From Joe Tegtmeyer.

A beautiful day to fly over the Lithium plant, with decent winds, abundant sunshine and great lighting conditions! I start today’s video with a high-altitude flight around most of the perimeter to see what the entire site looks like, and then I come down to a lower altitude for much more detailed views of main parts of the lithium plant.

Timestamps:
Introduction & overview with discussion & illustrations: 0:06 to 3:12
Lithium Plant Drone Flight & Narration: 3:30 to 22:02

Early in January, Tesla announced the first shipment of Spodumene Concentrate-6 (SC-6) had arrived to allow initial testing of the rotating kiln. In May, we saw the main part of the plant was nearing the capability to fully process the materials, and now in August, all the middle hydrometallurgical section is not only completed, but operational, with vapors coming from some of the machinery.

This indicates Tesla has hit their goal of initial production in the summer, and I think this is a great sign as the output here is already being used as input materials at the Giga Texas Cathode plant.

It appears Tesla has decided to just finish off the first half of the plant for now and it is likely they will delay start of construction of the second half into 2026. In my opinion, Tesla needs to concentrate on ramping up the first half of the plant and refine their processing and product while continuing to evaluate how the overall macro environment looks like before starting on expansion construction.

The new lined pond on the north end is now complete and has some standing water in it. I still think this is a water reservoir for the plant and operations (it is not a Lithium brine tank) as there are still no water utilities supporting the plant. The larger trapezoidal pond also on the north side is not lined and I think is used primarily for drainage, water management and for dust mitigation around the site.

The new small electrical substation next to the large raw materials warehouse is fully operational now and is a critical element for the overall plant operation.

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