I believe Tesla is giving these pack a much longer life span. I know one of the chief engineers for their batteries said the old batteries that exist in the Mod

I believe Tesla is giving these pack a much longer life span. I know one of the chief engineers for their batteries said the old batteries that exist in the Model S and X today could last many more cycles with a 15-20 year life span. I think we're seeing good evidence of this too as Tesla's are reaching 100k+ miles, one got to 200k already and I believe only had ~11% battery degradation. Pretty impressive either way. As far as mining, I think the biggest issues as far as cost go are getting Cobalt, which is primarily only found in the DR Congos', and then in Tesla's case, finding more Lithium in North America. I'm sure in a ~5 years or so, Tesla will create a massive battery recycling program as well to start bringing in those Tesla batteries on cars from the early models.