[naravara]

It is a bad battery (along certain dimensions). But there is serious doubt as to whether the world actually has enough Lithium and other rare earths to actually meet battery demand indefinitely, even assuming we get the supply chains and infrastructure to where the materials are infinitely recyclable.

[astrange]

Lithium is not a rare earth metal (neither is cobalt). There is actually quite a lot of it, but it's evenly distributed so needs a lot of demand to be worth extracting from seawater. On the other hand, if we got a lot of cheap lithium we could use it to improve everyone's mental health like those fluoride conspiracy theories.

Notably people think Tesla gets lithium from Bolivia because Elon made a joke about it once, but I think it actually comes from Australia.

[ryao]

Dr. Goodenough’s new battery design allows people to use either sodium or lithium. Given that the entire world has adopted his previous battery designs, I would not be surprised if sodium based batteries are next. Sodium is so incredibly prevalent in the earth’s crust that scarcity should not be a problem.

[eru]

Lithium would just get more expensive in that case, until other materials and techniques (including perhaps hydrogen storage) become more viable.