Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s goal is to be building 500,000 electric-vehicles (EV) by 2020. With this planned production rate in the latter half of the decade, Tesla alone will require today’s entire worldwide production of lithium-ion batteries.
There are two primary raw materials necessary to build lithium-ion batteries; lithium and graphite. In fact, it is estimated that 15 times more graphite than lithium is required in a lithium-ion battery.