On my way to Starbase to watch and provide Live Stream coverage of Starship’s 3rd launch and the Tesla Lithium Plant was right on the way so I was able to stop and get in an updated drone flight of the site and show some of the significant progress sine my last update in November 2023.

The site was busy across the main construction site, with most of the effort concentrated on the first half of what will be two parallel processing parts of the main Lithium plant, but we also saw activity with land clearing, foundation preparation and material storage all over the area!

In the video introduction, you get to see my first drone launch from the bed of my new Cybertruck, which was on it’s first trip after being accepted for delivery on Friday the 8th of March! We then discuss many of the significant changes to look for throughout the video, including some illustrations and other amplifying information

Timestamps:
Introduction & overview with discussion & illustrations: 0:06 to 3:10
Lithium Plant Drone Flight & Narration: 3:11 to 19:51

A few additional highlights:

The rotating kiln and cooler assemblies on top of the massive foundations is making great progress on the first half of the production facility, with a lot of supporting structures already assembled and installed around these two gigantic “tubes” that form part of the pyrometallurgical portion of the processing portion of the facility. We also see clamshells being installed around the rotating cooler which is most likely related to maintaining the correct temperature necessary to transform Spodumene Concentrate 6 from the alpha (inert) to beta (reactive ) material ready for the next step in the processing.

Much of the hydrometallurgical portion of the first half of the facility is also under construction now, including reinforced slabs and mounts for the tanks necessary for this stage of processing. Additional foundation and footing construction is observed around this area, including trenching through the mid-point of what will be the two mirror image processing lines of the completed facility.

The rail spur has not yet been completed, but I was able to talk with one of the rail crew who were out doing inspections and I think we can expect this added rail line to the raw material warehouse of the plant completed later this summer. I did learn that the main railway existing now is owned by Union Pacific, but the rail spur will be funded by Tesla and they will be responsible for maintenance and repairs of this new rail spur.

Finally, the new electrical substation to supply electricity to the site is under construction on the far north end of the facility, and we can see new power poles along a dirt road to the north where the wires are being installed to connect the new substation to the Lithium Plant. This is a critical part of getting the facility operational as quickly as possible as there are no other utilities located in this area. Along with the water detention ponds, that serve as water management, but also can provide water through a (possible) in-site water treatment facility, this site now has most of the utility service it will need!

More interesting discoveries and discussion in the main video! Thank you for watching and I hope this has been informative, educational, and entertaining for you. If you would like, please consider supporting me via Patreon (link is in the description of this video and in the video itself) so I can continue to make and share these incredible videos.

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Video, photos, illustrations, and commentary on this video is by me, Joe Tegtmeyer unless otherwise annotated.

Music in this video is obtained from the YouTube free and unrestricted and royalty-free use library.

Drones used are DJI Mini 2, Mavic Air 2 & Air 3.