Enlarge / These are piles of lithium harvested in Bolivia; Exxon’s site in Arkansas will look almost entirely unlike this as it will use direct lithium extraction, not evaporation, to harvest the mineral. (credit: Getty Images)
Earlier this year, new electric vehicle tax incentive rules went into effect. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, an EV’s tax credit is now linked to the amount of domestic content in its battery pack, an amount that needs to increase year on year.
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.
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