting questions about how he works within the company.
It also flirts with resource tuning: it uses a public company under its control to get benefits for its private companies.
But either way, Elon has even more concrete examples of igniting resources.
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