Tesla obtained a lithium mine located in Nevada. The target of the move: to diminish the creation expenses of its electric batteries.A project that promises to be very complicated for the company of Elon Musk to achieve.
Tesla takes on mining! Determined to produce electric cars on a large scale, Elon Musk’s firm has just won the rights to operate a lithium mine in the US state of Nevada. Enough to allow it – ideally – to extract its own lithium to manufacture its electric batteries.
As Bloomberg points out, the builder had held talks with Cypress Development. Which plans to mine the lithium in clay deposits located in Nevada. But the discussions had failed, assure sources close to the matter to the American media.
So Tesla, who built a massive 100-megawatt Li-On battery, grabbed 4,000 acres of lithium-filled clay soil. To reap all the benefits, Elon Musk is confident. He would have explained to investors that his engineers had designed a “very sustainable” method. An extraction process using sodium chloride that would replace more expensive chemical reagents.
Tesla’s project seems far too ambitious
But according to Chris Berry, a specialist in energy metals supply chains, the task is going to be very difficult. And for good reason: “There has never been any commercial production of lithium from clay sources,” he told The Verge. Bloomberg thus points out that no company has succeeded in mining enough lithium to launch large-scale production.
According to Chris Berry, that would be far too good to be true: “Damn it, if it were so easy to find a household source of lithium from clay and just use everyday materials like water and salt to produce and sell quality drums on a large scale, why haven’t we been doing this from the start? “.
Tesla would ultimately like to offer electric cars whose price would be accessible to ordinary people. On the occasion of Battery Day Tuesday, September 22, Elon Musk had revealed that he intended to produce an electric car at $ 25,000 by 2023. To do this, he plans to reduce the production cost of his batteries. If this fails, the manufacturer, which has just announced the impressive features of its Model S Plaid, will still be able to puncture its customers with new paid options.
