[wrd]

The author's numbers represent a lower bound on the amount of lithium required -- in reality, the amount of lithium required to produce all of those cars is much greater than just what's in the car. Each processing step from lithium-bearing ore to advanced lithium electrode materials has some yield less than 1, which quickly compounds. E.g., if there were only 10 steps between ore and electrode material (optimistic) and each step had an average yield of 90% (again, optimistic), then only 34% of the material in the ore would actually make it into the electrode.