Seriously though, lithium batteries are recyclable, generally, but pricy and there is a great deal of doubt whether we can mine enough to make fleets of electric cars.
Are humans ever careful?A recent (2014) study on this subject has been performed by the Wuppertal Institute. The conclusion is that the problem of mineral availability for renewable energy technologies is not critical if we choose the right technologies and we are careful to recycle the materials used as much as possible.
http://peakoil.com/alternative-energy/r ... -materials
http://wupperinst.org/uploads/tx_wupper ... ummary.pdf
However here an article I agree with, it goes though the numbers of building fleets of electric cars and it looks really unlikely.
Can We Switch To Electric Cars?
Consumption
The simple answer is no – and the complicated answer is also no.
(The article has a lot of charts on known resources, I'm not posting them all here.)