Lithium

Lithium mine production, in thousand tonnes — annual, 1995-2024.

USGS, Mineral Commodity Summaries / Minerals Yearbook (World Mine Production by Country).

Time slider.

Australia (88 kt), which mines lithium from hard-rock deposits (spodumene), leads Chile (57 kt), which extracts it from brine evaporated in the Atacama Desert — two radically different extraction methods for the same metal, which has become central over the past decade with the rise of electric-vehicle batteries.