Official rendering of the refinery project: an illustration, not a photograph of the completed facility. Courtesy of Tesla, Inc.
Archive article written on 4 November 2026.
On 8 May 2023, Tesla announced the start of work on its lithium refinery near Corpus Christi, Texas. The project proposed an investment of more than $1 billion to increase North American supplies of battery-grade lithium hydroxide.
The step before making cells
Extracting a raw material and making it suitable for batteries are different activities. For the site of more than 1,200 acres, Tesla described an acid-free refining process using more inert reagents and producing a sand-and-limestone by-product that could be used in construction materials.
The announcement projected nearly a thousand construction jobs and more than 250 full-time positions at the facility. These were project forecasts: breaking ground did not mean the refinery was already supplying material to cell factories.
Recycling and scrap in the longer-term proposal
Tesla also envisaged processing other intermediate materials, including recycled batteries and manufacturing scrap. That was a proposed development, not an operation already under way.
The refinery illustrated a less visible part of electrification. Before a battery reaches a car, an industrial supply chain helps determine its availability. The project aimed to address that part of the chain.
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