autotldr Bot , 8 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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Automakers had an inkling that would happen, so we’ve seen a flurry of announcements for new battery plants in the United States that will make the cells and assemble the packs for future EVs, but we’ve heard slightly less about new local sources of lithium.

But today, Exxon revealed it is about to extract the stuff from a rich deposit in Arkansas.

At one point, California’s Salton Sea looked like a promising source of lithium, but working with the corrosive brine has proven extremely challenging to industrial equipment.

Exxon says it will then use direct lithium extraction on the brine (as opposed to evaporating it in big ponds) before pumping the remaining salt water back underground again.

“This landmark project applies decades of ExxonMobil expertise to unlock vast supplies of North American lithium with far fewer environmental impacts than traditional mining operations,” he said.

Assuming all goes to plan, Exxon wants to begin producing lithium by 2027, with an output sufficient to build a million EVs annually by 2030.

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