Saudi Arabia is in talks with Tesla about setting up a manufacturing facility in the kingdom. The discussions are at an early stage and could fall apart, The Wall Street Journal reports. Especially with the contentious history Saudi and Tesla share.
One of the proposals Saudi Arabia is considering involves extending financing to commodities-trading giant Trafigura for a struggling Congo cobalt and copper mining project, which could help supply a Tesla vehicle factory in the kingdom.
Moreover, for Tesla to realize its ambition of selling 20 million vehicles annually by 2030, a successful deal with the Saudis could help achieve that milestone.
In the meantime, Tesla manufactures vehicles in the U.S., China, and Germany with plans to do so in Mexico. Musk has said Tesla will likely need roughly a dozen factories to meet its goal and could announce another by year-end.
Lucid, which is majority-owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, is expected to start vehicle reassembly on a smaller scale this month at its first international manufacturing facility on the kingdom’s Red Sea coast with plans to produce 150,000 cars annually.
The attempts to snag Tesla reflect a broader Saudi initiative to gain access to metals abroad, refine them at home, and plug them into a nascent ecosystem focused on renewable energy.
The country is in talks with the U.S. to secure metals in Africa needed for the energy transition.
