Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has proposed that Tesla might have to begin mining lithium, a critical element in electric vehicle batteries, given the skyrocketing prices of the chemical element.
In 2012, a ton of lithium cost $4,450. A decade later, in 2022, the price surged to $78,032 per ton, an increase of more than 1,650 percent. In the single year between 2021 and 2022, prices rose by 359 percent.
