Thread by @ReflexResearch

I may be very wrong, but this looks like a proof of concept of Tesla's proposed new Lithium Clay + Salt + Water method.
1) The method appears to have been discovered by accident by SGS working on the Clayton Valley Lithium Project in Nevada, without them noticing the consequences

2) SGS discovered that for some surface lithium clay samples you could leach lithium in water, but then that this didn't work for other subsurface samples.
cypressdevelopmentcorp.com/site/assets/fi…

3) They decided the reason for this discrepancy must be because surface samples must have had "some component of surface enrichment in the form of water-soluble salts".
4)Then they finished and said ok, water doesn't work, we have to use expensive acids instead.

5) Instead they should have investigated what the water-soluble salt enrichment was in the surface samples & added it themselves, optimising for highest Li extraction % for a water based leaching method.

6) Note I'm no expert on lithium or chemical engineering, so this may all be well off track.

7) And of course this is all still vastly simplified.

8) The big engineering challenge is then likely in how to enrich all the lithium clay samples with the right salt concentration in a dry process, to make all samples equal, before then using a water leaching process.

9) Possibly this will require a high temperature (700C +) process step to create Lithium Chloride pre water leaching.

10) Plus many more complicated engineering steps. Remember lithium materials are high value add engineered products with a huge number of process steps & many potential bottlenecks on production volume or quality.

11) A final note: Tesla's lithium clay plans looked highest risk & potentially least advanced of all projects announced at Battery Day.
They're also potentially the least vital as there are many strong Lithium suppliers & potential lithium startups working to ramp supply