Tesla Lithium Refinery

How many batteries can this mug support?

I remember hearing they were going to do this, but hadn't heard any updates. Is it operational now? Anyone know how much it can produce?

These were built to take advantage of the EV battery credit on the manufacturing side. We went from encouraging companies with the Inflation Reduction Act to invest in American manufacturing of battery components to completely knee-caping the industry within the 2 years it took to build it! No idea if it will be cost competitive vs just importing from abroad now but not like it matters since EV's will be a niche product for the foreseeable future in the US.

This seems pretty cool!

Hilarious to think about, because for years Musk talked about how it's 'free money' to mine lithium for anyone who wanted to do it. Then he supported and ran on a platform that takes away all incentives and goes against building this out in America. Truly a genius.

Now do the same thing with rare earths

It’s cause he wants the legacy car companies to go back to ICE. He wants to be the only EV option in the US even if that means kneecapping himself.

It is officially in operation. [Seems about 1 million EVs per year capacity. ](https://news.metal.com/newscontent/103099462/teslas-lithium-refinery-in-texas-us-officially-put-into-operation-volkswagen-acquires-stake-in-north-american-lithium-mine-to-secure-lithium-concentrate-supply-overseas-lithium-news) Although that's "designed capacity". I'm unclear if that capacity is current or projected with phases of expansion as they tend to do with their other factories.

As usual, Elon and his team getting things done at least twice as fast as anyone else. I need to dig more into this thing. I had heard Elon talking about it, but I didn't realize they had their own refinery going already. [https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/08/teslas-new-texas-lithium-refinery-to-support-1m-electric-vehicles-by-2025/](https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/08/teslas-new-texas-lithium-refinery-to-support-1m-electric-vehicles-by-2025/) **"Tesla’s new Texas lithium refinery to support 1M electric vehicles by 2025"** That enough for ALL North America Tesla sales right now. **EDIT:** It's apparently 50 - 70% of the USA's entire lithium refining capacity! Why aren't more people talking about this? How long until other companies are buying excess lithium or batteries from Tesla? There's already an unusual battery surplus thanks to overcapacity in production over the last few years. For national security reasons, we need more lithium refineries in the USA. "Rare earth" (which are actually quite abundant) sourcing and refineries mostly happens in other countries. This is a good start. Now we need 100 more of these, as well as J.B. Straubel's battery recycling!

The Joe Tegymeyer YouTube channel has been doing drone flyovers the Austin Gigafactory for years and he has also done flyovers of the lithium construction site several times since Tesla began work on it. He hasn't done one in a little while so another visit should probably be coming soon.

Looking at it the legacy auto companies should have never went into EVs. They should have stuck with hybrids like Toyota.

Designed capacity has 2 parallel lines, only the first is completed so far.

He does one whenever he goes down to Starbase for a Starship launch. The last Starship scheduled to fly got destroyed in testing so it's been longer than normal.

Lithium is used for much more than EVs of course

Good to know. Any idea when the 2nd line is planned?

I wonder how this will affect things like Semi, where battery supply is presumably the reason it still isn’t in mass production. Now Tesla just needs to figure out solid state, that technology will be a literal game changer.

I wasn't aware battery supply was the thing holding up Semi. I'm learning a lot of things because of this post today, haha.

I think it's not so much battery *capacity* it's battery pricing. Thia lithium refinery will have an impact, should be 20-30% cheaper to process Lithium with this process.

Do you think they'll use any potential excess refined lithium for large-scale grid storage and Powerwalls? I didn't see any other uses of lithium in a quick search that match the amount that EV or grid storage batteries use.

My understanding is the semi was bottlenecked for batteries but they also needed to build the factory and lines to make it profitable which has now been completed. They just announced a semi charging station between SF and LA which should be done in a few months. 2026 should be the year of the semi.

That is super exciting!!!!

I thought they said 500,000 right now

darn that car company!!! /s

outstanding. this is great. Now protect your intelectual property from China. The will most likely send some "engineers" to apply for a job and then you know what will happen next.