USGS states there are 7M tons of Cobalt reserves in the world. An EV battery needs about 15lbs of Cobalt. That means, in a fantasy scenario of perfect recovery

USGS states there are 7M tons of Cobalt reserves in the world. An EV battery needs about 15lbs of Cobalt. That means, in a fantasy scenario of perfect recovery of all known Cobalt, we have 930M batteries which last, maybe 100K miles. That means we get to replace, in a fantasy scenario, 2/3 of the world’s vehicles once. Then that number declines with recycling efficiency, which appears to optimistically be about 75% recovery. So no, and state-imposed poverty (lots of examples) seems much more likely than a successful extraterrestrial mining industry (no examples).