When you put lithium in a battery the actual lithium atoms don't wear out and this means you can likely recycle 100% of them or close to it. You mine it out of the ground once and then have endless use of it. For comparison, try recycling some gasoline once it has been combusted into the atmosphere. Guessing US state subsidies alone (direct welfare) for petrol fuel energy is about $900 billion a year. That is the normal but horrid $400 billion a year plus that apparent unnecessary recent increment to the US defense budget of $500 billion a year all of which seems likely to be nothing but more petrol welfare or direct state subsidy transfer payment to an industry that was never economically viable or self-sufficient but is now patently obsolete. Burning all that cash would be a much better use than allowing that outright theft, but there is a very positive potential here. That money constituting subsidy could be transferred instantly to Lithium production and the remainder of the petrol industry nationalized and run at cost. We're going to have to depose that malevolent monarchy sooner rather than later anyway. It would end the biggest source of political problems on the globe and the greatest source of misery production. These people were paid off long ago all that remains is the debt they owe everyone else. Obama came from petrol country, he was in Illinois a coal state and graduated from petrol U. But he made a hard U turn on his promises to the coal industry and whatever promises to the petrol constituency. Why? Guessing he saw that petrol fuel energy was outright killing the US economy (e.g. 07 crash) with its horrid economics and insane politics and that it had put the survival of the country at very serious risk. So the U turn. Enough tech came out of government labs to end petrol and was given to firms like Tesla, but that tech was next to nothing, because petrol is that weak. But it was enough, relax some patent suppression or something like that and its game over. That will be his legacy. How many more 911s could the world stand if he hadn't pulled the plug on the agenda of the Machiavellian Neocons? He did it and we ended up with Tesla and some more intelligent policies and alliances, including Paris.
