On April 9, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on his personal social media on Friday local time that Tesla may directly enter the field of lithium mining and refining on a large scale. Because, as a key element in making batteries, lithium prices have reached “crazy” levels.
Lithium prices have reached crazy levels. Tesla may have to go directly to mining and refining on a large scale unless it chooses to increase procurement costs, Musk wrote on Twitter. There is no shortage of lithium itself, It’s pretty much everywhere on the planet, it’s just being mined and refined very slowly.
Musk said so in response to a tweet. A previous tweet showed the average price per ton of lithium over the past 20 years, with prices starting to rise sharply in 2021. Lithium prices rose more than 480% last year, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
According to the US Geological Survey, part of the US Department of Interior, lithium mines do exist all over the United States.
Price of lithium has gone to insane levels! Tesla might actually have to get into the mining & refining directly at scale, unless costs improve.
There is no shortage of the element itself, as lithium is almost everywhere on Earth, but pace of extraction/refinement is slow.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2022
Lithium has great application value in electric vehicle batteries. As the lightest metal, lithium is also the least dense solid element, which means that lithium batteries have a high power-to-weight ratio, which is very important for the battery life of electric vehicles.
This isn’t the first time Musk has floated the idea of Tesla producing its own lithium.
Earlier reports quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that in 2020, Tesla obtained the mining rights to a lithium mine in Nevada after a deal to acquire a lithium mining company failed.