Elon Musk denies Tes­la in talks with Saud­is for EV fac­to­ry

Elon Musk denied a report that Tes­la is in talks with Sau­di Ara­bia to build an elec­tric vehi­cle fac­to­ry in the Mid­dle East­ern king­dom.
The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed that the elec­tric vehi­cle com­pa­ny is in ear­ly talks with the Saud­is about build­ing a man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty, cit­ing unnamed “peo­ple famil­iar with the dis­cus­sions.”
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Musk took to X, for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter, to respond to the report. “Yet anoth­er utter­ly false arti­cle from WSJ,” said the tech mogul, who has launched a num­ber of crit­i­cisms toward the media at large.

The alleged talks don’t come out of thin air, accord­ing to the report, and they are part of an “ambi­tious push by the king­dom to secure met­als need­ed for elec­tric vehi­cles and help diver­si­fy its econ­o­my away from oil.”
Sau­di Ara­bia has been “woo­ing” Tes­la by lever­ag­ing the right to pur­chase rare mate­ri­als need­ed to make elec­tric vehi­cles from Con­go, accord­ing to the report. Con­go cur­rent­ly sup­plies approx­i­mate­ly 70% of the world’s cobalt.
Musk has had a frac­tured rela­tion­ship with Sau­di Ara­bia, which would have made a part­ner­ship between his com­pa­nies and the oil-rich coun­try a shock to many.
In 2018, the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion sued Musk for mak­ing alleged­ly fraud­u­lent state­ments on Twit­ter about hav­ing the …