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Nickel expert calls on Musk, Farley, others to demand Nickel sourcing in North America
Surging prices of nickel, a potentially major influence in the future of the global electric vehicle market, have encouraged one mining expert in the field to call on automotive CEOs to demand more attention toward sourcing the metal in North America.
Nickel and its appeal to EVs
Nickel has been a significant talking point of many automotive CEOs for about two years as its wide availability could alleviate battery manufacturing bottlenecks for cells containing either controversial or hard-to-obtain rare earth metals. Tesla CEO Elon Musk first discussed nickel mining during an Earnings Call in mid-2020. Musk pledged a massive contract to any company that could supply nickel to Tesla, as long as it was sourced efficiently and sustainably.
“Well, I’d just like to reemphasize, any mining companies out there, please mine more nickel, OK?” Musk said on the call. “Wherever you are in the world, please mine more nickel, and don’t wait for nickel to go back to some long — some high point that you experienced some five years ago or whatever. Go for efficiency, as environmentally friendly, nickel mining at high volume. Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way. So hopefully, this message goes out to all mining companies.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk called on companies to mine more nickel, promising a “massive contract” during the Q2 2020 Earnings Call.
Musk eventually landed a nickel supply deal with Minnesota-based Talon Metals in January. It was the first major nickel supply deal Tesla landed and could be a monumental development in the production of EV battery cells.
Nickel increases energy density and therefore driving range, which is an essential metric for EV owners. Despite Elon Musk’s recent claim that too much EV range is counterproductive because it takes away from the performance, a small poll I ran on Twitter seemed to show that people were more concerned about range than performance. Two-thirds of respondents claimed they would sacrifice performance for more range. Despite Tesla’s high-range cars, which are only eclipsed by the Lucid Air’s premier Dream Edition trim, cold weather climates have shown to be one of EV range’s biggest foes, consistently trimming range estimations due to inefficient battery heating.
Soaring prices: $30k to $100k in the blink of an eye
Following a short squeeze on Nickel on the London Metals Exchange, the cost of a metric ton of the metal surged $70,000. Trent Mell, critical mineral expert and CEO of Electra Battery Materials, spoke to Teslarati last week regarding the price surges, which have him ready to make a proposal to automotive CEOs. “I would encourage the big names: Musk, Farley, Barra, to start demanding Nickel sourcing in North America,” Mell said.
According to Statista, Canada is the sixth-biggest producer of nickel globally, with 130,000 metric tons of the element produced in 2021. The United States ranked tenth on the list, with 18,000 metric tons. Mell believes, while North America has a low contribution rate to the global primary nickel supply, there is potential for extreme growth.
“North America currently only contributes around 4% of global primary nickel,” Mell said. “There is no immediate North American solution to growing nickel demand, but we anticipate that the construction of processing capacity on the continent will act as a catalyst to bring more primary nickel, in the form of mining operations, online in coming years so that North America can become increasingly self-reliant on domestically sourced raw materials. There are ample, good-quality nickel projects in North America.”
Nickel is highly-available in Russia, which has had numerous sanctions set by the United States and other governments due to the invasion of Ukraine. According to Mell, nickel in Russia, the third-most available region in the world, is Class 1, which means it is of the highest quality, which is eventually used in EV batteries, among other products. Mell said Nornickel, the country’s leading miner of the metal, exports 96 percent of its product, with 45 percent of that going to Europe.
(Credit: Teslarati) Data provided by Statista
Nickel is going to be a major factor in EV batteries in the coming years. However, automakers have had to adopt different strategies to keep their vehicles flowing off production lines and into customers’ garages. For standard range vehicles, many companies have adopted lithium-iron-phosphate, or LFP, batteries, which are available in wide supply in other markets and offer less range but more affordability. Tesla started transitioning some U.S. Standard Range Model 3 vehicles to LFP cells late last year, as it would reduce wait times. Eventually, it revealed all Standard Range vehicles would equip the LFP chemistry.
However, Mell does not believe LFP is a solution in the long term.
“We used to refer to LFP cells as ‘golf cart batteries,’” he said. Referring to the cell as a “half-hearted solution,” Mell understands the use of LFP for entry-level vehicles but knows nickel is the real solution, which led him to consider proposing industry-leading CEOs to push President Joe Biden to discuss more options in either domestic or, at least, North American mining projects.
Nickel is also easier to recycle and can be easily refined into new cells. Swedish company Northvolt successfully built a cell from recycled nickel last year.
What can consumers expect from the Nickel price hikes?
Mell is adamant that the current levels of nickel on the LME are not sustainable. “I would encourage consumers to wait about six months. Then we’ll see prices drop back to normal levels,” he said. However, as some analysts pointed out, the spikes in price could add between $750 and $1,000 per vehicle in the short term.
Musk said earlier this week that “significant inflationary pressure” was affecting both Tesla and SpaceX, which hinted toward price increases on the company’s vehicles. Last night, Tesla applied price increases to all four of its all-electric vehicles, with the Model X Plaid variant receiving the most substantial surge: $12,500.
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Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.
The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.
On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.
It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something
There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
