GM Aims To Draw Lithium From Beneath A Sea In The Desert

General Motors may be very short on electric cars at present, and those that are available are not the safest out there (Chevrolet Bolt, we'relooking at you). The company is aiming to change that and has set the goal of goingall-electric by 2035. This is a fine ambition, but switching to electric cars is not the only way that the automaker intends to reduce carbon emissions. It is working on ways of making EVs cleaner byoffering renewable charging sources, and now the company has announced another way of doing this. According to reports, GM has signed an agreement with company called Controlled Thermal Resources to extract lithium from superheated waters beneath the Salton Sea in the desert of Southern California.

This is a great idea because lithium, which all EVs need for their batteries, is about to become even more sought after as more automakers offer electric cars and more buyers start to adopt them. At the moment, most lithium comes from petalite ore in Australia and Chile, but very few other countries have rich reserves of the element, and as demand increases, so will the scarcity of the mineral. The Salton Sea is an ancient water pocket that has formed and dried up numerous times over the millennia and its lithium content was discovered when the sea was accidentally filled up about a century ago.