Tesla Inc., the American electric vehicle and clean energy company, has broken ground on a new lithium refinery in Texas.
According to CEO Elon Musk, the facility should manufacture enough battery metal by 2025 to assemble around 1 million electric cars (EVs).
Tesla Build Its Own Lithium Refinery
In order for Tesla to fulfill its lofty EV sales targets, Musk claimed the automaker must move outside its core business of manufacturing cars and into the complicated field of lithium refining and processing.
Musk stated that Tesla intended to complete the factory’s construction the following year and then achieve full production roughly a year later.
As a result, Tesla will be the first significant carmaker in North America to process its own lithium.
The processing of many important minerals, including lithium, is currently dominated by China.
Musk said the automaker will continue to purchase the metal from its suppliers, which include Albemarle Corp and Livent Corp, but he did not specify how much lithium the facility would process annually.
It’s not all going to be done by Tesla, according to Musk, who also stated that “we aim to use suppliers of lithium.”
Construction of Albemarle’s South Carolina lithium processing facility, which will refine 100,000 tonnes of the metal annually, is expected to start next year and be completed sometime later this decade.
Despite having supply agreements with companies like Piedmont Lithium Inc. and others, Musk did not specify where Tesla will obtain the spodumene concentrate, a crude form of lithium that will be refined at the facility.
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Lithium From Nevada Clay Deposits
Tesla announced that it will forego the traditional lithium industry refining method, which depends on sulfuric acid and other potent chemicals, in favor of substances that were less harmful to the environment, including soda ash.
The declaration made on Monday was not Tesla’s first attempt to enter the lithium production market. In 2020, Musk informed the company’s investors that Tesla had acquired the legal rights to 10,000 acres in Nevada, where it planned to manufacture lithium from clay deposits—a feat that had never been accomplished on a large scale previously.
Tesla hasn’t yet used the procedure, despite Musk’s boasts that the business has created a unique method for producing lithium from the Nevada clay resources responsibly.
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