HENDERSON (KTNV) — Lithion Battery, a company that manufactures lithium-ion battery cells in Henderson, held the grand opening of its second factory on Thursday.

Our state is home to the only operating lithium mine in the United States and is an element in high demand worldwide.

“I think we’re heading in the right direction,” Henderson resident David Olszens said.

The Olszens use lithium battery-powered tools every day. He says it’s great that there are more companies producing these batteries.

“Lithium is really great, it’s a quarter of the weight, it lasts longer, it charges faster,” Olszens said.

Lithion Battery is a company founded in Canada in 1998. It initially produced primary battery cells for oil and gas applications such as downhole drilling.

The company entered the rechargeable battery space in 2019 to build an iron phosphate battery cell manufacturing facility in Henderson.

Shortly after that, they acquired a battery company in China that produced battery packs. They moved the manufacturing facility to Henderson off Wigwam Parkway, which they still use.

Lithion purchases smaller battery cells and welds them together to create significantly larger batteries for all kinds of applications.

“We’re not making any EVs, we’re not making any passenger vehicles, but we’re trying to electrify everything from rail vehicles to home energy storage to marine vessels and everything in between,” said Lithion Battery President and CEO Tyler Armstrong.

Armstrong told Channel 13 the two factories currently open employ a total of 140 people. He says they plan to have more than 250 employees by 2026.

More electrification is coming.

The U.S. Department of Energy says there are deadlines in Nevada that state agencies must meet regarding zero-emission vehicles.

They must switch light-duty vehicles to zero-emission vehicles by 2040, and medium- and heavy-duty vehicles to zero-emission vehicles by 2050.

Automobile manufacturers, as well as government agencies, must meet zero-emission production and sales requirements starting with the production of 2025 models.

This valuable element is abundant in Nevada.

Nevada’s existing mine is the only lithium mine in the United States and one of 34 in the world. Armstrong told Channel 13 that China is one of the top sources of lithium in the world.

How safe are lithium batteries?

There are many different types of lithium-ion batteries. What we do is primarily Iron-phosphate, which means Lithium-iron phosphate, which is inherently safe,” Armstrong said. “It gets hotter, but it doesn’t catch fire.”

Lithion Battery executives say they don’t know exactly which batteries were being transported in recent truck crashes earlier this year that caused dangerous lithium fires to close I-15 and US-95.

They stated that it was more of an unstable lithium battery that used other elements that they did not use.

“It’s a lithium-ion battery, so they all kind of group together, but it’s actually the cobalt in these batteries that makes them a little bit more unstable and unsafe,” Armstrong said. “These are great for EVs because they are very powerful, have high energy density, but can be very variable if put in the wrong situation.”

These batteries are useful, says David Hodge, Lithion Battery Senior Vice President of Power Supplies. They are mostly used in mobile phones and electric vehicles.

“The energy density is significantly higher than phosphate-based material,” Hodge said. “Let’s say if your mobile phone had a lithium iron phosphate battery inside, it could hold a charge for 5 hours instead of 8 hours. Battery life is critical for these types of applications.”

However, he says some electric vehicle companies are moving away from this type of batteries and trying safer phosphate-based batteries.

Hodge says the lithium in the battery actually helps stabilize it.

“It’s not so unstable because of the lithium because there’s lithium to dissolve the level in all lithium-ion batteries, and so does lithium-iron phosphate,” Hodge said. “There are more other components; cobalt oxide, manganese oxide, nickel oxide. Lithium actually stabilizes this material.”

Hodge says they continue to look for safer, more efficient ways to build and operate these batteries.

As technology advances, the option to recycle batteries also improves.

“Lithium and everything in the active ingredients in the battery does not fade over time,” Hodge said.

He says this could lead to cheaper production and more ways to expand the deployment of lithium batteries.

Mining in Nevada is also expected to continue.

Two months ago we told you about a proposed hub near Tonopah that would be the site of a new lithium mine.

Now conservationists and a Native American tribe are suing to stop the project because of an endangered desert flower.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, this is the only region in the world where “Tiehm Buckwheat” is known to occur.

U.S. Wildlife experts say the flower has been in danger of extinction since 2022.

The lawsuit also states that the mining project is a threat to cultural resources and a potential disruption to groundwater.

The “Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Mine” could employ up to 500 construction jobs and require up to 350 employees to operate.

The project could produce enough material to supply more than 300,000 electric cars a year, according to the Bureau of Land Management.