Tesla Considers Building a Lithium Refinery for EV Batteries in Texas (reuters.com) 86
China remains the world's largest lithium processor, reports Reuters. But Tesla "is considering setting up a lithium refinery on the gulf coast of Texas, as it looks to secure supply of the key component used in batteries amid surging demand for electric vehicles."
The potential battery-grade lithium hydroxide refining facility, which Tesla touted as the first of its kind in North America, will process "raw ore material into a usable state for battery production", the company said in an application filed with the Texas Comptroller's Office.
A decision to invest in Texas will also be based on the ability to obtain relief on local property taxes, Tesla said.
Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has previously said that Tesla may have to enter the mining and refining industry directly at scale as lithium prices surge. Musk has also been vocal about the need for more players in the lithium refining industry.... Securing a steady supply of battery components is seen critical for Tesla as it faces fierce competition in the fast-growing market for electric cars. If approved, construction could begin in the fourth quarter of 2022 and would reach commercial production by the end of 2024, Tesla said in the application dated Aug. 22....
If Tesla's plan goes ahead, the carmaker could become the first in the sector to invest directly in lithium refining as automakers scramble to stitch up deals with miners and refiners.
In addition, the article points out, Tesla "also said it would use less hazardous reagents and create usable byproducts, compared with the conventional process."
A decision to invest in Texas will also be based on the ability to obtain relief on local property taxes, Tesla said.
Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has previously said that Tesla may have to enter the mining and refining industry directly at scale as lithium prices surge. Musk has also been vocal about the need for more players in the lithium refining industry.... Securing a steady supply of battery components is seen critical for Tesla as it faces fierce competition in the fast-growing market for electric cars. If approved, construction could begin in the fourth quarter of 2022 and would reach commercial production by the end of 2024, Tesla said in the application dated Aug. 22....
If Tesla's plan goes ahead, the carmaker could become the first in the sector to invest directly in lithium refining as automakers scramble to stitch up deals with miners and refiners.
In addition, the article points out, Tesla "also said it would use less hazardous reagents and create usable byproducts, compared with the conventional process."
Or (Score:5, Insightful)
And yes, I know, the anode is an issue that hasn't been worked out. I happen to know for a fact that Tesla is working on this, so they would have moved if it was an easy fix. But at the scale they use lithium, the supply chain was never going to support the volume necessary for electric cars, and even developing their own refinery won't change that.
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I'm all for any alternative battery chemistries, but in the 10 years since Tesla's come out with the Model S, the car industry as a whole has Tesla and some fringe models from major car makers that are completely electric and then some variations on the hybrid theme, including some plug ins.
There's no way to continue to continue expanding electric vehicles with new battery chemistries when most car makers are still kind of figuring out how to produce cars using the pretty much proven lithium chemistries.
I'd
Ore? Fuck You, Elon (Score:3, Informative)
The potential battery-grade lithium hydroxide refining facility, which Tesla touted as the first of its kind in North America, will process "raw ore material into a usable state for battery production"
Ore? There is only one environmentally safe way to extract lithium deposits, and that is brining. And it doesn't produce "ore" (a naturally occurring solid material from which a metal or valuable mineral can be profitably extracted) but rather pure lithium that has to be refined. You get "ore" from open pit mines.
Elon is planning for more open pit mining of lithium. He is willing to rape the Earth to any extent to get to Mars.
Re:Ore? Fuck You, Elon (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has just as much lithium and rare earth metals as China. The difference is the laborious US permitting process for extraction.
It should be laborious. History shows that when it is not, environmental devastation follows. I offer as evidence the history of industrialism.
Re:Ore? Fuck You, Elon (Score:4, Insightful)
The Standing Rock affair is a lulu of a case in point: An oil pipeline, the safest and least visible way to transport any fluid, is opposed by a native tribe whose land the pipeline did not at any point pass through.
Their land as recognized by the government, or their land as agreed upon by the government in treaty? Which like literally every other single treaty between the US Government and a tribe, has been broken by the US Government. But more to the point, the pipeline was going to be placed where it would directly threaten the water supplies of the people in question. To you, they don't have a right to clean water. To me, you're a monster.
Also, there is no safe way to transport oil. Period. There is also no safe way to use oil given our carbon situation. Being angry that people are standing in the way of more fossil fuel consumption is stupid as fuck.
This is the story of project after project after project. Meanwhile, when China needs infrastructure, they Just Fucking Build It. This is how they are winning.
This is how they are destroying the biosphere. I don't get why you want our life support system destroyed. Why do you want to watch the world burn? Why is that more important to you than people our government tried to eliminate having clean water?
Re:Ore? Fuck You, Elon (Score:4, Insightful)
What amazes me is how people identifying with the right wing party of small government, law, order and constitutional rights loves big governments running roughshod over the rule of law and people's rights if there's profit to be made.
It's alllmost like something's up there.
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That's true. "Conservatives...want more restrictions placed on people. They want to place more power in the hands of the state—to control the press, to stifle citizens' criticism and to limit voting." [salon.com]
To be fair, liberals are just as hypocritical. [youtube.com]
So both sides have roo
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That video is... horrible. Something about the style, the way it's shot, it's very in your face click baity style. I found it barely watchable. So I zoned out (har-de-har) when he got to the 'burbs because I already know about that. Oh yes the old suburban thingy. So fucked. He also missed one of the more important bits (making me dislike the video yet further) that also the higher density, poorer more urban neighbourhoods actually fund the low density crap. Taxing the poor to fund the rich? oof. Then again
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You're saying we don't need to work on fixing inequality until we've fixed "big governments running roughshod over the rule of law and people's rights if there's profit to be made."
I couldn't disagree more.
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We don't need to do anything. Whether we should is a different question.
A lot of inequality is caused by chasing profit at the expense of all else, but not all.
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What amazes me is how people identifying with the right wing party of small government, law, order and constitutional rights loves big governments running roughshod over the rule of law and people's rights if there's profit to be made.
It's alllmost like something's up there.
They hate big government right up until the instant when big government can enrich them and the right wing is generally hypocritical about many such things. Take for example freedom of speech, they love freedom of speech but they also think that TikTok should be banned because it is an agent of the CCP. Freedom of speech goes out the window the moment they don't like something that is being said. If capitalism is really the greatest economic system in history you'd think they'd be perfectly happy to allow t
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I agree. We should not only allow but encourage foreign states to propagandize and spy on us, especially the younger demographic on tiktok.
Yes, as a teaching aid for the valuable life lesson to those young people that they should not trust anything they see on social media for anything important, ever. Sadly many capitalists consider spreading critical thinking skills to be just as big a threat as the CCP, and for good reason.
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Critical thinking skills for kids has nothing to do with capitalism.
The schools are run by socialists and have been for generations.
Put the blame where it belongs.
(Here comes the reply that capitalists cut school funding to which the reply in advance is: when was the critical thinking class defunded? No, the socialist teachers removed critical thinking from their lesson plans all on their own. Pay rate has nothing to do with it).
For somebody who claims to have a big throbbing brain that makes him way smarter than everybody else you are surprisingly ignorant of what critical thinking is. Critical thinking is not teaching school children mindless conformity to an unchangeable imaginary natural order propagated by a guy named iAmWaySmarterThanYou that by sheer coincidence makes a guy named iAmWaySmarterThanYou one of the masters of the universe. It is the ability to understand that when somebody named iAmWaySmarterThanYou shows up and
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Well, if you would capitalize it correctly, it would make suddenly sense:
"It is easier for a camel to pass through The Eye of a^HThe Needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
The Eye of The Needle is/was a small portal like passage in Jerusalem (is/was, because they have 2 or 3 replica now, which have nothing to do with the original gate). A full loaded camel can not pass it. You have to half unload the camel, guide it through and carry the remaining luggage by other means through it and reloa
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My kid's teachers are horrible. The last thing I want to do is reward failure by paying them more.
Get rid of the teacher's unions, let bad teachers get fired and good teachers, even if new, get raises based on merit and not time employed and we can talk about it.
Do you even have kids? Are they in k-12 right now? Mine are. If yours aren't then stuff it.
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Paragraphs. Try them some day. Are you a product of public school?
And no, I do not think I am smarter than 'everyone'. Just you. It's a low standard, easily met.
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I agree. We should not only allow but encourage foreign states to propagandize and spy on us, especially the younger demographic on tiktok. Anything less is hypocritical. After all, western style freedom requires that we commit cultural suicide in the name of some hypothetical that some random guy on a tiny unknown site falsely claims is core to western freedom and culture.
I absolutely agree with everything you said. Let's commit cultural suicide together and just cut to the chase and have the CCP send their folks into our schools to teach our kids the superiority of the Chinese system. You know... government sponsored mass rape, slavery, cultural and physical genocide, suppression of free thought, chopping up political prisoners to provide organs to their ancient ccp leadership, and lots of other great stuff the world needs more of.
Our response to tiktok proves the ccp system is better than the west. I am with you all the way, Brother! All. The. Way!
I see I hit a Fuckface von Nervestick. This is not about who's right. Neither you nor the CCP have discovered the one true god ordained way of organising and governing a civilisation. This is about the hypocrisy of believing that you have discovered one true god ordained way of organising and governing a civilisation and that this entitles you to strip away the free speech of those who disagree with you and shove your god ordained social order down their throats by violence. If the only way that you can con
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Their land as recognized by the government, or their land as agreed upon by the government in treaty? Which like literally every other single treaty between the US Government and a tribe, has been broken by the US Government.
Have people actually read these treaties? I read a few of them. Not only were these tribes promised perpetual possession of the land but, among other things, they were promised to be supplied guns and ammunition. The treaty was to remain "as long as the grass grows and the river flows" or words that are similarly poetic. It's the same people that complain about the native tribes that have their treaties violated that complain about "gun violence". It is all based on ignorance because they don't bother
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Many of these tribes got a really sweet deal
Yeah, attempted genocide is pretty sweet!
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Their land as recognized by the government, or their land as agreed upon by the government in treaty? Which like literally every other single treaty between the US Government and a tribe, has been broken by the US Government.
Have people actually read these treaties? I read a few of them. Not only were these tribes promised perpetual possession of the land but, among other things, they were promised to be supplied guns and ammunition. The treaty was to remain "as long as the grass grows and the river flows" or words that are similarly poetic.
I think I see the loophole.
Does this make me cynical?
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Irrelevant, because the pipeline does not go through their land. It's just sot of near it at one point.
White People Land (Score:2)
There's white people land not far from where the pipeline was being shoved through tribal land.
If the white people had wanted the pipeline on their land, it wouldn't be shut down. Blaming the tribes is just gaslighting
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A point I should have added: whatever gives you the idea that we will stop using petroleum? We both hope that burning it for energy will be phased out soon, but the need for petrochemicals will go on forever. When civilization expands into space, it will still need hydrocarbons that by then it will probably gave to get from Titan.
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Also, there is no safe way to transport oil. Period.
Sure there is.
Realistically, such a pipe is not going to leak oil as long as any leaks discovered during the scheduled tests are fixed in a timely manner, so I think that qualifies as safe, unless you mean the word "safe"
Can always tell the Leftists .... (Score:2)
"Why do you want to watch the world burn?" is your uber-dramatic response to the guy suggesting America is holding back progress.... got it.
What's funny is, you've got all these "Green" advocates screaming that we've got to use "clean alternatives" to burning fossil fuels, yet when a company actually makes real headway in offering a workable alternative for passenger cars (like Tesla pulled off), they start screaming about the terrible environmental damage it'll cause to keep building those too.
Every time
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There is probably not a singel country on the planet that is more capitalist than China.
Going any further requires rule of law, property rights, personal rights, more capitalism, allowing people to reap the rewards of their own work, etc. etc.
You all have that, unless you cross the CPC for some reason.
Or do you think they have no law books or people can not own land or means of production?
Except for typical internet giants the biggest corporations on the planet are China based privat companies like Alibaba
Re:Ore? Fuck You, Elon (Score:4, Informative)
The US has just as much lithium and rare earth metals as China. The difference is the laborious US permitting process for extraction.
Only if “as much" in your world means half the lithium of China. [investingnews.com] If we are talking rare earth metals the US has 1.5M tons compared to China's 44M tons [visualcapitalist.com]. Again I do not where you get "as much" as it is not even close.
Re: Ore? Fuck You, Elon (Score:2)
one endangered flower growing on the site
We need to ammend the Endangered Species Act to ban the classification of a distinct species based upon the location where it happens to grow.
I've tried to fight my HOA's demand to weed my front lawn by claiming that it hosts the only known instances of "PPH's dandelions". So far, they're not buying my argument.
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I've tried to fight my HOA's demand to weed my front lawn by claiming that it hosts the only known instances of "PPH's dandelions". So far, they're not buying my argument.
I used to pull dandelions out of my garden, until I learned that 100% of the plant is edible. The young leaves are good in salads, and you can make a hot "coffee" type drink from the roasted roots, although this this doesn't actually taste good in my opinion. Now I let the dandelions do whatever they want. It keeps the bees happy and it's probably beneficial to break up the monoculture a bit.
Could you tell the HOA that the dandelions are a vital food crop for you? Or would that just make them persecute you
Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
There is only one environmentally safe way to extract lithium deposits, and that is brining.
You're not wrong but it's also exceptionally slow. This is a HUGE problem because of the whole climate change thing but if we had forty extra years then sure, stick with brine based extraction.
Elon is planning for more open pit mining of lithium.
Or maybe he's just planning to refine the stuff from Australia, the world's primary source of extracted lithium.
He is willing to rape the Earth to any extent to get to Mars.
How are these two things even connected?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Elon is planning for more open pit mining of lithium.
Or maybe he's just planning to refine the stuff from Australia, the world's primary source of extracted lithium.
The world's primary source of open pit mining extracted lithium, which is already being processed as it is extracted. QED, more open pit mining will occur to feed Elon's plant regardless of whether or not it comes from Oz. So that argument is obviously foolish right on its face.
He is willing to rape the Earth to any extent to get to Mars.
How are these two things even connected?
I applaud you for getting so far without knowing anything about Elon Musk, but I wonder why you think you're qualified to post in this discussion.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
The world needs about a million tons of lithium to make the energy transition. The worlds reserves are 14 million. Small price to pay. If Bolivia wants to be a pissy socialist and hold back their reserves, Australia could provide everything the world needs. Mine a few mountains into the ground. The local damage will be bad. And the world might be able to prevent entire civilizations from having to uproot and migrate.
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This is going to get me downmodded, but we shouldnt delay the worlds energy transition because a few mountains will get wrecked by mining.
False dichotomy. We should ramp up ecologically friendly mining methods in places where we know they are viable before exploiting more polluting sources.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, right. Michael McDoesntExist.
Again, this is a problem with environmentalists. It's gotta be perfect or it's evil. I'm absolutely NOT a fan of mining and the damage it causes, but I'd far prefer to see a few mountains in rural Australia leveled as opposed to delaying electrification for decades. While we talk about it, we're pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and the effects are getting better understood every year. And the new is all bad.
As I've said before, I don't actually have much expectation that we'll mitigate this. As a species, we blew it on this problem. The scientists and engineers need to be ready with geoengineering solutions because we're going to need it
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
We should ramp up ecologically friendly mining methods in places where we know they are viable before exploiting more polluting sources.
There is a distinct problem with this: ownership and time.
* Locations where ecologically friendly methods work are owned by different people who have different goals.
* Ecologically friendly extraction methods are much slower. As a result, ultimately more pollution is released into the atmosphere.
I am in favor of environmentalism but you pull your hand out of the fire as fast as you can, not slowly while being careful to avoid ripping your sleeve.
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Translation: You want lithium to magically be mined with no impact is such quantities that you can have every car on Earth be electric in ten years,
Only problem is, not one aspect of you plan is possible.
In fact even if we go the most abusive route to extract lithium (and other minerals no-one is even talking about yet) possible we are probably way more than 50 years from every car being electric.
Fact is, if you wanna save the Earth via electric cars you are going to have to do a lot of damage first.
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False dichotomy. We should ramp up ecologically friendly mining methods in places where we know they are viable before exploiting more polluting sources.
Ecologically friendly mining methods are viable everywhere for the right (high) price, but you think nuclear is too expensive (and slow), so you should not be surprised the most ecologically friendly (and slow) methods will not be used for mining either.
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As usual it's a bit more complicated than just good/bad.
Strip mining is disruptive and emits CO2, but there are many different ways of doing it, some better than others. And when you have finished strip mining an area there is the question of what you do with it. Responsible mining operations would plan to fill the site in as much as possible and re-wild it, or at least turn it into some kind of nature reserve.
Come to that, there's the question of what you do before you start strip mining. It's possible to
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
How are these two things even connected?
Elon Musk has been using profits from Tesla to fund SpaceX. Or rather he's been using capital that's been created from Tesla to back up the loans for getting the capital to fund SpaceX. It appears that Starlink is mostly an effort to get funds for more rockets, the ability to get internet globally is just a nice side-effect.
Or maybe he's just planning to refine the stuff from Australia, the world's primary source of extracted lithium.
You mean from open pit mines in Australia?
A quick internet search tells me that much of the lithium out of Australia comes from brine extraction, but not all of it. There's open pit lithium mines in Australia. There's likely to be more open pit lithium mines in Australia if Tesla opens a lithium refinery.
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There's likely to be more open pit lithium mines in Australia if Tesla opens a lithium refinery.
Well, for once we are in perfect agreement, even if you haven't quite realized that's what I was saying; if not more mines, then at least more production at the same sites. Most of the world's lithium production comes from open pit mines in Australia. Most of the world's lithium deposits (estimated 53%) are located in salyars in Chile. Some of those are being brined in ecologically friendly ways now. Some of them are also being brined in not so ecologically friendly ways, so it's not an automatic victory. T
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A quick internet search tells me that much of the lithium out of Australia comes from brine extraction, but not all of it.
Sure... but Australia’s primary lithium export is spodumene. https://smallcaps.com.au/lithi... [smallcaps.com.au]
There's likely to be more open pit lithium mines in Australia if Tesla opens a lithium refinery.
What you're missing is that mining in Australia is expanding with or without Tesla.
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In the last few months I saw an interview with Elon where he stated that the problem with the lithium supply chain is refinement. He indicated that lithium is pretty much available in many places around the globe but only a few areas have refineries. He also indicated Tesla had no intentions of getting into mining unless they really needed to.
I guess he decided they really needed to make their own refinery.
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On related note, since I like to annoy environmentally friendly people, did you know that you can only recycle materials a limited number of time? Most plastic can only be recycled once.
We should increase renewables beyond what is "necessary" and use the "excess" energy to refine aluminum for a variety of purposes. There's a lot of jobs for it to do. Researchers recently discovered that you can dissolve aluminum in gallium to cheaply produce nanoparticles [ucsc.edu]. Then you feed water into the mixture and the aluminum reacts with water and releases hydrogen. This obviously produces oxides (Al2O3) which then have to be processed before reuse, which is where the need for additional energy comes in
Re:Ore? Fuck You, Elon (Score:5, Interesting)
Brine extraction produces large quantities of brine. After extracting the lithium everything else is still in your salt water. If you pump it back into the ground in the same layer it came from you will eventually dilute your input stream. If you put it into a different layer, that is essentially fracking and it may come out where you didn't expect.
And you do not get pure lithium out of the brine, you get one of its salts. LiCl or Li2CO3 most likely. So they still need refining to lithium metal.
One last quibble, you also get ore from underground mines as well.
Where you are probably right is that the environmental damage from lithium mining will likely be much less than that from the copper mining required to actually make use of the lithium.
I won't get into the politics of the current administration demanding electrification of the entire economy while blocking the permitting of new copper mines. And if you are about to start going on about how we should use aluminum instead then you just might want to look up how you make aluminum and what they do with "red mud", as well as bauxite resources within the US.
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And if you are about to start going on about how we should use aluminum instead then you just might want to look up how you make aluminum and what they do with "red mud", as well as bauxite resources within the US.
It is certainly a big problem, it's one of those things we know how to solve but don't bother. All it really takes is proper settling ponds, with liners. We buy Aluminum (often in finished products) from China which now mines bauxite in Africa, where they can still get away with polluting. But if you compare the ecological impact of steel, the only place aluminum loses out by comparison is in its greater initial energy consumption — and that can be mitigated by increased renewables production, which n
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The potential battery-grade lithium hydroxide refining facility, which Tesla touted as the first of its kind in North America, will process "raw ore material into a usable state for battery production"
Ore? There is only one environmentally safe way to extract lithium deposits, and that is brining. And it doesn't produce "ore" (a naturally occurring solid material from which a metal or valuable mineral can be profitably extracted) but rather pure lithium that has to be refined. You get "ore" from open pit mines.
Elon is planning for more open pit mining of lithium. He is willing to rape the Earth to any extent to get to Mars.
A) Raping the earth is OK as long as you do it in the name of capitalism and the free market, or are you some kind of the hugger?
B) Elon can go to Mars, the sooner the better just as long as he stays there.
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Elon is planning for more open pit mining of lithium. He is willing to rape the Earth to any extent to get to Mars.
You're giving him too much credit. He is willing to rape the earth to add more billions of dollars to his personal wealth, period.
Yes, ore. (Score:3)
Ore? There is only one environmentally safe way to extract lithium deposits, and that is brining. And it doesn't produce "ore" (a naturally occurring solid material from which a metal or valuable mineral can be profitably extracted) but rather pure lithium that has to be refined.
Entirely wrong.
Lithium metal is not stable in the terrestrial environment. There is no mining process that produces pure lithium. All lithium mining is of ores, not of metal. If you're mining it from salt, the ore is a salt-- carbonate, or chloride-- but it's still ore.
Re: Ore? Fuck You, Elon (Score:1)
What does this have to do with Mars?
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It's about time! (Score:2)
Honestly, we need to build a bunch of lithium refineries. Where does the world get their lithium refined? Mostly in China which means they are giving themselves the competitive edge.
It takes 500,000 pounds of ore for one EV battery (Score:1)
It takes a lot of raw material to make an EV. Estimates are that it takes 500,000 pounds of the Earth's crust to be mined just for the battery. I've seen some people do the math on how much mining would have to be done for a switch to electric vehicles and it is not trivial.
We see California mandating EV use in their state, are they going to open up mines in their state also for all the material needed to make these EVs? I doubt it. They will inevitably raise objections to the mining out of concerns for
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Where are our electric airplanes? Every time someone claims we can just use electric vehicles instead of hydrocarbon fuels just ask yourself that question. That's just the extreme example, there's far more examples of where batteries will not provide sufficient energy density to be practical. Once we solve the problem of synthesizing fuels for aircraft then it is a relatively small matter of scaling that up so there is enough for every other application.
The problem with internal combustion engines right
Texas Gulf Coast? (Score:3)
Good thinking, Elon. Put a new battery facility on the Texas Gulf Coast, an area known for bad hurricanes.
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I would assume a Lithium refinery is not made from paper, wood and some wires, or am I wrong?
You ever notice (Score:5, Insightful)
How many of these wonderful labour producing good for the economy good for the country mega projects start with a request for tax relief from the local agencies? Just another example of how the billionaires and their pet projects are the real welfare addicts in these days.
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If you had a choice to build a billion dollar factory anywhere in the USA then would you not look for the place that offered the lowest operating costs? These tax breaks got to be a thing because the taxes got so high as to be a factor in the decision. Maybe the taxes are just too high in the first place, and then everyone gets a "deal" on the taxes to make the people negotiating the permits believe that they are such awesome negotiators. Kind of like the window sticker price on a car just being a starti
Re:You ever notice (Score:4, Interesting)
Insignificant Taxes would STILL be a factor for many and it's a popular excuse to extort concessions which is a tired old pattern big corps have been playing localities against each other. The only solution is to out law the perks localities do to bribe the corps to move in. Legit infrastructure benefits more than a single corp and also is a influential factor that is perfectly fine; that is what used to be a bigger influence.
Tax breaks are corporate welfare; worse it's unfair favoritism because everybody else doesn't get any tax breaks or tax deals and they pick up the costs for the large new neighbor. Indirectly, everybody is paying for the MANY services used by them -- basic infrastructure that if not provided would immediately get them out of consideration. Police, Fire, Roads, Trains, corruption (well, in Texas the heavy corruption nearly always favors those with money so that is appealing to a big corporation,) hell land rights and those basic laws taken for granted are essential for business.
Tesla should put all their toxic polluting factories like refineries in Texas like the Oil companies have always done. Texans do not fear cancer or mind wrecking the environment so let them... just stop taking my taxes to subsidize that welfare state who can't actually sustain it's own economy.
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No corporation can extort tax breaks out of anyone. If the deal is a bad deal then the government can walk away.
You can't "out law the perks" because those "perks" are set in law in the first place. The people that set the tax rates would have to be the same people that create the "perks". If you remove the "perks" a local government can set by state law then you just have states fighting each other. If the rules are set by the federal government then you just have nations fighting. On top of that you
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sure they technically have all the power to say no. But in reality we have politicians desperate to tout what jobs they created with deals they can get their name stamped on; we vote for the "job creators" etc. So when big corp says they'll bring in billions and thousands of jobs the politicians fall over themselves for short-term bragging or some real numbers while long term making everybody else pay to subsidize the deal.
It is an extortion of resident locations where they threaten to leave a place to ren
Taxes are for the little people (Score:3)
FTA: Musk has also been vocal about the need for more players in the lithium refining industry. "You can't lose. It's licensed to print money,"
Huh. Wonder why he wants to deprive local government of taxes then (presumably including schools given how American ones are funded)
Texas, being Texas... (Score:2)
They're gonna jump for this like a hungry fish:
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.g... [nih.gov]
Lithium hydroxide, solution appears as a clear to water-white liquid which may have a pungent odor. Contact may cause severe irritation to skin, eyes, and mucous membranes. It may be toxic by ingestion, inhalation and skin absorption.
Texas likes hazardous chemicals
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Unless you put it into water it is just a white powder, or if not grinded to powder gypsum like "rock".
Of course such a powder would also cause skin irritations as the mineral is alkalic.
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Ya... and the wind blows on the gulf coast.
Can you say alkali dust storm? Knew ya could!
It'll make coal dust look like powered sugar
Elon needs to get hit by one of his rockets (Score:1)
Why not pursue smaller cars? (Score:2)
I think maybe one way to deal with lithium battery supply constraints is to consider smaller cars that just need less battery.
It's often repeated in the arguments about range anxiety that most people don't travel very far in daily commuting. My daily round trip is 12 miles and really I don't think I'd need a range of much more than 60 miles to cover other potential distances I'd actually drive in a day. I know this is not everyone, but it's a lot of people just the same.
I think small vehicles not much big
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Bikes are a non-starter for most people in a winter climate, along with a bunch of other infrastructure issues and practicality elements (passenger or cargo capacity, even if that means a second person and groceries).
That is kind of nonsense. You seem to mix up "sports bikes" with an ordinary bike that has a cargo area, or a basket at the steering handle.
As long as it does not rain - which is unfortunately now the norm in "winter climate areas" - there is nothing wrong in riding a bike in winter. Actually i
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Our city has expanded the bike lanes/infrastructure a lot over the last 10 years, but its nearly empty all winter. I just don't see myself commuting 6 miles on a bike when its 20 degrees and the roads have snow and ice on them. Apparently, I'm not alone because I don't see anyone else doing it.