A typical lithium car battery weighing about 450 kilograms contains about 11 kilograms of lithium, nearly 14 kilograms of cobalt, 27 kilograms of nickel, more than 40 kilograms of copper, and 50 kilograms of graphite—as well as about 181 kilograms of steel, aluminum, and plastics. Supplying these materials for a single vehicle requires processing about 40 tons of ores, and given the low concentration of many elements in their ores it necessitates extracting and processing about 225 tons of raw materials.[108] Again, we would have to multiply this by close to 100 million units, which is the annual worldwide production of internal-combustion vehicles that would have to be replaced by electric drive.

Vaclav Smil, How the World Really Works

[108] H. Berg and M. Zackrisson, “Perspectives on environmental and cost assessment of lithium metal negative electrodes in electric vehicle traction batteries,” Journal of Power Sources 415 (2019), pp. 83–90; M. Azevedo et al., Lithium and Cobalt: A Tale of Two Commodities (New York: McKinsey & Company, 2018).