Lithium is more abundant than lead, tin, or tungsten. We're not going to run out any time soon.
I also think that biotech has picked up some new tricks lately (alphafold, etc) that might let it branch out from academia, medicine, and agriculture and affect things like mining re: bioleeching fungi to move minerals through mycelial networks to the surface.
[0] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2023/02/10/rusty-batteries-cou... [1]https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/29/electric-cars-powered-b... [2]https://samcotech.com/is-it-possible-to-extract-lithium-from...
Sigmoids (the most well know being the logistic curve) begin to tapper off overtime approaching no growth and reaching an upper bound.
First, battery technology has changed to require only one rare ore: lithium. Older battery chemistries required nickel and cobalt, but the most popular chemistry in electric vehicles today is lithium iron phosphate.[1] It has lower energy density than nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) or nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA), but lasts longer and is safer.
Second, lithium is everywhere. The reason why most lithium comes from salt flats in Australia, Chile, and China is because that's the cheapest way to get it. But there are plenty of other salt flats around the world, and the oceans themselves contain over 100 billion tons of lithium (1,000x more than known land resources). If today's biggest producers form a cartel and try to control prices, other sources will become economically viable.
Third, lithium is a tiny fraction of the cost of an electric vehicle. LFP batteries have around 160 grams of lithium per kWh, so a typical car battery (60-90kWh) has 10-15kg of lithium. The spot price for lithium is $15/kg, so the materials cost per car is around $150-250. If lithium prices went up by a factor of 10, the cost of the car would only go up by 5%. In contrast, doubling the price of petroleum almost doubles the cost of driving.
Fourth, demand for lithium extraction will go down in the long run. This is because unlike petroleum, lithium stays in the car. Older EVs contain lots of lithium (and other raw materials) that can be recycled into new batteries. Old batteries are basically very high quality ore. Lithium recycling may sound unlikely to some, but we already have existence proofs of recycling happening with other cheaper elements. 80% of all copper ever mined is still in use. The number for aluminum is almost as high. Remember that the cost per kg of copper is half that of lithium, and aluminum is 1% the cost of lithium.
I'm really not worried about rare ores being the bottleneck for electric vehicle adoption. In 2022, world lithium production was around 130,000 metric tons. That's enough to produce 9 million cars. In that same year, 85 million motor vehicles were built. Assuming we wanted all vehicle production to be EVs, and assuming an average battery capacity of 90kWh, that would require 1,224,000 tons of lithium. If lithium production increases at the same rate it did from 2016-2022 (3.5x)[2], it will take another 12 years before there is enough capacity to make every vehicle electric. I doubt things will take off that quickly, but you never know. EV designs are simpler than combustion vehicles, and the raw materials costs are similar. As EV production volumes increase and manufacturers design for farther down-market, we should see prices continue to drop.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery
2. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/lithium-production?tab=ch...
From what I've read this causes the lithium market to be very chaotic.
Supply is complicated and capital intensive to bring online while the demand is essentially inelastic.
Time it right and you make a fortunes.