German luxury car maker Porsche AG will no longer offer diesel versions of its cars.
Porsche is investing over ?,?6 billion ($7 billion) into hybrid and electric mobility technology until 2022. Every other new Porsche car will likely be electrically powered by 2025, either as a hybrid or fully electric.
Ganfeng Lithium, China's top producer of lithium, said it's agreed to a deal with Tesla to supply a fifth of its production to the vehicle maker.
The agreement runs from 2018 to 2020 and could be extended by three years, Ganfeng said.
The Tesla deal follows an earlier announcement with Ganfeng agreeing to supply battery producer LG Chem between 2019-2025 under a supplementary contract.
Its lithium compounds capacity may rise to 75,000 tons of carbonate equivalent at the end of this year, making the producer the industry's second-largest, according to CRU Group research.
According to Benchmark Mineral's forecasts, Tesla may need as much as 28,000 tons of lithium hydroxide a year from late next year based on battery output at its Nevada facility reaching the equivalent of 35 gigawatt hours.
Context, as always, is important. Simon Moores of Benchmark - which is one of the most reputable research firms in the lithium space - put it well, saying "These deals are dwarfing the size of the entire lithium hydroxide market from only a couple of years ago."
Remember when Elon said Tesla would focus on trying to source resources only from American producers? That didn't work out too well.
In the second quarter of 2018, China produced 265,000 units of new energy vehicles (NEVs), up from 148,000 units in the first quarter but down from 370,000 units produced in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to industry ministry data.
Approximately 500,000 electric vehicles were sold worldwide in 2016. That figure is expected to jump seven fold, according to estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and I think that estimate may prove to be conservative.