Aussie billionaire pushes Elon Musk on local Tesla factory

Car manufacturing could return to Australian shores – if Mike Cannon-Brookes has his way.

On the Energy Insiders podcast, the Aussie billionaire revealed he’s been pushing Tesla CEO Elon Musk to bring car production back to the country by establishing a Gigafactory (Tesla’s name for its new-car plants) here.

“I’ve called him again, I’ve done a little bit of lobbying over time on the Gigafactory,” Cannon-Brookes said.

“Look, at some point, I think it makes logical sense to me, I don’t pretend to understand the internals of those businesses exactly. But it’s clear that we have a lot of the raw materials.”

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm previously signalled the company’s intention to spend more than $1 billion on raw materials mined from Australia in order to create electric vehicle batteries.

At the same conference in Canberra, Denholm – who is Australian and helped establish Toyota’s Melbourne factory – suggested the country could see a return to car manufacturing.

“Can Australia move even further up the value chain? To large-scale cell manufacturing? To vehicles? In my view, that’s a possibility. Australia has the minerals, the know-how and many of the skills.” Denholm said in June.

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Investment bank Morgan Stanley recently published a report in which the idea of Tesla manufacturing in Australia was raised, according to The Driven.

Mike Cannon-Brookes was instrumental in having Tesla build its large battery facility in South Australia in 2017, following an exchange of tweets with Musk.

The Tesla boss has been vocal about his troubles with government bureaucracy as the company works towards getting its German Gigafactory up and running.

The electric vehicle maker has also reportedly been facing difficulties with Chinese authorities in recent months, as well as parts suppliers having to reduce output due to electricity shortages across the country.