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On July 7, 2021, a view reveals the Stellantis emblem at the entrance to the company’s facility in Hordain, France. Pascal Rossignol/REUTERS Reuters, July 9 – According to two sources, Stellantis (STLA.MI), the world’s fourth-largest automaker with Jeep and Peugeot brands, has inked memorandums of understanding for lithium supply with geothermal brine projects in California and Germany. Automakers from all over the world have been vying for access to lithium, a critical component in the production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries. They also want the metal to have as small carbon imprint as possible during production. Stellantis announced this week that it expects to invest more than 30 billion euros ($35.54 billion) in electrifying its car fleet between now and 2025. find out more According to the sources, the deals are with privately held Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) Ltd, which operates in California’s Salton Sea around 160 miles (258 km) southeast of Los Angeles, and Vulcan Energy Resources Ltd (VUL.AX), which operates in southwestern Germany’s Black Forest area. Stellantis announced the deals on Thursday, but did not name the companies involved. On Friday, the French-Italian automaker declined to comment. find out more During the overnight hours, spokespeople for Vulcan and CTR, both of which have headquarters in Australia, could not be reached. In most geothermal projects, super-hot lithium-rich brine is collected from subterranean reservoirs and used to generate power, after which lithium is extracted from the brine. The brine is then reinjected into the ground, making the process more environmentally friendly than open-pit mining and brine evaporation ponds, which are the two most frequent existing ways for producing white metal. Major global automakers are increasingly paying attention to the process, including General Motors Co (GM.N), which announced last week that it will invest in CTR’s California project. By 2024, CTR expects to produce 60,000 tonnes of lithium, enough to produce around 6 million electric vehicles, depending on design. find out more Vulcan has announced that it will invest 1.7 billion euros ($2 billion) in Germany to establish geothermal power stations and lithium extraction facilities, with the goal of producing 55,000 tonnes of the white metal each year. find out more Ernest Scheyder contributed reporting; Ben Klayman, Gilles Guillaume, and Giulio Piovaccari contributed supplementary reporting; and David Gregorio edited the piece. The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles are our standards./nRead More

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