A General Motors (GM) will invest US$625 million in what will likely be one of the largest lithium mines in the United States, reinforcing the automaker’s efforts to secure supplies of the essential ore for electric vehicle batteries.
The cash and credit financing agreement announced this Wednesday (16) is based on an investment of US$320 million that GM had made in Lithium Americas last year. The injection of resources will be crucial for the mining company to be able to unlock a US$2.3 billion financing package that the US Department of Energy offered in March this year.
GM will form a joint venture with Lithium Americas and take a direct 38% stake in Thacker Pass as part of the deal. The companies described the transaction as the largest investment ever publicly announced by a U.S. manufacturer in a lithium carbonate project.
READ MORE: Lithium prices slide along with demand for electric cars – but investments continue
The Thacker Pass project, located in northern Nevada, is home to the largest known lithium deposit in North America and is expected to produce approximately 40,000 tons per year when fully operational.
The investment shows that GM is moving forward with electric vehicles even as sales slow down. While competitors, including Ford, delayed or canceled completely some electric vehicle projects, GM will have more than 10 electric models on the US market by the end of 2025, including a new version of the Chevrolet Bolt.
The automaker has made other investments to secure lithium supplies for its EVs. In 2021, GM partnered with Controlled Thermal Resources to extract lithium from the Hell’s Kitchen project in the Salton Sea Geothermal Field in California. Last year, the Detroit-based company’s GM Ventures fund invested $50 million in Energy Exploration Technologies, a U.S. startup developing a process to extract lithium from brine.
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