Please do not get political about this. I am simply posting it as news for those interested in EV's.

There has been a geothermal test site in SoCal for years which was also used for testing and it has become quite a big deal.

It is near the town of Ridley CA, which is close to the Salton Sea, which is kind of like the Dead Sea, in that it is super salty from brine and pollutants from agricultural runoff. The well goes deep and used a continuous hot brine to produce electricity.

They have just announced that the brine contains manganese, lithium, silica, cobalt and nickel. About 40% of the brine is useable rare earth metals, and they figure it is the largest brine pool in the known world. Plans are announced to build a large facility partially sponsored by GM to extract the metals for commercial use. This would make the US a major producer of Lithiium. Other large companies are also very interested.

Lots of jobs are anticipated in one of CA's poorest counties, and it will be a clean industry. The factory would remove the metals from the brine and reinsert the remaining water into the ground. This should also hopefully slow down lithium harvesting by slave labor and children in other parts of the world.

Google 'California's Lithium Lake', to get on the trail. It was in my newspaper.

Again...news, not politics.