Tesla plans to build a lithium refinery in the United States


Tesla pushed ahead with plans to build a lithium refinery on the Texas Gulf Coast to gain more control over the power cell supply chain, Bloomberg reported Oct. 20. Its CEO Musk confirmed the plan in a conference call on the 19th. Musk said lithium is ridiculously expensive and has repeatedly encouraged entrepreneurs to start refining lithium to ease the supply bottleneck of key materials used in lithium batteries.