Aren't other metals like Nickel and whatnot are the main bottleneck for the vast numbers of batteries required for the electric car boom? Didn't we already know for the long time that lithium is very abundant, but it's those other metals (which are required much less by mass, but still required) that might be a problem, and this is why different companies are betting on different lithium chemical processes, because they don't know for sure which secondary metal will become the bottleneck?
Cobalt yes, kind of. Nickel absolutely not. Every single car, globally, could be electrified without making a big dent in nickel demand. Stainless steel is FAR more demanding of nickel.
Cobalt is tricky because in most places it's a byproduct of nickel mining, and it is only mined on its own in a couple places (notably the DRC). Despite that it's fairly likely that it will scale well, and it also becomes less and less relevant as electrodes reduce the amount of cobalt they use.
Virgin spheroidal graphite is another possibly-constrained supply, as it's a very particular kind of hard coal. Luckily it can be produced artificially- batteries use a roughly 40-60 mix and it costs roughly the same. IIRC natural graphite has a slightly higher power output and synthetic graphite has higher capacity, due to the nanoscale patterning of the graphite grains. As coal mining decreases graphite will probably just become more artificially produced, since it can be made from essentially anything.
