The Australian Government will establish a $2 billion loan facility for domestic critical minerals projects to help secure vital supplies of resources needed to drive a new energy economy and support future jobs.

This $2 billion facility will be used to get new projects off the ground for minerals including rare earths, lithium, magnesium and nickel for use in advanced technologies such as renewable energy, aerospace, defence, automotive and electric vehicles, telecommunications and agri-tech.

More tailwinds for this space.

The Battery area is heating up further with now efforts to get a solid state battery for automotives. There is is this company going to list soon in US stock exchange which apparently is pretty advanced in the state of developing "solid state" batteries. These ones would be be lighter, less flammable and will use less expensive materials (exclude Ni and Cobalt). They are looking to use iron pyrite - (fools gold.)

This company "Solid Power" - which is going to list soon - already has investments from BMW and Ford and has also received this grant or award - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/solid-power-awarded-12-5-120000417.html.

Quantumscape which has investment from Volkwagen seems to be another player in the solid state battery space. https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/06/15/first-look-solid-power-a-ford-backed-quantumscape/

The other piece of news meanwhile is also that Tesla managed to have a record number of car deliveries even with the Covid and chip shortage issues.