Exxon will mine lithium for electric vehicle batteries in Arkansas::With EV incentives tied to domestic battery content, US lithium mines are needed.
Ooh maybe they can get kids to do it, thanks to Arkansas new child labor laws.
Exxon will mine lithium for electric vehicle batteries in Arkansas
Submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
bus_go_fast@lemmy.world 11 months ago
FrostyTrichs@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Exxon comes in to help pay for podiums.
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 11 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
The original article contains 258 words, the summary contains 169 words. Saved 34%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
riodoro1@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Oooh yes, the EVs are so green and sustainable! Let’s consume more!
spongebue@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Like it or not, cars cannot reasonably be phased out within a decade - certainly not in a place where entire cities are designed around them. In the meantime, people are going to get new cars (remember the high prices and empty lots during the chip shortage?) especially when they need it to get to work (again, no way to practically redesign entire cities in a reasonable timeframe). If someone gets rid of their year-old ICE to get an EV, sure, that’s not doing anyone any favors. But if someone needs a new car, and they convert from ICE to EV, sure. That can definitely help.
Also, we’re not necessarily talking cars. We’re talking lithium for batteries. Large batteries are an important component to make sustainable energy sources like solar practical on a bigger scale with less nighttime help from fossil fuels.
Destraight@lemm.ee 11 months ago
We should stop them from doing that. Exxon wanted to go so hard on making fuel and destroy the world, but now they want to start mining lithium? Nope. Stop them. They can’t do that. They don’t get to turn around and start being environmentally clean after what they’ve done. They still have yet to pay for all the damages they have caused
ChemicalPilgrim@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We should embrace anything that gets us off fossil fuels faster even if it comes from companies that have contributed to the problem in the past. We don’t have time for purity tests if we actually want to tackle this problem.