Elon Musk suggests looking at lithium batteries as the “new oil”
At the beginning of this week, Tesla officially launched the construction of a lithium processing plant in Texas. Earlier, the company’s CEO Elon Musk stated that lithium batteries should be considered as the “new oil,” Yahoo Finance reports.
Tesla plans to invest $375 million in the construction of the plant and by 2025 produce enough lithium to provide batteries for one million electric vehicles. Withal, the company does not intend to abandon cooperation with existing lithium suppliers.
Lithium is a critical component for the production of lithium-ion batteries, which are revolutionizing the spread of electric vehicles.
“We are looking for several years ahead and understand that the fundamental obstacle in the development of electric vehicles is the availability of lithium for batteries,” Musk said during the groundbreaking ceremony of the plant.
Indeed, the active development of electric transport creates a growing lithium demand — 74% of the global volume of its mining goes to the batteries production. XtraLit, in which Veligera Capital invested in 2022, is working to solve the problem of the shortage of this critical raw material. XtraLit owns an innovative technology for direct lithium extraction (DLE) from salt lakes, associated oil waters, and geothermal sources. Today, the project is at the final stage of assembling components of pilot productions, their commissioning is being prepared at the Dead Sea fields, in Turkey, Canada, and the USA (Texas).