Controlled Thermal Resources, a company developing a geothermal energy and lithium production facility in Southern California, has a new potential partnership with a business that plans to build an EV battery factory nearby.

A newly launched company called Statevolt intends to build a 54 GWh EV battery factory in Imperial Valley, California, according to an announcement Tuesday from company founder Lars Carlstrom. Carlstrom is founder and CEO of Italvolt, a company that’s developing an EV battery factory in Italy.

Statevolt has signed a letter of intent with Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR) in which CTR will provide lithium and geothermal power from the company’s Hell’s Kitchen Lithium and Power project, which is now under development in Imperial Valley.

Statevolt said in a release that it’s performing due diligence to find the best site for its Imperial Valley battery factory. The factory will be one of the largest in North America, the company said, with a production capacity of 54 GWh, enough for about 650,000 electric vehicles a year at full capacity.

The project is expected to cost around $4 billion. The announcement didn’t include details on project financing.

A CTR spokeswoman said Statevolt expects to start producing lithium-ion batteries at scale by 2025. She said there are no further details on lithium or power offtake at this time.

Lithium from Brine

California’s Imperial Valley is home to the Salton Sea Geothermal Field, where a number of geothermal power stations are located.

The area is also a rich source of lithium, which is in growing demand as a component of electric vehicle batteries. CTR plans to extract lithium from the geothermal brine it uses to produce renewable energy.

CTR announced in November that it had started drilling wells at the Hell’s Kitchen site. CEO Rod Colwell said at the time that CTR was on track to deliver the project’s first 50 MW of baseload renewable power in late 2023 and an estimated 20,000 tons of lithium hydroxide in 2024.

In July, General Motors (NYSE: GM) announced it will invest millions of dollars in CTR’s lithium production project, a deal that will give GM first rights to lithium produced in the first stage of the Hell’s Kitchen project. (See GM Invests Big in Calif. ‘Near Zero’ Lithium Project.)

‘Hyper-local’ Model

At Statevolt, Carlstrom described the planned partnership with CTR as a “hyper-local” sustainable business model, in which lithium and power come from local sources. The approach minimizes the environmental impact of battery production and produces a more secure supply chain, he said.

“We believe this model will offer Statevolt a significant advantage in producing lithium-ion batteries at scale, to meet booming consumer demand,” Carlstrom said in a statement.

Carlstrom’s other company, Italvolt, announced in September that it had signed a binding agreement to buy land in the municipality of Scarmagno, Italy for a 45 GWh lithium-ion battery factory.

The company said it expects to obtain building permits and start construction in the second half of this year.

Carlstrom also co-founded Britishvolt, a company aiming to build a battery factory in England. He stepped down as company chairman in late 2020 after details emerged of his tax fraud conviction in Sweden more than 20 years previously, according to news reports.

Carlstrom said at the time that he didn’t want to be a “distraction” for the company and that he had planned all along to pass on Britishvolt’s chairmanship.