EVwire brief: Tesla's lithium refinery near Robstown, Texas is now fully operational, with battery materials already being shipped to Giga Texas for 4680 cell production.
The milestone was announced during Lithium Day 2026, an event held at the refinery last week that brought together Tesla executives, employees and local officials to showcase the facility and discuss the company's growing battery materials business.
According to Tesla watcher S.E. Robinson Jr., who attended the event, Plant Manager Jason Bevan confirmed the refinery is complete and fully ramped. Infrastructure Vice President Rodney Westmoreland Jr. also addressed attendees, congratulating the team on building what he described as North America's only lithium refinery of its kind.
Tesla Battery Vice President Bonne Eggleston also discussed the company's newly filed patent covering a battery recycling process designed to recover high-purity battery materials for use in new cathodes. According to attendees, the technology is intended to enable full battery recycling while reducing emissions and improving end-to-end efficiency compared with conventional acid-based processes.
The newly disclosed recycling patent, filed globally under application number WO2026048253A1, would let the refinery accept spent battery materials and manufacturing scrap directly, extracting high-purity materials from degraded cells to build new cathode active materials. Tesla says the process uses water vapor condensation, reuse systems, and heat-recovery loops in place of traditional sulfuric acid leaching, for lower CO2 emissions and higher end-to-end efficiency.
The event also featured demonstrations of Tesla products, including Optimus, the Cybercab, Cybertruck and Powerwall 3, while guests were given tours of the refinery and an overview of the company's long-term plans for the site.
Context:
Tesla highlighted the Texas refinery as one of the centerpieces of its battery materials strategy in its 2025 Impact Report.
According to the report, the refinery is expected to become North America's largest lithium refinery, producing approximately 20,000 metric tons of battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate annually, enough to support about 30 GWh of battery production.
The facility uses Tesla's commercial-scale alkaline leaching process, which eliminates sulfuric acid while reducing processing steps and lowering greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30% compared with traditional hard-rock refining.
The report also notes that the refinery is designed with battery recycling in mind. Tesla says the facility can recycle most of its own water while reducing total water discharge by about 80% through closed-loop processing technologies, supporting the company's broader goal of producing battery materials with a smaller environmental footprint.
Source: S.E. Robinson, Jr. on X
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