Lithium, for instance, is not scarce, but the average electric vehicle battery requires around 10 kg of the metal.
Individual recruitments at big companies like Tesla don’t ordinarily attract outside attention. But when, in mid-April, an exploration geologist announced on LinkedIn that he’d left Rio Tinto to join Tesla, it sparked speculation. Why a geologist? Why Tesla? What kooky plans did Elon Musk have...
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So 1 metric ton equals 1,000 kg therefore 24,000 tons equals 2,400,000 EVs, so why are we dependent on China for 80% of lithium? China is by far the leader in the battery race with nearly 80% of global Li-ion manufacturing capacity.
Mapped: EV Battery Manufacturing Capacity, by Region
The United States has a large, domestic source of lithium in geothermal fluids, especially at the Salton Sea region of southern California, where estimates of lithium pass-through at geothermal plants exceed
24,000 metric tons per year, based on 2019 geothermal plant operations. Lithium extraction from geothermal brines offers the potential to provide the United States with a secure, domestic supply of lithium to meet the increasing demands of electric vehicles, grid energy storage, portable electronics, and other end-use applications. Additionally, the use of direct extraction technologies allows for a more sustainable lithium supply relative to current evaporative brine and hardrock mining operations in terms of land use, water use, time to market with lithium products, and carbon intensity of operations.