politicodiary

Photo for representation purpose only There is going to be a new war of raw materials that might reinvent the Electric vehicle dynamics worldwide. The precious material here in controversy in Nickel. With a surge in the EV market, there is more need of batteries that make use of this metal. Not found in large quantities, it takes painstaking effort to mine in from the Earth’s crust. As of now, America has small amounts to spare. In 2020, Tesla's Elon Musk begged miners to “please mine more nickel” and offered a “giant contract” to anyone who could do it sustainably. The problem is acute. Nickel is a key component of electric-vehicle batteries. Thanks to surging EV demand, geopolitics and a lack of new supplies, the high-grade nickel necessary for making electric-vehicle batteries is becoming scarce. As of latest statistics, Australia and Indonesia are tied for the highest nickel reserves in the world, each coming in at 21 million MT. While Australia is only the  fifth larges...

Elon Musk is now getting requests from military trapped in Ukraine for help. Money does go places and this is not anything new. The situation of Ukrainians is becoming bad to worse as we see many of them stuck in places of offensive. Right now, Russia is concentrating all its power in places like Mariupol that is home to sprawling Azovstal steel mill. In the mill, we know for sure that there are Ukrainian military is stuck along with its Commander in Chief, Serhiy Volyna. They are dead serious to get help from Musk; and in order to do this, they have even started a new Twitter account to contact him. "Help us get out of Azovstal to a mediating country. If not you, then who? Give me a hint," commander Serhiy Volyna tweeted to Elon Musk. Serhiy Volyna, commander of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade took to Twitter and said, “Elon Musk, people say you come from another planet to teach people to believe in the impossible. Our planets are next to each other, as I live where it ...

Parag Agarwal’s wife Vineeta Agarwala seems to have been caught in the wrong spot when it comes to Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter. It was Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) – that had agreed to pay $400 million as part of Musk's new $7.1 billion financing commitments. One of America’s top US VC firms apparently, has Vineeta Agarwala as its general partner. Rumour goes that the whole deal is now going to pose a conflict of interest owing to Ms. Agarwala’s association with Twitter and the funding itself. With the possibility of Musk becoming a partial CEO of the newly acquired microblogging platform, Parag’s position now become insecure as CEO. If asked to leave, he would receive nearly $39 million due to a clause in his contract on sudden termination of services. His total compensation for 2021 was $30.4 million, largely in stocks. However, if the deal has come through an ‘under-the-table’ understanding, his exit could mean a huge kickback later, economists feel. All this has come to s...