Electric Vehicle Sales Are Surging. Can Mineral Producers Meet Future Demand?

Elon Musk isn’t known for playing by the rules.

The 48-year-old tech billionaire got himself into hot water with regulators a couple of years ago by tweeting that he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” (At its 52-week high in February, the company’s stock traded at more than double that amount.) Then there was the time he smoked weed live on Joe Rogan’s show, a decision that the administrator of NASA himself called “not appropriate.”

Oh, and you may have heard that he named his and Canadian singer Grimes’ newborn son X Æ A-12, though California regulations may have something to say about it.

Even more recently, Musk—a vocal critic of coronavirus lockdown measures—disobeyed a California county’s laws by reopening the Tesla assembly plant. “If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me,” he tweeted. (Since then, county officials have capitulated and will now allow the plant to officially reopen next week.)