Tesla is known for being vertically built-in, and the corporate has now introduced plans for taking this to the following stage, by mining its personal Lithium.
Yesterday at their Battery Day Tesla introduced that it bought 10,000 acres in Nevada wealthy in Lithium.
“We got rights to a lithium claim deposit in Nevada – over 10,000 acres.”
Tesla additionally says it has a complete new Lithium mining course of which was much more environmentally pleasant than the same old practices.
“We are going to use a new process that we will pioneer. It’s a sulfate-free process again, we skip the intermediate. It will result in a 33% reduction in lithium cost,” mentioned Drew Baglino, SVP of engineering at Tesla.
“What is one of the simplest ways to take the ore and extract the lithium and accomplish that in an environmentally-friendly method? We have been taking a look at from a primary precept physic standpoint as an alternative of simply the way in which it has at all times been executed. We discovered that we are able to really use desk salt, sodium chloride, to mainly extract the lithium from the ore. Nobody has executed this earlier than to the perfect of my data.
According to Musk, their course of would have little or no environmental influence.
“We take a bit of filth within the floor, extract the lithium, and put the chunk of filth again the place it was. It will look just about the identical as earlier than.”
Elon Musk has earlier mentioned the corporate is planning to convey battery manufacturing in-house, however that quantity manufacturing will solely occur someday in 2022. The firm didn’t nevertheless ship a time scale for his or her new Lithium mining enterprise to hit manufacturing.