His goal: annual sales of 20 million e-cars by 2030. But the road to a volume as large as the world’s largest carmakers Volkswagen and Toyota together is strewn with potholes. The billionaire and aerospace entrepreneur who started almost 20 years ago to promote electromobility and stir up the market would explode dimensions: Tesla would have a market share of a fifth, twice as much as the largest manufacturers today. Compared to the targeted 1.5 million Tesla deliveries this year, the electric car pioneer would grow by a factor of 13.
“I would equate it to the Manhattan Project in World War II,” says production executive Michael Tracy of The Agile Group. The Manhattan Project was the US effort to build an atomic bomb. For the auto industry, too, Musk’s vision, if it becomes a reality, would be a game changer that would fundamentally change the way the industry works and secures raw materials.
Tesla would have to build seven or eight more gigafactories for battery production, one every year. The battery capacity would have to increase 30-fold compared to the current 100 gigawatt hours: Musk explained in July that the long-term requirement would be 3,000 gigawatt hours. “We have good prospects of actually achieving this before 2030. I am extremely confident that we can do it by 2030.”
HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS
Musk’s lofty plans also require huge investments, according to a Reuters analysis of Tesla’s published financial data and forecasts for the development of the electric car industry. A total of around 400 billion dollars would have to flow into new assembly and battery plants in California by 2030 – another 200 billion dollars into the purchase of raw materials and the production of electric drives. By the end of the year, Musk wants to decide where the fifth Tesla factory should be built. Today there are two in the USA, one in China and one in Grünheide near Berlin. Canada is the hot candidate for number five. There is also speculation about the USA, Mexico or India.
Commodity producers and battery producers would have to expand their capacities significantly in order to be able to satisfy the appetite of their customer Tesla. For 3000 gigawatt hours, the specialist service Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (BMI) calculates a quantity of two million tons of lithium, 1.3 million tons of nickel, 3.5 million tons of graphite and 200,000 tons of cobalt. That would be four times as much lithium and nickel as the entire electric car industry will use in 2022, seven times as much graphite and twice as much cobalt. BMI described this as “very ambitious”. Tesla currently has purchase agreements with more than 20 raw material suppliers worldwide. The carmaker does not comment on its plans on request.
The Tesla boss must also take into account the growing range of electric cars from traditional car manufacturers, who are switching to zero-emission drives worldwide. Car expert Tracy is therefore skeptical that Musk can set up by far the largest car manufacturer in the world within eight years. “That would be an extraordinary achievement considering it took Toyota decades to do this.”
Meanwhile, Tesla shares temporarily lost 1.35 percent to $280.97 in NASDAQ trading.
Reuters
Leverage must be between 2 and 20
No data
More news about BMW AG
Image sources: Pe3k / Shutterstock.com, Nadezda Murmakova / Shutterstock.com