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Battery costs have declined by 99% in the last three decades, making electrified transport a reality
(ourworldindata.org)
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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While they are getting cheaper, lithium is not in infinite quantities, nor are rare earths and other elements within li-ion batteries. Also cobalt is problematic for many reasons. LFP are much better but still depend on lithium at least. So, price helps, but it's not everything.
First you make batteries economically viable alternatives to fossil based energy sources.
Then the competition for even more economically viable battery technologies brings the tech to the next level.
Besides, lithium and the used rare earth elements can be recycled. It's not like they'd evaporate when being used.
We’ve already seen this over the past decade. I was skeptical of electric vehicles when I first started learning about Teslas because at the time there was something like 2/3s of the lithium available for mining compared to what would be needed to replace every vehicle on Earth with an EV.
But since then new lithium mining techniques have opened up new sources (I think the southeast US has a large amount of these newly accessible sources), increasing the raw amount available. Sodium ion batteries have made strides, and while they aren’t as energy dense stationary batteries can use that while vehicles use lithium, reducing overall lithium demand. And who knows, sodium ion batteries could still reach a point where they are viable for vehicle batteries. And of course lithium batteries have improved as well, making available lithium stretch farther.
Yeah, like let's complain about lithium having a limited supply (which can be recycled until the cows come home) while burning fossil fuels all the while - which are also limited but gone after having been burned. The cherry on top is burning them pollutes the air and causes climate change.
Aside from new mining techniques and new battery technology there's still the option to improve the situation by moving people and goods onto rails and operating the trains directly by electricity and not through batteries - a technology already available. It just needs to be implemented at more places.
I'm aware that this is no solution that fits all situations, but I'm damn sure a lot of situations would be improved by having more rails/trains.