India, March 25 -- California's Salton Sea has just made it onto the map of the planet's largest 'White gold' aka lithium deposits, with a value of up to $540 billion.

This could be a game changer for the U.S., bringing lithium production closer to self-sufficiency and making the country less reliant on imports.

The Salton Sea in Imperial County is known as a long-troubled environment. The U.S. Department of Energy came up with recent studies that found there were about 18 million tons of lithium in the region, far more than was previously believed. It could provide enough batteries to power 382 million EVs, more than all the vehicles on the roads in the States now.

"This is one of the largest lithium brine deposits in the world. This ...