INN, Lithium news, Oct. 15/20, exerpts:
Musk announced Tesla will build a cathode plant in Texas and a
lithium hydroxide chemical facility, where it will turn hard rock spodumene concentrate into lithium hydroxide for direct use in its battery cells.
Talking on Battery Day about sourcing lithium specifically, Musk said Tesla has acquired the rights to lithium-rich clay deposits in Nevada, and said the company has found a way to mine it in a sustainable and simple way — using table salt and water. “Tesla’s announcement here was hard to take seriously without much more detailed information,” Chris Berry of House Mountain Partners said.
For the expert, Tesla won’t realistically be mining its own lithium until several years from now. Besides, lithium grades in clay deposits are typically lower than spodumene deposits.
Meanwhile, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence believes that new processing routes and new
technologies that unlock different types of lithium
resources will be crucial to the buildout of the supply chain.
“Because ultimately, brine and spodumene aren’t going to be able to absorb all of the growth that is planned for the coming decades,” Miller said.
By implementing its new acid sulphate-free process to extract lithium, Tesla said it could reduce lithium costs by 33 percent, and adding all other cathode improvements it could see a 12 percent reduction in battery costs per KWh.
According to Moores, “It’s a long-term investment. It takes seven years for a lithium miner at best to fund and build a new mine, and it takes 18 months to build a battery plant. So the takeaway is, it’s not easy, it takes time, you need integrated partners on this.”