Say Lithium becomes essentially free because we find so much of it…would that drastically lower battery costs? Is our current supply of lithium limiting production?
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In the US environmental regulations, the cost of producing power, labor costs, would all drive up the price of the end product in a way that makes it totally noncompetitive. That's also why the US and some other countries are investing in other ways to find lithium (among other things) on seabeds, where it's hoped that extraction would be less expensive. Of course the threat to the seabed environment is a concern, which in turn might drive up prices by imposing regulation, etc etc etc.