Costs for Lithium Hydroxide Versus Brine Producers, page-4

It's kind of a complicated question that would end up with a complicated answer.

For years Livent formerly known as FMC have been providing lithium chemicals to the Tesla supply chain, and that has been from brine.

Saying that lithium hydroxide is a higher purity product is not correct, its just another format of lithium chemical.

Tesla have been making adjustments to the types of batteries they plan to use, and are planning to shift more vehicles & energy storage to Lithium Ion Phosphate batteries away from the high nickel dense batteries that use Lithium Hydroxide.

In the end, each will have its place, as they are used for different applications.

Production of the chemicals from each source varies in price, that is why we have companies claiming to be the next lowest cost producer....It also depends on how connected the supply chain is, being it vertically integrated or not. You will find that a vertically integrated supply chain will have lower costs as whilst each component will have its costs, and you may see things like transfer pricing, essentially being all in house is better.

Lowest cost wise.... I have seen some say hard rock which is surprising given the costs to mine etc, plus it probably went along with the story they wanted to tell when it came to the company they were representing.

Overall, I think you will find that brine would be the cheapest in producing most lithium chemicals.