Elon Musk’s entrance to the much-awaited ‘Battery Day’ event was met with honking from the crowd. Indeed, onlookers were seated in Tesla (US:TSLA) cars parked in front of the stage.
But such enthusiasm did not extend to shareholders more broadly. Tesla’s valuation has skyrocketed this year as investors backed chief executive Elon Musk’s vision of the company as a tech player that happens to sell cars. But in the days after the much-anticipated event on 23 September, its share price dropped by almost 20 per cent. High expectations were ostensibly dampened by a longer-than-expected timeline for the carmaker’s ambitions.
Mr Musk said that his company had worked out a new, cheaper way of extracting lithium from ore that could be done in the US. He also flagged massive increases in production, which - if realised - would lift demand for nickel and other materials. Moreover, he pointed to a shift towards in-house battery production and lithium mining, huge increases in battery capacity and a $25,000 (£20,000) car in three years. The capacity ambition would see battery production triple over the next three years from the current level of 35 gigawatt hours (GWh).