Elon Musk reportedly discussed with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa the potential of Tesla building a battery factory in South Africa.
The conversation between Musk and Ramaphosa reportedly happened earlier this year, but it was only now reported by Bloomberg.
According to the report, Musk approached the president of his home country to ease regulations and allow Starlink, his satellite-based internet service operated by SpaceX, to operate in the country.
South Africa has rules requiring Starlink to be at least 30% Black-owned to operate, which would likely require SpaceX to partner with locals.
How does Tesla play into this?
According to the report, Musk and Ramaphosa discussed the potential of Tesla to build a battery factory in South Africa as part of a deal to encourage the country to relax its rules to enable Starlink to operate locally.
It’s unclear what kind of “battery factory” they are discussing.
Tesla does produce its own battery cells at Gigafactory Texas, but the production is somewhat limited, and the company is still having issues ramping up. The cells are currently only used in Tesla’s Cybertruck.
The company is also producing battery packs for its electric vehicles and its energy storage business, the latter is expanding much faster than its EV business. Tesla has been building what it calls “Megafactory” to produce its Megapack for energy storage.
Tesla has been rumored to have discussions about building factories in South Africa since 2016, but nothing has come out of it yet.
Electrek’s Take
I’d would take this report with a grain of salt. I doubt that Tesla is currently seriously considering a “battery factory” in South Africa. At best, they have maybe talked about a Megapack factory, but even then, I would see Tesla build such factories in other markets before South Africa.
If Elon indeed talked about a Tesla factory in exchange for allowing Starlink to operate with looser requirements, it does raise interesting questions about how he operates between companies.
It is again flirting with resource tunneling: using a public company under his control to get benefits for his privately owned companies.
But either way, Elon has even clearer examples of resource tunneling.