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Tesla and EV Expert Sandy Munro: Solid State Batteries are "Kiss of Death" for Gas Cars (motortrend.com)
Tesla and EV Expert Sandy Munro: Solid State Batteries are "Kiss of Death" for Gas Cars (motortrend.com)

File this under the category of "Too Good to Be True", but I'd sure like it to be. Sort of like "Free Beer," only better. The source for this came from a CBS "60 Minutes" segment broadcast last night. The statistics are what I can remember from the program and may be not entirely accurate, but if not it's because of my fading memory rather than fan-boi exaggeration.

The biggest hindrance to EVs and by extension the Green Revolution is that in some ways it isn't all that 'green'. The extraction and production of lithium, the most fundamental and sought after component for storage of ecologically clean and renewable energy, is both expensive and detrimental to the environment. It can make the strip mining of coal look good by comparison. Locations around the world where lithium is currently produced are largely unstable or unfriendly places, like China, equatorial Africa and South American jungles.

Enter the area near the California wasteland surrounding the Salton Sea, which some are now starting to call "Lithium Valley." The area has long been known for its geologically active thermal vents and upwelling of mineral rich deep hot water brine aquifers that provide an abundant source of steam for cheap and effective electrical generation. The brine is especially rich in lithium. Lots and lots of lithium.

Several small entrepreneurial companies have built and are scaling up new facilities to extract the lithium from these brines in a nearly pollution-free process. Firstly, the brine is practically 'self-extracting'. Thermal convection vents the brine from deep underground. The steam is used to power generators for the plant at a net positive (the unused 'waste electricity' then can be sold to the grid). This heat extraction cools the brine, which then passes through special membrane filtration which extracts the lithium. The 'waste water' brine is then returned to the aquifer via deep subterranean well piping in a pollution-free closed loop system. The lithium is extracted at a net-positive energy cost while the 'waste water' is returned to the deep Earth aquifer from which it came. It is estimated that this single site source is capable of producing more than half of the projected future world demand for lithium! If so, we may be witnessing the beginning of a revolution that could make the U.S. the 'Saudi Arabia of clean energy'.

Major U.S. automobile manufacturers estimate the demand for EVs world-wide will exceed 500,000 vehicles per year by 2025, half of which will be the U.S. market, which coincides with when these extraction plants should be coming online. Today the test facilities near the Salton Sea are producing highly pure lithium powder at a cost that is about one-fourth that of current world market prices, without the Third World political issues and instabilities which always end up having us exploiting the populations (as well as their countries) while enriching and enabling their tin-pot dictators. Auto makers are already buying up the future projections of these startup companies. Prices should fall as production ramps up. Proven reserves in these brines is projected to meet the increasing expected world demand for lithium for the next "three generations."

Is this truth, hyperbole or simply sensationalism? Don't know. But even if this story is only half-true fake-news, it is certainly 100% captivating and welcome good news for the future.