american businessman Elon Musk suggested this Friday that Teslayour luxury electric vehicle company, will go into the business of extracting and refining lithium if the cost of this raw material that it needs to make batteries is not reduced.
Musk, very fond of using the social network Twitter to comment on news and share his ideas, today echoed a historical series of data on the price of lithiumwhat it has skyrocketed in the last decade and especially since the war in Ukraine began.
“The price of lithium has risen to insane levels! Tesla may really have to go into mining and refining directly at scale unless costs improve”said the world’s richest man, noting that the metal is “almost everywhere” in the world.
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
Later, in the same message thread, he mentioned the Nevada lithium reservesthe largest known in the US, and assured that Tesla “has some fresh ideas regarding the sustainable extraction and refining of lithium”, without going any further.
We have some cool ideas for sustainable lithium extraction & refinement
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2022
Like other commodities, from wheat to nickel, lithium has become more expensive since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and in the last year alone its price has risen 480 percentaccording to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence data cited by the channel CNBC.
It is not the first time that Musk has shown interest in the idea of mining this key metal for electric vehicle batteries, although in recent years the company has focused on signing agreements with external producers.
