[JumpCrisscross]

> It's always going to be cheaper to pour end of life cells into a remanufacturing process than to extract raw lithium from brine ponds, so it makes economic sense to do the R&D to do so.

This is a major point to assume away.

[toomuchtodo]

I make the assumption based on existing evidence. I could be be wrong if it gets drastically cheaper to source lithium, nickel, and iron from mining operations versus concentrated ore in end of life cells. Doesn’t seem likely based on mining costs and the demand curve (demand will increase as fast or faster than reserves can be sourced), as well as jurisdictions mandating manufacturers stand up recycling supply chains for the products they're building and selling (California did this with solar PV, many others have done it for electronics recycling in general, for example).

I would be willing to make a Long Bet [1] on this point. Accountability is important.

[1] https://longbets.org/

[imtringued]

Lithium does not suffer from undesired pigmentation and overabundance of too many completely different types of lithium the way plastics do. Plastics are composites so if you were to extract the elements out of them then you would end up with carbon and hydrogen which unfortunately aren't plastic. With lithium all you have to do is extract the lithium elements.

Aluminum and iron recycling is viable because they are elements in their own right.