[hedora]

The second company described in the article claims to recycle using nothing but catalysts, and simply grinds up the used batteries in a giant vat before transportation (rendering them inert, and easier to safely move).

It sounds like their main problem at this point is continuing to scale the business to meet supply (they are already the largest lithium recycler in the US), and that the challenges there are logical, not the underlying technology.

What human labor and chemicals are you referring to?

[h0l0cube]

Some amount of human labor will be required for operations, say maintenance of the in-situ automated systems, or intervention when things go wrong. These costs can't be eliminated with renewable energy, and won't be fixed with robots for some time yet (decades, minimum).

And if a mine can be automated to yield orders of magnitude more material than recycling for the same labor costs, you would need some other financial incentive (government subsidies, backroll by Tesla for marketing purposes) to make it viable.