A stinky desert lake in California just became one of the most important places in the global EV race.
Beneath the Salton Sea, scientists have found enough lithium to build 375 million EV batteries.
That's more than every car currently on U.S. roads.
Combined.
Most people know this lake for two things: unbearable heat, and an even worse smell.
Turns out it was sitting on a fortune the whole time.
Deep underground runs hot, salty water called geothermal brine.
Power plants have pumped it up for decades just to generate electricity.
Nobody paid attention to what was dissolved inside it.
Now they have.
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, led by scientist Patrick Dobson, mapped it out:
Here's the uncomfortable part.
The U.S. barely produces any lithium of its own.
Almost all of it is imported.
And not from a diverse set of places either:
One supply hiccup, one geopolitical spat, and battery costs spike overnight.
A domestic reserve this size changes the math entirely.
You can't scoop lithium out of a lake with a bucket.
Engineers use something called Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE).
The brine already gets pulled up for power. DLE just adds one more step — pulling lithium out before the water goes back underground.
No giant evaporation ponds. No hard-rock mining.
DLE uses 99% less water per ton of lithium than traditional mining, with almost zero carbon emissions.
Newer versions of the tech can pull lithium out in under 24 hours — methods that used to take months.
Not yet at full scale.
Companies including Controlled Thermal Resources, EnergySource Minerals, and even a Berkshire Hathaway energy subsidiary are racing to build extraction plants in the area now nicknamed "Lithium Valley."
Trial runs are underway through 2026, with full production hoped for by 2027.
California's governor promised this boom years ago.
The lithium is real. The factories are still catching up.
If you've been holding off on an EV because of price or range anxiety, remember this.
The metal powering your next battery might not come from a mine in South America.
It might come from a smelly lake in the California desert that nobody thought twice about.
That's all for now!
