Tesla’s lithium refinery, which CEO Elon Musk called a “money-printing machine,” is now expected to come online sooner than anticipated.
In September 2022, we learned that Tesla has a plan to build a lithium refining facility on the Gulf Coast of Texas.
The goal of the new plant is to produce lithium hydroxide to support Tesla’s own battery cell production at Gigafactory Texas in Austin.
The company also wants to prove its own new lower-cost processing system. If successful, it could be adopted by the rest of the industry and facilitate the deployment of new lithium processing capacity, which is badly needed to support electric vehicle growth.
Tesla previously confirmed that it planned to invest $365 million in the lithium plant, which would employ about 165 people full-time plus another 250 construction jobs for about two years.
During a groundbreaking ceremony in May, CEO Elon Musk said that the factory would produce enough battery-grade lithium to build about 1 million electric vehicles per year.
The company updated the timeline to construction being finished next year and achieving production in 2025.
Top comment by LR
Lithium is off about 70% off its highs in 2022. Price is still triple what it was before 2020 thought.
Given that lithium is one of the more abundant elements on earth (on par with sulfur, chlorine, phosphorus) prices should equilibrate at a much lower point around marginal production costs. Does anyone have a sense if a Tesla plant has lower cost than other industry players (cheaper feedstock, better technology)? If so, they should be able to deliver decent returns- if not, they will be lucky to get their money back.
Now we receive an update thanks to Tesla sr. manager of operations, Jason Bevan, who spoke to local media in Texas during a fair to recruit for the plant.
Bevan said that Tesla now plans to commission the assets in the first half of 2024 and ramp up during the second half of the year:
We will begin commissioning the assets, roughly the first of next year, and that will continue, in earnest, over the first half of next year. They will start ramping up production the latter half of next year.
The manager added that he could see Tesla expanding beyond its original plan with this refinery on the coast:
We have property that is well-suited for a future expansion, beyond these first two trains, so I think there is ample opportunity for further economic impact beyond just those direct employees that we hire.
We will be keeping a close eye on this project as it could greatly increase the lithium processing capacity in North America, which is currently limited.
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