Agree with most of what you say but unless someone comes up with a way to remove the precious/rare metals out of the batteries and still get decent performance from them EVs will never become as ubiquitous as ICE cars as there won’t be enough precious metals to go around. Making better batteries out of common materials isn’t out of the realms of possibility of course as by and large human beings are a pretty clever bunch (well the ones that don’t hoard toilet paper anyway!).
I work in a Mining-related field, So I can give you a little info on this.
For context, Lithium is the 25th most abundant element on earth to date. (I say to date because as more exploration occurs more or less material is found, ask any geologist about this.) and it makes up about 0.0007% of the earth's mass. Considering the earth weighs a good 5.972 × 10^24 kg (about 5.9 sextillion tons, or 5,900,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons) and at that mass, 0.0007% of that is 1.8x10^15 tons, or 1.8 Quadrillion tons. That's a fuckton (literally) of lithium. More than enough to supplant the entire world's need for batteries, although I do agree that better batteries are needed, in regards to charge and discharge rates. Silicon Graphene packs are a step in the right direction, where the polymer cathode is replaced with a graphene cathode to facilitate better charge and discharge rates, but these packs have yet to hit EVs due to heat sensitivity issues. They're only just beginning to trickle into smartphones and laptops, however they've been in the Hobbyist space for a long-ass time as they're lighter and more powerful, making them perfect for RC models and drones. The most common chemistry used in cars is LiFePO4, or Lithium-Iron Phosphate, due to their charge rates and stability at those charge rates, as well as their improved heat resilience.
Lithium is also a recyclable metal, but not in the conventional sense. You can't just chuck your batteries in the recycle bin with your plastics, cardboard and glass, it requires specialised equipment to recycle the materials, which is often why there's special disposal requirements for batteries, as there's certain companies which dedicate themselves to extracting the raw materials from batteries. Batteries can also be repurposed into low-current applications (such as house PV systems and battery backup supplies) once their high-current usefulness has been exploited. Tesla Powerwalls for example are all made from recycled batteries taken from older Tesla cars and from old laptops which use 18650 cells.
Now, once again, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the idea of reducing the consumption of rarer metals and building much better batteries, but i'd be less concerned about the batteries and more concerned about motor tech, especially companies which depend on making BLDC motors with permanent magnets. Tesla uses AC induction motors, which do not use permanent Neodymium magnets.
https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/blog/induction-versus-dc-brushless-motors
Take a read of that when you get the time.