Tesla took the first step toward refining enough lithium to power one million electric cars a year in Texas.
CEO Elon Musk this week broke ground on a lithium refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, ahead of planned completion in 2024 and increased production in 2025.
Mr. Musk was escorted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott at the groundbreaking ceremony, and arrived in a Cybertruck equipped with a variety of accessories.
Speaking at the event, Musk said that “the fundamental bottleneck in the development of electric vehicles is the availability of lithium batteries.”
“We can expect to produce lithium for about a million vehicles and produce more battery-grade lithium than the rest of North American refining capacity combined,” he told media at the event.
“We have some innovations that we think will be quite effective in refining lithium, which has never been done before,” Musk said.
Tesla says the refining process is designed to be cleaner than existing methods, aiming to remove a “challenging refinery byproduct” called sodium sulfate.
“Instead, the by-product is a mixture of sand and calcium carbonate—a possible additive in the production of building materials, allowing us to take advantage of this waste stream,” the brands said.
“In the future, we will also process other intermediate lithium materials, including those from recycled batteries and manufacturing scrap.”
