For people who bet in the future of electric vehicles, this will be an exciting piece of news. Researchers in Arkansas, a state in the Midwest of the US, have announced that they have found huge reserve of lithium （鋰的儲備區）in southern region of the state. Lithium is a valuable, scarce raw material that’s needed to make batteries for electric vehicles. According to the scientists involved, there might be five to nineteen million tons of lithium （鋰）buried in that geological area, which will be more than enough to make the world‘s demand（需求）. However, they need to figure out how to extract lithium without causing too much destruction （破壞）on the environment. Most of us probably don’t know that lithium is tough to mine and has been linked to pollution, water depletion （水源浩劫）and other environmental problems. So actual mining of it won’t take place any time soon.