Jason Badeaux

Tesla’s vision is simply batteries everywhere, for everything, all the time. And that means Tesla is going to need to produce a lot of batteries.

This is a very new technology. It could be decades before it is developed enough to be put into a car. The high levels of cobalt could also be a huge issue. Not only is cobalt more than twice as expensive as any other battery metal, but its mining is environmentally and humanely dubious. Many companies, including Tesla, want to have cobalt-free... See more

Early on in an energy transition, there is often more attention on how well they can do existing things. Examples include how well coal could heat and oil and electricity could light. But the larger impact for any energy transition, like other new technologies, is to enable us to do brand new things.

Tesla is by far the most advanced in releasing an FSD package, announcing in early 2020 that it had completed over 5 billion kilometers of testing under autopilot, against just 2 million miles over the past two years by its nearest competitor Waymo (backed by Google).

Tesla doesn’t want to limit the scale of battery manufacturing to the number of cars it can produce. So Tesla is selling its batteries to other car manufacturers. This is pretty astonishing. Tesla has developed a material technology advantage over its direct competitors. Rather than using that to differentiate its product, Tesla is selling that... See more