Shares of Lithium Americas (LAC) skyrocketed Wednesday after the mining company announced the creation of a joint venture with General Motors (GM) to extract lithium, the element used in electric vehicle (EV) batteries, from a key Nevada mine.
Lithium Americas said that GM would put up $625 million and acquire a 38% stake in the Thacker Pass site. It added that $430 million of the money would be in a direct cash payment to support the construction of Phase 1 of the Thacker Pass lithium mine site, with the remaining in the form of credit that can be used as collateral to support reserve account requirements for a Department of Energy conditional $2.3 billion loan to develop Thacker Pass announced in March.
Lithium Americas would invest $211 million initially into the project and own the remaining 62% of the project
The company added that this new deal with GM “replaces the $330 million Tranche …