Lithium isn't a rare earth element. Batteries don't use rare earth elements. Some electric motors do, but that's a choice; Tesla's doesn't. If you mean to say

Lithium isn't a rare earth element. Batteries don't use rare earth elements. Some electric motors do, but that's a choice; Tesla's doesn't. If you mean to say that lithium mining is a bad thing, then you might want to try to come up with a better measure of environmental impact than the number of tons of earth moved.