The lost opportunity – Tesla and its attempt to buy Simbol Materials
Elon Musk describing the Tesla Gigafactory (source: flickr/ Steve Jurvetson, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
10 Jun 2016
In details provided recently, it is reported that Tesla made an offer to buy Simbol Materials back in 2015 under a $325 million offer. This could have been an incredible boost to geothermal. But things are not over yet.
In a rather interesting article, The Desert Sun from Nevada writes about Tesla’s attempt to buy Simbol Materials.
We have written about Simbol Materials before, the company essentially developed a technology to derive Lithium from geothermal brine at the Hudson Ranch geothermal power plant in the Salton Sea in California.
For scaling up technology and operations, the company needed some serious cash and was in discussions with various players. As it now appears, Tesla made a concrete offer of $325 million in Tesla stock back in 2014.
The article by the Desert Sun provides some intriguing details about the failed deal and about the company.
While a lost opportunity, there are various other companies now trying to build similar businesses that could in the future provide the much needed Lithium for the Gigafactory of Tesla in Nevada. There the company plans to build batteries for its Tesla cars, but also home batteries.
Source: The Desert Sun
