Tesla confirms plans to build a lithium refinery in Texas

CTOnews.com, Oct. 24, according to documents submitted by Tesla to Texas in September, the company said it would build a battery-grade lithium hydroxide refining facility. Tesla declared that it would be "the first of its kind in North America", and Tesla applied for tax relief from the office of the Texas Auditor General.

Mr Musk confirmed on a conference call that Tesla was pushing ahead with plans to build a lithium refinery on the Gulf Coast of Texas to gain more control over the battery supply chain for electric vehicles, Bloomberg reported earlier. And answered analysts' questions about the progress of the new 4680 battery technology.

Construction of the project will begin as early as the fourth quarter of 2022, and commercial production will not be possible until the fourth quarter of 2024, according to people familiar with the matter.

CTOnews.com learned that China is currently the leader in lithium refining, with more than half of the world's production capacity.

The Austin, Texas-based company has been weighing the project for months, but has been considering at least another location in Louisiana. The company has told state regulators that it plans to build a battery-grade lithium hydroxide refinery near Corpus Christi to process ore materials into more suitable products.

On July 14 this year, Musk tweeted that lithium batteries are the new oil to affirm the value of lithium in the modern economy. In addition, during the Tesla earnings conference call in July, he also urged entrepreneurs to enter the lithium refining business, saying that the competition for lithium should not be lost, which is the same business as printing money. Earlier, Musk wrote on Twitter in April: "the price of lithium has reached crazy levels! unless we improve costs, Tesla may actually have to directly enter the field of lithium mining and refining on a large scale. Lithium itself is not in shortage, because it is almost everywhere on earth, but the speed of extraction / extraction is very slow."