Musk says Tesla did not plan to invest in Swiss mining company

Tesla's 4680 battery cells

Tesla

The Financial Times recently reported that Tesla had talks with Glencore about taking a stake in the Swiss mining giant. It seems that Tesla and Glencore held some sort of discussions starting as early as last year. Discussions apparently continued until March this year when Glencore’s chief executive Gary Eagle visited Tesla’s Fremont Factory.

According to the FT, Tesla supposedly planned to buy a minority equity stake of 10% to 20% in Glencore but both parties were unable to reach an agreement. Tesla had concerns over Glencore’s coal mining business which conflicted with the EV manufacturer’s environmental goals.

However, at an investor's conference today in New York, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla "never contemplated investing in Glencore." It's not clear what led the FT to think that Tesla was considering investing in Glencore, but there may have been conversations between Tesla and Glencore as Tesla tries to secure mining materials.

Glencore does plan to align itself with the objectives of the Paris Agreement, reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 and shrinking its coal portfolio over time.

Glencore is the world’s largest trading house and producer of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia, and Canada. A few years ago, Tesla secured a cobalt offtake agreement with the Swiss mining giant for Giga Shanghai and Giga Berlin.

Will Tesla invest in mining?

Although talks between Tesla and Glencore did not lead to Tesla considering an investment in the mining giant, the discussions hint that Tesla is interested in what's happening in the mining industry.

Elon has said in the past that he prefers not to enter the mining industry, although Tesla will if they have to. Mining could become more of a constraint as Tesla increases vehicle production and scales the 4680 battery assembly line.

At the Q3 2022 earnings call, Elon was asked about vertically integrating into mining, and he responded:

“We’ll do whatever we have to. Whatever the limiting factor is, we’ll do. We do not artificially constrain ourselves. We don’t vertically integrate just for the hell of vertically integrating,” Elon Musk replied to Jonas.

“Like if there was a great supplier who’s better than us or we think is at least very good, or even where the economics of comparative advantage suggests that we should use that supplier, even if we could beat them, but we could use our resources to do something else that will be more productive, then we would in source in that case. But if we have to go mine, we will mine,” Musk explained.

The rise of EVs has caused many carmakers to become more involved in the mining industry to secure raw materials such as cobalt, lithium and nickel that are needed to manufacture batteries.

These types of discussions will likely continue as the need for such raw materials increases. It is possible that Tesla's Master Plan Part 3 will involve the acquisition of a mining company so that Tesla can “scale to extreme size to shift humanity away from fossil fuels.”

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Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

Not a Tesla App

As part of Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla included two awesome new features - Weather at Destination and the long-awaited Weather Radar Overlay. These two features are big upgrades built upon the weather feature that was added in update 2024.26. The original weather feature added an hourly forecast, as well as the chance of precipitation, UV index, Air Quality Index, and other data.

However, this update also added some smaller weather touches, such as the vehicle alerting you if the weather at the destination will be drastically different from the current weather.

Weather At Destination

When you’re navigating to a destination and viewing the full navigation direction list, the text under the arrival time will show you the expected weather next to your destination. You can also tap this, and the full weather pop-up will show up, showing your destination's full set of weather information.

Note the weather under the arrival time

Not a Tesla App

You can also tap the weather icon at the top of the interface at any time and tap Destination to switch between the weather at your current location and the weather at your destination.

You’re probably considering that the weather at your destination doesn’t matter when you’re three hours away - but that’s all taken into account by the trip planner. It will add in both charge time and travel time and show you the weather at your destination at your expected arrival time.

And if the weather is drastically different or inclement, such as rain or snow, while you’ve got sunshine and rainbows - the weather will be shown above the destination ETA for a few moments before it tucks itself away.

The weather pop-up above the ETA

Not a Tesla App

One limitation, though—if you’re planning a long road trip that is more than a day of driving, the weather at destination feature won’t be available until you get closer.

Weather Radar Overlay

As part of the improvements to weather, Tesla has also added a radar overlay for precipitation. You can access the new radar overlay by tapping the map and then tapping the weather icon on the right side of the map. It’ll bring up a 3-hour radar overlay centered on either your vehicle or your route. You can play or pause the animation of the weather overlay, but it’s useful to see the direction the storm is moving in.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, as long as you’re not zoomed out too far. It also works while you’re driving, although it can be a little confusing if you’re trying to pay attention to the navigation system. If you like to have Points of Interest enabled on your map, the weather overlay will hide POIs except for Charging POIs.

The weather overlay works on HW3 but only with Ryzen processors. Intel is once again left out. pic.twitter.com/tzYlJHsWzH

— Iowa Tesla - Jim Spencer (@IowaTeslaGuy) December 9, 2024

Requirements / Data

Unfortunately, you’ll need Premium Connectivity for any of the weather features to work, and being on WiFi or using a hotspot will not be enough to get the data to show up. The data, including the weather radar, is provided by The Weather Channel.

As for supported models, weather and weather at destination are available on all vehicles except for the 2012-2020 Model S and Model X. The weather radar has more strict requirements and requires the newer AMD Ryzen-powered infotainment center available on the 2021+ Model S and Model X and more recent Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

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Tesla Updates Santa Mode & Rainbow Road to Use Ambient Lighting and Updates SteamOS [VIDEO]

Flo / Roberto Bonato

While Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update brought many new features, including Apple Watch Support, Cross Traffic Alerts, Weather Overlays, Search Along Route, and others, there are also several smaller items in this update that didn’t get much attention.

Ambient Lighting Now Affects Easter Eggs

The 2024+ Model 3 and Cybertruck both come equipped with ambient lighting, and Tesla is now taking advantage of this custom lighting feature by incorporating it into several easter eggs.

Rainbow Road: If you head over to Apps > ToyBox > Rainbow Road, you’ll find a new option available that allows the ambient lighting in the vehicle to also change shades while Rainbow Road is active. The Rainbow Road easter egg is a tribute to the iconic course course in Nintendo’s Mario Kart.

Check out the feature in action below:

🇮🇹 Con l’aggiornamento di Natale, quando attiviamo la pista arcobaleno, anche i LED interni diventeranno arcobaleno. Questa è una novità non documentata, scovata da un utente di TESLERS (chiaramente riguarda le Model 3 Highland)

🇺🇸 UNDOCUMENTED CHANGE: With the Holiday update,… pic.twitter.com/xyocOIrWfX

— 𝗧𝗘𝗦𝗟𝗘𝗥𝗦 (@TeslersOfficial) December 8, 2024

Santa Mode: Just in time for Christmas, Tesla has improved Santa Mode by cycling the ambient lighting between Christmas colors. Similar to Rainbow Road, the use of ambient lighting for the easter egg is optional and can be enabled under Apps > ToyBox > Santa Mode.

When using Santa Mode with ambient lighting turned on, the lights will cycle just between Christmas colors, red, green and white, instead of the full rainbow. There’s a video of the feature below:

Yup and in Santa Mode it cycles between red white and green pic.twitter.com/HVQUlfUyze

— Roberto Bonato (@BonatoRoberto) December 9, 2024

Update: It looks like it affects other Easter eggs as well, such as turning orange when using Romance mode.

SteamOS (Beta) Update

The Model S and Model X vehicles that support Steam gaming are receiving a Steam app update in the holiday update as well. This update could end up being very interesting, but for now Tesla says that the SteamOS, which also runs on Valve’s Steam Deck has been updated to version 3.6.

Valve outlines a wide range of fixes and improvements in their release notes for version 3.6, but Tesla simply states that the OS update includes performance enhancements and improved game compatibility.

The SteamOS hasn’t been updated on the Model S and X for quite a while, so we believe there may be more to this besides performance improvements and fixes. We’ll be looking to share some insights into this in the near future.

So, there you have it—three new features in the Holiday update that have mostly gone under the radar. While they may not apply to everyone, there are plenty of other cool features in the Holiday Update, like the arrival of Dynamic Road Closure Routing and Nearby Parking, that are coming to every vehicle, so go check out the full release notes.

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