IMHO, (F)Elon Musk is probably the worst side effect of the quantitative easing program and the zero interest era. That, plus the inability of SEC to investigate the option trading, which catapulted the Tesla share price into stratospheric levels last year caused, that technically Musk can buy just about anything he wants, assuming that the other party would be willing to sell. And he better do so, because the “asset re-valuation” and USD fall may erase significant part of the wealth his followers of St Elon Church. I just hope, that the “basic materials” such as Lithium will be partially excluded from this drama.

But coming back to the issue outlined above, Musk keeps telling a lot of crap, primarily to keep his follower happy. On TOB, there is an article claiming, that a Tesla bull expects 5-10 giga factories in next 2 years. That itself is sufficient prove, that this people are on high doses of some stuff, which surely must be illegal, because it causes brain cells to malfunction. But this issue comes from the very top of the St. Elon Church, because Musk himself said that the Texas facility is “…the largest factory building in the world by volume" and the "most advanced car factory the world has ever seen." I vaguely remember, that the same claim was repeated on each of many “grand openings” of the first Gigafactory in Nevada, which by the way has not yet been completed (or at least was not when I have checked last time). Just another support of the statement, that Musk just cannot be trusted for what he says or promises to deliver.

IMHO, should Jon Evans be sober, he is going to avoid the marriage with Tesla, because it just does not make sense. To be in line with 6 rules, lets just say, that there are “incompatibilies” between strategical outlooks of both companies. The most obvious is, that while LAC needs to invest into mining and chemical processing, Tesla has to come up with new cars as I very much doubt, that Model 3 and the “F-150 like” (which still does not exists) will be able to sell 20 mil. units annually.

And here comes the final (evergreen) argument: Tesla does not use Lithium, it just take battery cells and pack them into battery packs. LG and Panasonic make the cells for them. And that would be another sizeable investment to make between LAC and Tesla. According google, Musk is worth of $240 bill. on paper. If each of those 20 factories + working capital would cost let say $5 bill. + $4bills for LAC +  the battery cells factory… no matter how I slice it, it just does not add up.

Of course, anything is possible and this is just my 2 cents, probably not even worth of 3* rating :-)