Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:
Tesla inks deal to get key battery component outside
China
TOM BOWKER and TOM KRISHER
Sun, January 16, 2022, 12:32 AM
Elon Musk's company signed an agreement last month with Australia's Syrah Resources, which operates one of the world’s largest graphite mines in the southern African country. It's a unique partnership between an electric vehicle manufacturer and a producer of the mineral that is critical for lithium-ion batteries. The value of the deal hasn't been released.
Tesla will buy the material from the company's processing plant in Vidalia, Louisiana, which sources graphite from its mine in Balama, Mozambique. The Austin, Texas-based electric automaker plans to buy up 80% of what the plant produces — 8,000 tons of graphite per year — starting in 2025, according to the agreement. Syrah must prove the material meets Tesla’s standards.
The deal is part of Tesla's plan to ramp up its capacity to make its own batteries so it can reduce its dependence on China, which dominates global graphite markets, said Simon Moores of United Kingdom-based battery materials data and intelligence provider, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
“It starts at the top with geopolitics,” Moores said. “The U.S. wants to build enough capacity domestically to be able to build (lithium-ion batteries) within the USA. And this deal will permit Tesla to source graphite independent from China.”
Moores said producing the batteries in the U.S. will reduce some of the questions Tesla is facing about its ties to China, where there are environmental concerns at some mines. The automaker also has set up a showroom in the region of Xinjiang, where Chinese officials are accused of forced labor and other human rights abuses against mostly Muslim ethnic minorities.
A message was left seeking comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations department.
The battery industry has been confronted with a short supply of graphite in recent months, Moores said. Graphite stores lithium inside a battery until it’s needed to generate electricity by splitting into charged ions and electrons.
It comes as every major automaker is racing to get into electric vehicles amid concerns about climate change.
Tesla is making almost a million electric cars per year, and sourcing enough batteries is its biggest constraint, he said.
“They’ve upped their own battery manufacturing capacity,” Moores said, but still “they can’t get enough batteries.”
A new battery factory that the company is building in its new hometown of Austin, Texas, will allow it to get closer to self-sufficiency, but Moores said it is still buying batteries from other manufacturers, “and that won’t change this decade.”
For instance, Tesla has a deal with Panasonic to make battery cells at the automaker's battery factory near Reno, Nevada.
The deal with Syrah is part of a broader effort by automakers to secure relatively scarce raw materials for batteries as demand for electric vehicles is expected to grow, said Sam Abuelsamid, principal e-mobility analyst for Guidehouse Insights.
The deal also brings the graphite processed in Louisiana much closer to Tesla's U.S. factories.
“The pandemic pointed out to us that we've got these long, long, long supply chains, and it doesn’t take much to disrupt a supply chain,” said Donald Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Somebody could all of the sudden say, ‘We’re going to jack up the prices,' or ‘We’re going to refuse to ship it.'"
It's unlikely that the Tesla deal with Syrah will rankle the Chinese government because China has plenty of markets for its graphite, including increased domestic electric vehicle production, Abuelsamid said.
China, though, is Tesla's biggest global market. It has a giant factory near Shanghai and sells about 450,000 vehicles per year there, compared with about 350,000 in the U.S., Abuelsamid said.
For the Australian mining firm, the deal is “crucial” because it has a non-Chinese purchaser for its graphite product, Moores said.
Syrah’s graphite mine in Mozambique’s northernmost province, Cabo Delgado, is one of the world’s largest, with an ability to produce 350,000 tons of flake graphite a year.
Cabo Delgado has faced violence in recent years by Islamic extremists, an insurgency that has recently extended inland from coastal areas toward the neighboring Niassa province.
The mine is on the main road connecting the Cabo Delgado and Niassa provinces, a thoroughfare that has been recently upgraded by a Chinese contractor. At a ceremony to reopen the road in December, President Filipe Nyusi called for vigilance so the road isn't used by insurgents.
Translation
倫敦（美聯社）——Tesla 正在向莫桑比克尋求其電動汽車電池的關鍵部件，分析師認為這是一項旨在減少其對中國對石墨的依賴的同類交易中的首個。
埃隆馬斯克 (Elon Musk)的公司上個月與澳大利亞的 Syrah Resources 簽署了一項協議，該公司在南部非洲國家經營著世界上最大的石墨礦之一。這是電動汽車製造商和生產鋰離子電池關鍵礦物商之間的獨特合作夥伴關係。該交易的價值尚未公佈。
Tesla將從該公司位於路易斯安那州維達利亞的加工廠購買這種材料，該加工廠從莫桑比克Balama 的礦山中採購石墨。根據協議，這家總部位於德克薩斯州奧斯汀的電動汽車製造商計劃從 2025 年開始購買該工廠生產的 80% 的產品 - 每年 8,000 噸石墨。Syrah 必須證明材料符合Tesla的標準。
總部位於英國的電池材料數據和情報提供商 Benchmark Mineral Intelligence 的 Simon Moores 表示，這筆交易是Tesla提高自身電池生產能力計劃的一部分，以減少對主導全球石墨市場的中國的依賴。
Moores 說: “這是由於最高層因地緣政治開始”; “美國希望在國內建立足夠(鋰離子電池)的產能。這筆交易將使Tesla能夠不需依賴中國石墨” 。
Moores表示，在美國生產電池將減少Tesla在與中國的關係, 這涉及一些開採時的環保問題。這家汽車製造商還在新疆地區設立了一個陳列室，中國官員被指控對大多數穆斯林少數民族進行強迫勞動和其他侵犯人權的行為。
一個要求發表評論的信息已向Tesla發送了，該公司已解散其媒體關係部門。
Moores 表示，近幾個月來，電池行業一直面臨石墨供應短缺的問題。在電池內的石墨將鋰儲存，直到需要時, 它通過分裂造成帶電離子和電子來發電。
由於對氣候變化的擔憂，各大汽車製造商都在競相涉足電動汽車。
他說，Tesla每年生產近 100 萬輛電動汽車，而採購足夠的電池是其最大的限制因素。
Moores說: “他們提高了自己的電池製造能力”; 但仍然“他們無法獲得足夠的電池” 。
在其新家鄉德克薩斯州奧斯汀, 該公司正在建造的新電池工廠將使其更接近自給自足，但Moores表示，它仍在從其他製造商那裡購買電池， “在這十年是不會改變的” 。
例如，Tesla與松下達成協議，在內華達州里諾附近的汽車製造商電池工廠生產電池。
Guidehouse Insights 首席電動汽車分析師 Sam Abuelsamid 表示，與
Syrah 的交易是汽車製造商為確保相對稀缺的電池原材料而採取的更廣泛努力的一部分，因為電動汽車的需求預計將增長。
該交易還使在路易斯安那州加工的石墨更近Tesla在美國的工廠。
麻省理工學院材料化學教授 Donald Sadoway說： “病毒大流行向我們指出，我們有這麼長、很長、很長的供應鏈，破壞供應鏈並不需要太多工夫”; “可能有人會突然說，‘我們會抬高價格’，或者‘我們會拒絕發貨’” 。
Abuelsamid 說，Tesla與 Syrah 的交易不太可能激怒中國政府，因為中國的石墨有很多市場，包括國內電動汽車產量的增加。
不過，中國是Tesla最大的全球市場。 Abuelsamid 說，它在上海附近有一家大型工廠，每年在上海銷售約 45 萬輛汽車，而美國的銷量約為 35 萬輛。
Moores說，對於這家澳大利亞礦業公司來說，這筆交易“至關重要”，因為它的石墨產品有一個非中國買家。
位於莫桑比克最北部省份Cabo Delgado的Syrah石墨礦是世界上最大的石墨礦之一，年產能為 35 萬噸片狀石墨。
近年來，Cabo Delgado 一直面臨伊斯蘭極端分子的暴力，該叛亂分子最近已從沿海地區向內陸延伸至鄰近的Niassa省。
該礦位於連接 Cabo Delgado省和 Niassa省的主幹道上，這條大道最近已由一家中國承包商進行了升級改造。在 12 月重新開放道路的儀式上，總統 Filipe Nyusi呼籲保持警惕，以免叛亂分子使用這條道路。
So, in
order to reduce its dependence on China for graphite, Tesla signed an agreement
with Australia's Syrah Resources which operates one of the world’s largest
graphite mines in Africa. In the past two years the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted
the fact that global supply chains can be disrupted easily for various
reasons. To remapping the supply routes will be a new subject for world leaders
of the developed countries out of political and economic needs.
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