Tesla’s Lithium Dreams
Lithium mining might finally be in Tesla’s future as the price of the pivotal battery material spiked to $78,000 per metric ton, up almost 800% from $6,800 in 2020, when Musk first hinted that Tesla would be looking to gather Lithium mining under its umbrella.
In a twitter screed on April 9th, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said,
This talk is of course not unexpected; stories of Tesla bringing Nickel and other material gathering ventures into the greater web of its infrastructure holdings have been frequent over the last couple years. But it seems this wild jump in price has spurred some quicker action.
Like anything else, of course, Elon has been planning for this. Back in 2020 at the Battery Day conference, Musk described not only their plans to begin mining and refining Lithium themselves, but a possible way to use salt to reduce costs by almost 33%.
Not much detail was originally given, but last summer a patent was applied for that gives way more information; but the real confirmation for the start of mining operations is that back in 2020, Tesla purchased 10,000 acres of Lithium-rich land in Nevada.
This of course isn’t the biggest barrier. Industry professionals have been critiquing Musk’s plan since it was announced,
“Mining lithium is very challenging. If Tesla really wants to fly solo, we’re talking about four to five years to really see any kind of lithium production,”
“This plan from Tesla brings up a lot more questions than it answers. Are we just supposed to take Elon Musk’s word for it that the cost will be lower than existing lithium projects?… If producing lithium in commercial amounts at battery quality grades from clay was feasible, why isn’t it already being done?”
Valid points, but we’ve seen Elon’s companies surpass those hurdles before. Is Tesla going to be able to do it again, or is Lithium going to be a tougher nut to crack? I’m sure we’ll see soon.