Quite a lot of dismissive comments here but the patent actually sounds very promising. I'm not familiar with the state of the art in the space but according to

Quite a lot of dismissive comments here but the patent actually sounds very promising. I'm not familiar with the state of the art in the space but according to the patent the conventional approach involves acid leaching lithium rich clay. Tesla's approach involves exchanging lithium cations from the clay using a sodium chloride brine solution, mechanical agitation, and heat. The end result is a lithium rich brine that can be processed using conventional approaches and doesn't involve consuming large amounts of acid. Brine is also a lot easier to manage from an environmental perspective than strong mineral acids.