Elon Musk, CEO of auto major Tesla, believes that 100 gigafactories could sustainably power the whole world through a new, ascending global currency. Lithium.
Musk might be the visionary here, but it’s the Chinese who’ve captured the lithium zeitgeist.
Hitting its stride a decade earlier than India, China not only strategically stockpiled a supply of essential minerals but also laid out elaborate subsidies to completely localise the ore-to-battery supply chain. This was helped by a wafer-thin wall between the private sector and the state.
Today, the country is home to three of the world’s largest gigafactories.