Well, that’s just great. When they figure out how to make a lithium ion battery without lithium manganese dioxide, 97% of which is in China, then Chile will be in the driver’s seat. (rolls eyes) BTW, Nevada has quite a lot of lithium also.
Well for one there is many different compounds for batteries than just lithium manganese, secondly since lithium exists as a mineral in nature it is relatively easy to process into different salts and compounds and to purify. You make it sound as if the Chinese have pre-made lithium manganese oxide just oozing from the ground without the need of processing. Well I hate to burst your bubble, thats not how they do it. They extract the lithium from lithium carbonate deposits and then create the compounds for Li-ion batteries from that.