General Motors will lead a $50 million funding round for lithium extraction startup EnergyX

UAW Local 5960 member Kimberly Fuhr inspects a Chevrolet Bolt EV during vehicle production on May 6, 2021, at the General Motors Orion Assembly Plant in Orion Township, Michigan.

Steve Fecht for Chevrolet

General Motors said Tuesday its venture capital arm will lead a $50 million financing round for EnergyX, a Texas-based startup developing a more efficient method to extract and process lithium from salt flats.

Lithium is a critical component in batteries for electric vehicles. Under the deal, GM will also help develop EnergyX’s technology and will have first right of refusal to buy lithium from any projects developed by the startup.

related investing news

Tesla's shares are up over 70% this year. One market pro is bullish — but another isn't convinced

CNBC Pro

EnergyX demonstrated its technology with a pilot plant in South America’s “Lithium Triangle,” an area of salt flats covering parts of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile that contains over half of the world’s known lithium reserves.

Brine pools at the Albemarle Corp. Lithium mine in Calama, Antofagasta region, Chile, on Tuesday, July 20, 2021.

Cristobal Olivares | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Currently, miners in the area extract lithium by pumping water underground to flush out the mineral then allowing the resulting brine to evaporate in a series of ponds. The process is relatively cheap, but it only recovers 30% to 40% of the total lithium – while using huge amounts of water and land.

EnergyX’s pilot plant, which opened last year, has demonstrated that its technology can recover 90% or more of the lithium in brine, while using much less energy, water and land than existing processes.

EnergyX plans to use the new funding to build five larger demonstration plants in North and South America.

For GM, a key priority is to unlock a North American supply of lithium, which isn’t cost-competitive with global supplies using current extraction methods. The auto giant believes that EnergyX’s technology could reduce costs enough to make North American lithium mining viable, while minimizing the environmental impact of extracting the mineral.

GM will report its first-quarter results before U.S. markets open on Apr. 25.

For all the latest business News Click Here 

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! TechAI is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.