nevada

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has blamed “lower-than-expected” battery manufacture from Panasonic for disrupting production of Tesla’s Model 3 electric vehicles (EVs).

Musk said in a post on Twitter that Panasonic’s battery cell lines at the ‘Gigafactory 1’ facility in Nevada amounted to about 24GWh per year— lower than the expected 35GWh— and had “been a constraint on Model 3 output since July (2018)”.

Musk added “Tesla won’t spend money on more capacity until existing lines get closer to 35GWh theoretical”.

LithiumOre is to form a new division to develop a method of extracting battery-grade lithium from brine.

The division will extract battery metals from LithiumOre’s 26,000-acre Nevada land holdings, as well as marketing its extraction technology to other mining companies.

The Nevada-based exploration and development company said current extraction technology— involving a series of evaporation ponds— can take up to two years to complete and requires a huge amount of water, meaning the process is no longer permissible within the US.

LithiumOre CEO Doug Cole said the new division “simultaneously creates a technology side to our business with an entirely new revenue stream independent of our mining operations and realises our goal of becoming a fully integrated lithium mining and production company”.