Electric vehicle manufacturers are increasingly interested in securing raw material supplies for the manufacture of their most important component, batteries. Last July, Tesla signed a nickel supply contract with Australian miner BHP and has been in talks in August with Wheaton Precious Metals, one of the world's largest metal streaming companies (metal streaming consists of financing mining companies by securing the right to buy part of their future production at a discount), to supply it with cobalt. GM, meanwhile, announced an investment in Australia's Controlled Thermal Resources, a company that hopes to produce lithium in thermal deposits in the USA. These moves are in addition to the memorandum of understanding signed by Volkswagen with China's Gangfeng, which has lithium projects in Argentina and Mexico, for a 10-year lithium supply contract, and the Toyota Group's lithium exploitation projects in Argentina.