There is always debt and market worries. It's easy to create fear here as there will be other battery alternatives, but they are far off and the anode requires a combination of materials anyway. Tesla batteries have been torn down and I believe they contain a large amount of synthetic graphite and around 5-10% silicon, which greatly increases the cost - around $30 a kilo. In the model 3, they haven't changed materials and most improvements have come from pack design and vehicle design, rather than any change in composition. The synthetic graphite that they use is currently $10+ a kilo and natural is $5+ a kilo, so there is a lot of room for cost improvement if our natural graphite can go even close to matching the synthetic. I doubt we'll ever supply Tesla, but I wouldn't rule it out completely.
Article on Clean Technica .com on a Tesla Battery teardown (January 2019):
Jack dove into the constituents of Tesla’s batteries and expressed his opinion that graphite was the critical material to watch, as sourcing for the other components has largely been resolved for Tesla. Tesla continues to work to reduce the amount of cobalt in its batteries, and with its sourcing in Canada this is largely a non-issue from a supply chain standpoint. Having said that, the toxicity of cobalt is a real issue and is one of the main reasons Tesla plans to phase out the use of cobalt in its batteries over the next few years.
Synthetic has a long way to come to match the price of natural. Also keep in mind that batteries are only 25% of the graphite market and still growing. There is a lot of negativity in the battery space with Tesla not performing as expected. They have a lot going against them with US-based manufacturing and have been trading at a 200-300x PE ratio. They are in a difficult position, but we don't need Tesla to succeed. There will be more than enough growth in battery applications (think solar battery systems, general portable devices) and cost is the driving factor. But still, batteries only form 25% of the market, so I am not too phased by any of this negativity.
This is the last chance to sell off for EOFY and lock in the losses. And the last chance to buy low IMO. Tight register of larger holders and it'll start picking up in anticipation of MIN Res decision to mine. We only need one of them to double their position and SP will move 50%. It should be an exciting year ahead. GLTAH.
