The interview linked below of Elon Musk at MIT was fascinating...

The interview linked below of Elon Musk at MIT was fascinating to me on many levels as he combines visionary thinking with practical decision making.  The video is quite long so the most Syrah/Graphite relevant part is couple of minutes from the 34min mark when he is asked about the battery Gigafactory.
Specifically:
- Last year the total world production of batteries was 30 Gigawatt hours, which is only enough for his single Tesla factory planned output of 500,000 cars per year.
- 100 million cars of all types per year produced each year, with 2 billion cars 'on the road' now.
- We need 200 battery gigafactories (!) over the next 20 years to provide enough batteries for replacing the existing vehicle fleet

Clearly he talking big picture, but his record is pretty good.  Syrah, Triton and all other graphite potential producers will clearly be happy to hear his prediction of current battery production needing to increase by 200 times over the next 20 years just to cope with car production demands!  Then there are all the other markets being developed by Syrah and others...(Graphene, aluminium production, castings etc.).  If only a very small fraction of all this comes to pass then there is a very rosy future for graphite production.

Other relevant comments scattered through the interview:
- New battery technologies are announced every week but you need a big "bullsh#t detector".  He sounds positive about the existing graphite anode design.
- All transport will eventually move to batteries except for rockets! (Ironic, because he designs rockets)
- For the Gigafactory he mentioned Sumitomo metals and mining and Hitachi as the suppliers of "raw materials from the mine" that Panasonic then package into the battery cells. (*I remember Syrah saying some time ago they had met with Sumitomo and can easily imagine the attraction to a large Japanese company of well priced high volume battery grade graphite from a non-Chinese supplier).

Anyway, a nice line (thread?) of thought rather than just navel focusing on the SYR vs TON thing  ;-)

http://www.theage.com.au/digital-li...i-technologist-elon-musk-20141026-11c8ql.html