Musk responded to a tweet below posted by the World of Statistics, which documented the exponential rise in lithium prices in recent years.
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The price for this critical mineral has risen 1,200% over the past two years, a reality that in part led to Tesla’s announcement earlier this week that it would raise the price of its 3 EV model by 7,000 euros, to US value. $ 54,838. The price increase will cause customers The German company will not be able to access a significant part of the sensitive subsidy for the price of 9,000 euros offered by the German national government, which will make the Model 3 even less competitive in price in the market.
Price of lithium has gone to insane levels! Tesla might actually have to get into the mining & refining directly at scale, unless costs improve.
There is no shortage of the element itself, as lithium is almost everywhere on Earth, but pace of extraction/refinement is slow.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2022
The price increase of the Model 3 follows price increases in some of the company’s other models, and by competing car manufacturers. Rapid price increases of lithium and other critical minerals like copper, cobalt and others were among the main motives for these increases in car prices. It should be noted that the lithium industry is considered a modern slave and leads to the death of thousands of people in the field every year, which will probably prevent Musk from taking such a step seriously, which could provoke strong criticism of him in the West.