Lithium Americas and General Motors (GM) have entered into a new investment agreement that will establish a joint venture for construction and operation of the Thacker Pass lithium mine in Nevada.

GM will contribute $625 million to the joint venture.

“We’re pleased with the significant progress Lithium Americas is making to help GM achieve our goal to develop a resilient electric vehicle (EV) material supply chain,” said Jeff Morrison, General Motors’ senior vice president for global purchasing and supply chain, in a statement.

“Sourcing critical EV raw materials, like lithium, from suppliers in the U.S., is expected to help us manage battery cell costs, deliver value to our customers and investors, and create jobs.”

General Motors will own a 38 percent stake in the project which includes $430 million of direct cash funding to support the construction of Phase 1 and a $195 million letter of credit facility.

Shares of Lithium Americas jumped following the new in spite of slumping lithium price brought on part by an oversupply of the metal from China.
Tim Crowley, vice president of government and external affairs for Lithium Americas told Mining Engineering. “The (lithium) market is still growing exponentially and the demand is high. Prices are tough to track but our project is such that we are still in a good place. The fears of getting squeezed out by the Chinese flooding the market is not impacting us, we are not rattled by that. A lot of projects are pulling back and waiting for a stronger market but we think that is a mistake. You can’t flip the switch on a project like this quickly. If we were to pause we think we could potentially miss the upswing that is coming in terms of prices.”

Lithium Americas said $430 million is a direct cash payment to support phase one of construction, while the remainder of the funds will be held as a form of credit and collateral that will help the company access the U.S. Department of Energy’s $2.3 billion conditional loan dedicated to Thacker Pass.

The company said it expects to close the federal loan in the next few weeks. Thacker Pass will be fully operational by 2028.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Energy had planned to lend Lithium Americas up to $2.26 billion to build the Thacker Pass lithium project, which holds enough of the battery metal to build 1 million electric vehicles annually.

Initial construction at the site in Humboldt County, just south of Nevada's border with Oregon, started in March 2023 after Lithium Americas won a long-running and complex court case against conservationists, ranchers and Indigenous communities.

The lithium miner said GM will also enter into an additional 20-year offtake agreement for up to 38 percent of production from Phase 2 of Thacker Pass, upon closing of the transaction.

Separately, GM said it would invest $10 million into material science firm Forge Nano. The automaker intends to use the firm's battery material coating on EV cells to increase performance and lifetime.

Following the announcement, GM said it was open to other critical mineral deals in North America.

Jeff Morrison, GM's senior vice president of global purchasing and supply chain, told Reuters that a majority of GM's deals are for minerals supply, not necessarily JVs, and the automaker likely would continue that approach, he added.

"We don't want to become a mining company," Morrison said. "Our main goal is to build out a North American based, Western-allied, reliant supply chain. To do that, we have to pick partners and assets and figure out what they need to do to industrialize and be successful."

GM also has agreements to buy cobalt from Glencore, an investment in nickel and cobalt miner Queensland Pacific Metals, and a lithium supply deal with Arcadium Lithium, among others.

The automaker in 2021 invested in Controlled Thermal Resources Hell's Kitchen geothermal brine project in California, although that project has experienced delays.