The age old dilemma. Save the earth by using battery powered cars, or save a snail. I wonder which will win.
The snail. That way, people in the U.S. won’t have any cars at all.
The snail, every time. There never was a plan for the US to be self-sufficient in lithium.
If you really want to recover LARGE amounts of lithium, extract it from the lithium salts dissolved in sea water. In fact, mining the sea for most metallic elements is a perhaps more practical and cost-effective way to extract minerals than grubbing holes in the earth, and fighting the environmentalists for the necessary permits and the mitigation measures.
How do we extract metallic elements from sea water? By evaporating large amounts with the application of a lot of heat, then by progressive fractional crystallization of the much more concentrated brine. There are very definite striations of the various minerals, which can be identified by the point at which they crystallize, and they may then simply be scooped up between the striation lines.
And how do we get the heat? Well, sunlight comes to mind, but for really LOTS of heat, the use of nuclear reactors to provide the heat to boil down the brine goes a lot faster. Also, a condensation tower above the plume of steam coming off, to capture the now distilled water, provides potable water either for human use, or irrigation of crops in desert lands.
The water problem for coastal California is solved, and the lithium and cobalt supply problem for the manufacture of the playtime electric vehicles is also solved. With that much nuclear power on tap, a portion may be used to generate a huge baseline electric power for the grid to keep all those electric vehicles charged up.
This can work, but first Californians must embrace nuclear power.
Actually there isn’t enough lithium for them to force EV cars on us while oil is abundant.China controls the world’s lithium supply, so shut down lithium mining everywhere but China. Who wins?
Lithium also do more damage to the environment than oil so there’s that. Everything this demonic administration does is to the benefit of China. I wonder why?