The biggest news from Elon Musk?s Tesla shareholder meeting

There’s been a ton of speculation as to what, exactly, Tesla believes Maxwell has to offer, but the company had been tight-lipped while the deal was still closing.In response to a question at Tuesday’s shareholder meeting, though, Musk finally gave the beginnings of an answer, calling the acquisition “quite strategic.” He’s saving full details for when Tesla holds a “battery and powertrain investor day” (a follow-on event to the recent “autonomy investor day”), but Musk said Maxwell had developed some “very important technologies” that he believes will make it cheaper and easier to quickly scale up production of lithium-ion battery cell production. But even that will only go so far to help meet the company’s hunger for batteries, and so Musk said he’s considering moving Tesla further into the lithium-ion battery supply chain.“We might get into the mining business, I don’t know, maybe a little bit at least,” he said. Getting into mining could certainly help complete that vision, while also securing materials in what is turning out to be a pretty volatile market as more electric vehicles get built every year.Musk announced on a conference call in April that Tesla is going to start offering insurance to its customers, and said it “will be more compelling than anything else” on the market, since the company has more direct access to its cars’ (and therefore its drivers’) data. But in response to a question about what is holding up the offering, Musk said Tesla has “a small acquisition that we need to complete, and a bit of software to write.” He didn’t specify what company Tesla might be buying, but reassured shareholders that “it won’t be long before” Tesla starts offering insurance.Tesla unveiled its solar roof tiles all the way back in 2016, right around the time that the company was buying Solar City. They’re being deployed in eight states, Musk said Tuesday, but he added that making them is “quite a hard problem.” Tesla is working on a third iteration of the tiles, which Musk said he’s “really excited about,” and that the company has “a shot” at bringing the cost of a full solar roof down to that of a normal, shingled version plus the cost of utilities. I’m not sure what to do about it.” Musk said Tesla does provide “rebuttals” to stories it perceives to be negative, but that the responses get “buried.” “It’s the most crazy disinformation campaign I’ve ever seen,” Musk said.One shareholder proposed Musk turn to media moguls like Michael Bloomberg and Arianna Huffington to find a better way to get the company’s message out, which Musk said was a “good idea.” But, Musk added that be believes there’s been “quite a few negative articles in Bloomberg.”Another shareholder asked Musk why he doesn’t spend money on marketing or advertising, something the company famously avoids.