Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated via his personal Twitter account on April 8th that his company may need to directly and massively mine and refine lithium because the costs of the metal have skyrocketed.
The twitter account of "World of Statistics" recently shared the changes of the average prices of lithium per ton in the past 10 years. Its statistics show that the average price for 2022 dramatically soared. According to the statistics of "Benchmark Mineral Intelligence," the average price of lithium in 2022 shot up by 480% YoY.
In his response to the tweet of "World of Statistics," Musk confirmed that lithium prices have indeed moved up to 'crazy' levels. The lithium element itself is not in shortage because it can be found everywhere on Earth, Musk wrote. However, the speed of extraction and refinement is too slow. According to Musk, unless the costs of lithium are lowered, Tesla will likely have to get into the lithium mining and refining business.
Lithium batteries are important energy sources for electric vehicles. As lithium is the necessary raw material for manufacturing lithium batteries, it is extremely valuable to the electric vehicle industry. The aforementioned tweet from Musk is not the first time that he had brought up the idea of mining lithium.
According to a report from Fortune which cited inside sources, Tesla had successfully had earned the privilege to mine lithium in Nevada in 2020 after failing to purchase a lithium mining firm.
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