"Today, the data shows a looming mismatch between the world’s strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to rea

"Today, the data shows a looming mismatch between the world’s strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realising those ambitions." [1] There is a lot of lithium out there, but other minerals/metals will likely be limiting factors and the metals used in batteries will be determined by price availability. For example, nickel is better than cobalt from an energy density and weight perspective, but there needs to be a 19X increase in nickel mining to have enough for EV+stainless steel use and most of the easy nickel has already been mined. There are plenty of rare earth minerals out there, but they are extremely dirty to produce, and so very few places produce them. Even with mining though, EVs are more efficient for the one time mining of the metals, vs the constant life time use of "mining" of fossil fuels to power ICE engines. Also, the recycling aspect is pretty positive too. Once enough metals are mined for all cars to transitions, we should be able to survive mostly off of recycling, with smaller amounts freshly mined. That is why Elon is out there asking mining companies to "please mine more nickel," because he knows about the looming shortages. That is why they are using iron cathodes in Model 3 and stationary storage. See the article, "All the mines Tesla needs to build 20 million cars a year" [2]. An example of recycling is with aluminum, where b/c of prolific recycling, we only have to mine 10% or so each year's needs to keep up with demand. We need to figure out how to sustainably extract the needed quantities of these important minerals this century, which can then power humanity's needs almost indefinitely. This is one of the great challenges of this century. [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in... [2] https://www.mining.com/all-the-mines-tesla-needs-to-build-20-million-cars-a-year/ https://www.mining.com/all-the-mines-tesla-needs-to-build-20...