Lithium is not scarce. It is more abundant than lead. "At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust,[45] lithium is the 25th most abundant element." (https://en.w

Lithium is not scarce. It is more abundant than lead. "At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust,[45] lithium is the 25th most abundant element." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium) " lead's relatively high crustal abundance of 14 ppm; it is the 38th most abundant element in the crust." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead) The problem is that easily mined high concentration deposits of lithium are rare so it is expensive to extract. Some of the high price can be simply attributed to high demand occurring after a period of demand low enough that mines were closed in North America. Now that demand is high there is pressure to develop new mines in the US; see, for instance, https://qz.com/1975325/electric-cars-are-fueling-the-uss-lithium-mining-boom/ https://qz.com/1975325/electric-cars-are-fueling-the-uss-lit.... In theory we can extract vast amounts from seawater we just need enough energy. See, for instance, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/seawater-could-provide-nearly-unlimited-amounts-critical-battery-material https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/seawater-could-provi..., https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsmaterialslett.0c00385 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsmaterialslett.0c00385, https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from-seawater/ https://www.samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-....