Tesla (TSLA-US) CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that Tesla could jump directly into lithium mining and refining on a large scale due to soaring lithium prices.
Lithium is a key metal when making batteries, Musk tweeted: “Lithium prices have soared to crazy levels, there is no shortage of Lithium itself, because it is everywhere on earth, but very slow to extract/refine .”
Musk responded to a tweet showing the average price per ton of lithium ore over the past 20 years, highlighting a surge in prices from 2021. The cost of lithium mines soared more than 480% last year, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, lithium deposits do exist all over the United States.
Lithium is valuable for EV batteries because it is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element, meaning that batteries made with lithium have a high power-to-weight ratio, which is important for improved transport performance.
But Marx’s tweet on Friday wasn’t the first time he had floated the idea of mining lithium himself. Fortune magazine reported in 2020, citing people familiar with the matter, that Tesla had managed to secure the rights to mine lithium in Nevada after its failed acquisition of a lithium mining company.