The whole reason why lithium is such a good material for cathodes in car batteries is because of its very low mass per cation. So for a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery, the the cathode material is LiFePO4, where the Lithium itself is only 4.4% of the overall mass of the cathode.
So it’s important to remember that although the lithium constitutes a small amount of the total mass of a battery, that swings both ways so that not much is actually needed to build the next battery out of recycled materials.
Exactly.
The whole reason why lithium is such a good material for cathodes in car batteries is because of its very low mass per cation. So for a Lithium Iron Phosphate battery, the the cathode material is LiFePO4, where the Lithium itself is only 4.4% of the overall mass of the cathode.
So it’s important to remember that although the lithium constitutes a small amount of the total mass of a battery, that swings both ways so that not much is actually needed to build the next battery out of recycled materials.