"Particularly in hard rock mining, for every tonne of mined lithium, 15 tonnes of CO2 are emitted into the air." Estimates seem to vary, but this is claiming t

"Particularly in hard rock mining, for every tonne of mined lithium, 15 tonnes of CO2 are emitted into the air." Estimates seem to vary, but this is claiming that there's about 12 kg of lithium in a 70 kwh Tesla battery: https://www.quora.com/How-much-lithium-in-kg-is-used-in-an-electric-car https://www.quora.com/How-much-lithium-in-kg-is-used-in-an-e... So, that's 180 kg of CO2 for enough lithium to make a large car battery. If your first quote is actually referring to 15 tons of CO2 per ton of lithium carbonate mined, then there's 63 kg of that, the mining of which causes about 945 kg of CO2 emissions. Burning a gallon of gas emits about 9 kg of CO2. A car that gets 30 miles to the gallon will burn about 6700 gallons of gas over a 200,000 mile lifetime, resulting in 60,000 kg of CO2 emissions. There are other environmental issues with mining lithium and cobalt and other energy costs involved in making the batteries, but CO2 emissions from mining is way down there on the list of things to be worried about.