According to foreign media reports, Musk said that Tesla sees the potential of manganese-based cathodes in batteries, and reiterated that the auto industry needs to pay more attention to the battery supply chain, especially the mineral supply chain.

　　On March 22, after delivering the first Model Y at Tesla's Berlin plant, Musk was asked about graphene batteries in a speech to employees. Like many in the industry, Musk said he was skeptical due to the complexity of graphene production, but stressed that Tesla is using more of the material to make batteries.

　　Musk reiterated that in the foreseeable future, Tesla, like other companies, will focus on nickel-based materials for long-range electric vehicles and iron phosphate materials for short-range electric vehicles. However, Musk also briefly commented on manganese-based materials, "I think manganese has great potential."

　　Tesla has been exploring using more manganese in batteries. At Tesla Battery Day 2020, Tesla said that as an interim step, Tesla plans to use nickel-manganese. "It's relatively simple to make a cathode with two-thirds nickel and one-third manganese, which allows us to produce batteries with 50 percent more capacity for the same amount of nickel," Musk said. Musk didn't elaborate on March 22, other than to say that Tesla is working on manganese-based batteries.

　　Image source: Official Twitter of the State Government of Brandenburg, Germany

　　Musk emphasized, "The mass production of electric vehicles and batteries requires tens of millions of tons, or even hundreds of millions of tons of battery raw materials. Therefore, these battery raw materials must be common and ubiquitous materials, otherwise we will not be able to scale production."

　　Several research groups have published papers on high-manganese batteries, arguing that high-manganese batteries may have higher energy density than lithium iron phosphate batteries, but may be less expensive than high-nickel batteries.

　　Tesla already uses manganese in some battery chemicals, but manganese is not the main ingredient. For example, Tesla has previously used nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) in the Powerwall, which uses a lot of manganese. Nissan also used a high-manganese cathode in the Leaf's initial battery.

　　Musk reiterated the need to focus on battery mineral supply to accelerate the transition to electric mobility and renewable energy. Tesla estimates that the world will need to produce 300 TWh of batteries to fully transition to sustainability.