What do you think the negative externalities actually are? Off of the top of my head: mining, landfill. Same as other metals.

If the processes to extract Lithium from recycling become cheap enough to compete with the prices of mined Lithium, then that happens.

Processes still need to be invented/scaled for that to happen: the only real way to deal with damaged or charged cells that I know of is to deep freeze them, shred them, and then defrost them slowly.

But in either case: Lithium is going to end up as waste. Making it cheaper to make cars affordable and the grid more stable means that disposable batteries will be even cheaper.

I don’t know how modern batteries fare in landfills: Most modern solar panels, for example, are relatively clean (mostly aluminum, silicon, copper, wee bits of lead). But not a waste management expert.

That's very interesting about the freezing. I wonder if Redwood Materials does that?

https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/news/responding-recovering-...

They've been working hard at recycling, and the biggest challenge at the moment is actually getting old batteries for the process. There's not many in-service batteries reaching end of life yet, so they mostly deal with production scrap.