I agree with you, the bigger problem with Li-ion is that once they become popular, there are about six countries with massive deposits of Li. Even among them, the most are in Chile-Bolovia-Argentina triangle. The more popular Li-ion gets the more scarce or expensive Li becomes (say 10 years from now), so we have to move to batteries made of really abundant resources like Na (sodium).
2040 seems to be about right time, Startfor science analyst predicted something like that an year or so ago.
We have no issue with lithium scarcity - it's tremendously abundant on earth, and we could recycle old batteries if we gave a damn... the lithium is just not currently worth recovering, that's how damned common it is. The problem now is the huge demand outstripping the on-hand supply, which has caused lithium prices to soar... but this year has seen a surge in new lithium projects and companies like Albemarle have seen their share prices surge accordingly. We've also seen numerous new projects in the Americas start producing lithium. Just let supply and demand fix this market, and it'll be smooth sailing.
...Cobalt, otoh, is more worrisome in the upcoming future and much, much worse to mine. Western demand for L-ion batteries has had China turn Africa into a wasteland (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...) in search for more and more cobalt and copper to keep electrification projects going.
But it's not all bad news. There are alternative lithium chemistries that use less or no cobalt, just to date they either don't offer the same energy density or are not practical for mass production yet (lithium-sulfur).
You need about 1kg of lithium per kWh of battery, which is not nothing but Lithium is common and not used up by battery's making this far less significant than many assume. It's actually fairly common, we have ~700 times as much carbon but coal is 32$ per ton and the United States produces 1 billion tons of coal per year. Divide that by ~700 and your talking about a billion 1kwh batteries per year before recycling comes into play.
Anyway, my point was we currently mine highly concentrated lithium, but as long as we are willing to spend more it's not going to be an issue because it's not used up and overall it's very abundant.
I'm surprised it's not more abundant. Usually, the smaller the atomic number, the more abundant the element is in the universe. But surprisingly, Lithium, Beryllium and Boron are not that abundant (compared to, say, Carbon).
You'd be wrong. First, light gases escape from the Earth's gravity, which is why there's no molecular hydrogen or almost any helium whatsoever. Second, the crust is not the same thing as the Earth, and the distribution of elements by depth depends a lot on the density and other properties of the material elements are chemically bonded into.
2040 seems to be about right time, Startfor science analyst predicted something like that an year or so ago.