In 2024, President Biden said he wanted 56% of all new cars sold in the United States to beelectric vehiclesby 2032. California Governor Gavin Newsom similarly mandated that 35% of new 2026 model cars sold in the state be zero-emissions vehicles, rising to 68% in 2030 and 100% in 2035.
The European Union announced in 2023 that, from 2035 onward, all new cars coming onto the market could not emit any CO2. The United Kingdom similarly announced a 2030 ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol cars.
The reaction from the U.S. auto industry was blunt. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation said it “will take a miracle” for all states following California’s rules to reach 100% new zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035.
They are correct. The environmental impact would be devastating. The people claiming to save the world with electric cars could end up destroying it.
Replacing every vehicle on Earth with an EV, all 1.5 to 1.6 billion of them, would be effectively impossible. There are not enough minerals to manufacture all of the batteries required. In addition, there is not enough global processing capacity, and such a transition would require incredible amounts of labor. Many of these minerals are already being mined by children and by workers laboring under hazardous and toxic conditions that amount to modern slavery.
Across every dimension examined, the answer is the same: a simultaneous global conversion to EVs is physically impossible and would cause environmental and humanitarian damage that rivals or exceeds the problems it claims to solve.
A standard 75 kWh NMC battery pack requires approximately 9 kg of lithium, 13 kg of cobalt, 40 kg of nickel, 25 kg of manganese, and 66 kg of graphite per vehicle. Copper and aluminum are also required for the battery casing, current collectors, and wiring. Multiply those figures across 1.5 billion vehicles and the total mineral demand runs to roughly 13.5 million metric tons of lithium, 19.5 million metric tons of cobalt, 60 million metric tons of nickel, 37.5 million metric tons of manganese, and 99 million metric tons of graphite.
Cobalt is the binding constraint. USGS (U.S. Geological Survey)confirmed reservesstand at roughly 11 million metric tons. A full NMC conversion would require nearly double the entire known reserve base before a single battery reaches a recycling facility. Lithium is the second pressure point: confirmedreservesof 28 million metric tons mean fleet demand alone consumes nearly half of all known lithium, before accounting forgrid-scale energystorage or consumer electronics. Graphite reserves of290 millionmetric tons and confirmed nickel reserves of around 130 million metric tons are less immediately catastrophic, but a global conversion would still consume a third of graphite reserves and nearly half of nickel. Only manganese, with roughly 1.5 billion metric tons of reserves, clears the demand figure with room to spare.
Battery chemistry is shifting toward lithium iron phosphate. LFP batteries grew from19% of global market sharein 2020 to 55% in 2025, eliminating cobalt and nickel from the cathode. This converts an impossible geological equation into a marginally feasible one, but does not solve the supply chain problem. It just relocates it. Over98% of LFPcathode material and battery cells are produced in China. Trading cobalt dependence on the DRC for total battery dependence on China substitutes one crisis for another.
Before any mineral reaches a factory, it must be extracted, and the extraction burden is staggering. Production of a single NMC battery requires mining an average of91 to 607 tonnesof rock. At the midpoint, converting 1.5 billion vehicles implies moving somewhere between 136 billion and 910 billion tonnes of earth, an excavation with no historical precedent. Lithium extraction uses approximately500,000 gallonsof water per metric ton. In Chile’s Salar de Atacama, mining has consumed 65% of the region’s water, forcing some communities to import water entirely.
Source: The Gateway Pundit
