During Tuesday’s much-hyped battery day, Tesla CEO Elon Musk laid out plans to put everyone behind the wheel ( or is that sleeping in the back ) of a $25,000 car that drives itself.Much of the three-hour-plus presentation was low on detail, high on promotion, and stratospheric on ambition, ( it is ever thus ) but Tesla’s plans to start mining seemed particularly simplistic.With great fanfare and 40 years after Chevron’s Thacker Pass , Tesla announced to the world – and to a parking lot – that there were significant untapped lithium reserves in Nevada clay. Tesla said they secured the rights to 10,000 acres in the Silver State but if their factory was in Hawaii they probably would’ve mined there, because as Musk told the cars assembled in front of the stage “it’s pretty much everywhere”:“There is basically so much damn lithium on earth it’s crazy. It’s one […]