Biden wants to cut into China's electric battery dominance

Good move. I recommended doing such onshoring about 10 years ago. Finally, governments and businesses are getting it.

Big bully, america.

Making batteries causes lots of nasty chemicals to be used and left over. China is learning the price of essentially no environmental laws on their land and for their population.

Similarly, there are places in the US with very nasty chemicals sitting in ponds with no plans to ever clean those places up. Just driving nearby will make your lungs hurt and eyes water.

I can only imagine how bad it could be in China.

Hopefully, Biden's plan will include mandating as-you-go cleanup and mandatory if-you-make-it-you-must-recycle-it-forever laws.

Leaving a mess for future generations is unacceptable. We have to pay to clean along the way.

It's just the kicking of someone who is afraid of being overwhelmed very soon..

Often when we solve a problem, we inevitably inevitably create another. Lithium is the metal in batteries of electric cars, but will we have enough lithium as we build more and more electric cars? So we go from gas to electric and create less carbon footprint but what footprints will we make in mining such a comparatively rate element on Earth? Mining and refining causes a lot of greenhouse gases.

It's just the kicking of someone who is afraid of being overwhelmed very soon..

Just like China vainly trying to catch up to Taiwan and South Korea chip foundries, lol

Just like China vainly trying to catch up to Taiwan and South Korea chip foundries, lol

I have been following this for a couple of years. The Salton Sea area has one of the largest reserves of lithium in the world and the process being tested doesn't have the ecological footprint of other lithium extraction methods. The geothermal plants are already there, have been for decades. They pump hot lithium laden water to the surface to make steam for their turbines before pumping it back into the ground so it can re-heat. The only additional tech is extracting the lithium from this water economically.

As for battery tech, Tesla (pardon me while I swallow my vomit after typing that name) and Panasonic have the most advanced battery tech in the world and only Panasonic has the skill to make these.

T@ARA TAN KITAOKA whats wrong with Biden wanting to produce lithium in the US. Please correct me if I am wrong how does this make the US "Big bully, america". Your logic is off base.

JeffLeeFeb. 23  06:44 pm JST

Good move. I recommended doing such onshoring about 10 years ago. Finally, governments and businesses are getting it.

kaimycahlFeb. 24  11:55 pm JST

T@ARA TAN KITAOKA whats wrong with Biden wanting to produce lithium in the US. Please correct me if I am wrong how does this make the US "Big bully, america". Your logic is off base.

Another step towards America reaching greatness. Once again.

Another step towards America reaching greatness. Once again.

Indeed, the 90s was America's economic apogee, with the ascent of Silicon Valley and the emergence of Apple, Microsoft and other high-tech firms seizing global dominance.

But sadly, that was followed by a wave of globalization and free trade agreements, and with that a flurry of off-shoring of key technologies and knowledge to the likes of China. That neatly coincided with the US's fall in global economic significance, stagnation of wages at home and shrinking middle class, not to mention the ascent of the communist authoritarian state.

May the ongoing onshoring move forward.

@JeffLee, I have been reading diatribes about the imminent demise of the US, the decline of its economy and / or societ for pretty much my entire 64 plus years on this planet. It's a bunch of bovine excrement. Forty years ago everyone who knew anything was predicting Japan was about to eclipse the US economically. A few even predicted there would be a big war between the US and Japan. I have books in my office by reputable economists and foreign policy "experts" making these predictions. We know in hindsight how wrong they were. The US is still far and away the global leader in the most advanced technologies. So what if the US doesn't make toasters or vacuum cleaners. What the US makes are high value high technology goods, things like oil drilling and refinery equipment, airplanes, advanced avionics, high technology medical equipment, advanced biotechnologies, software products that are wanted all around the world and that fetch their makers a lot of money. It is telling that railroads in China use GE locomotives and not a locally designed product, or that truck companies like Autovaz in Russia use Caterpillar engines for durability and reliability. They can't make an engine that good. Vladimir Putin made a big push over a period of several years to develop a completely Russian made natural gas powered gas turbine "peaker", basically a very big jet engine burning natural gas that is used to generate electrical power to meet periods of peak demand, hence the term "peaker". They tried for years but whenever they never managed to keep one together very long. They would always blow up before they ran enough hours to be competitive with the US made peakers from Solar Turbines (part of Caterpillar). Russia wanted so badly to be able to move away from American made turbines but they don't have the material science necessary to build a gas turbine engine that is both high powered and durable. The same is true of their aircraft and marine turbines. The Europeans are much closer technologically to the US than the Chinese or Russians are and even then there are significant technologies the Europeans lack, especially in the defense realm.