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An Australian-made Tesla could be on the cards as homegrown billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes confirms he's lobbying Elon Musk to bring vehicle and battery manufacturing down under.
Speaking on the Energy Insiders podcast, the Atlassian founder and minted multi-billionaire Cannon-Brookes said he'd been lobbying Musk for an Australian Gigafactory, in what would be a stunning return to large-scale vehicle manufacturing in this country – if it comes off.
"I’ll call him again. I’ve done a little bit of lobbying over time on the Gigafactory," he said.
"It makes logical sense to me. I don’t pretend to understand the internals of these businesses exactly. But it’s clear we have a lot of the raw materials, and if we could have the low energy prices and the raw materials…
"Australia has always exported energy, we’ve just exported it in molecule form, fossil form. In the future we are going to be exporting energy in a bunch of different ways.
"Battery manufacturing is just another example (of that)."
And Cannon-Brookes does have some form in this department. It was back in 2017 when he reached out to Elon Musk (in what's since been dubbed the "Billionaire Tweets"), engaging Tesla boss in a wager over plans to install a 100MW Tesla battery storage facility in South Australia.
The exchange over the battery, designed to solve South Australia's energy supply woes, attracted the attention of our state and federal governments, with Musk writing: "Tesla will get the system installed and operational in 100 days of contract signature or it's free. That serious enough for you?"
History shows Tesla was successful, but it also shows Cannon-Brookes has some form when it comes to convincing Elon Musk to look to expand in Australia.
So we'll have to wait and see.
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