Hello Mark,

You migh want to check the source for Tesla car production of 4.5M cars/yr. This is about x10 of what Forbes says in the following link:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2014/02/26/tesla-5b-gigafactory-bombshell-500000-cars-by-2020/

If Forbes is correct then the required spherical/potato graphite would be ~224,528 tonnes/10 = 22,453 tonnes/yr which is in the same ballpark figures given by Moores (30,000 - 40,000 tonnes/yr).

It should be noted that the above figure are for the final product taking into account the conversion losses, etc. For China, because they are using small-flake graphite to produce spherical graphite, the conversion loss would be about 70%. For large/jumbo flakes the loss would be much less, e.g. ~30%. Even though coated graphite can fetch much better price, the cost for coating is expensive, something that would need to be considered in working out the profit margin. It should be noted also that China ship the uncoated stuff to Japan for coating. Japan has better technology, hence does it better/cheaper?

goldhunter