Musk suggests Tesla will extract lithium if it doesn’t lower its cost

U.S. entrepreneur Elon Musk has suggested that Tesla, his luxury electric vehicle company, will go into the business of extracting and refining lithium if the cost of the raw material it needs to make the 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 lithium, which has skyrocketed in the last decade and especially since the war began in Ukraine.
“The price of lithium has risen to crazy levels! Tesla might actually have to go into extraction and refining directly at scale, unless costs improve,” said the world’s richest man, noting that the metal is “almost everywhere” in the world.
Later, in the same thread of messages, he mentioned Nevada’s lithium reserves, the largest known in the U.S., and said Tesla “has some fresh ideas about sustainable lithium extraction and refining,” without going any further.
Like other commodities, from wheat to nickel, lithium has become more expensive since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and in the last year alone its price has risen 480%, according to benchmark Mineral Intelligence data cited by CNBC.
 

Original source in Spanish