So sad to see American thinker descend into such nonsensical misinformation:
Fact check me on each of these: A tesla contains roughly 5 kg 12 pounds of lithium. (https://www.barrons.com/articles/tesla-electric-vehicle-battery-profits-51660832313) May sources cite 63 kg, but that’s the entire weight of the lithium compound not the amount of lithium. Also, that amount of lithium is far less than initial needs. The amount needed will certainly decline, but let’s go with current usage.
That’s about 200 cars per ton. Multiply that by 22,000,000 tons, and you get 4.4 billion cars, enough for every adult human. Now here’s the kicker: the lithium isn’t consumed, like gas. It’s fully recyclable. Right now, it’s much cheaper to mine than recycle. But if there ever IS a shortage, recycling is the obvious answer.
Also, we’re only talking about known global reserves. Now, if you know about Peak Oil, you know that we ran out of oil in 1990s. At least that’s what my 1970s textbook says. The current estimate of our global reserves of oil is now 50 years, up from 26 years. So that’s why there’s not a gun to our heads to switch from oil or die. But the same thing works with lithium. The global reserves are only about a billion tons. But there’s probably a million times more than that. (Earth’s crust: 3 x 10^22 kg, or 3 x 10^19 metric tons. At 0.02% lithium, that’s 6 x 10^15 tons. Your chart estimates 1 x 10^9.) So, if we can move from 1 x 10^-6 recoverable to 1 x 10^-5 recoverable, we’ll be swimming in lithium.
At the same time, the amount of lithium it takes to create a battery will probably shrink by 90% again.