International competition for Lithium and rising cost to battery manufacturers may be a short-term phenomena, unlikely to last much beyond 2025. Alternative and better means of storing electricity, using other more plentiful metals such as aluminium, are likely to have been developed and put into production by then.

Development of fuel-cell technology is also likely to have made advances making lithium battery storage for EV’s redundant because of fuel-cell ability to increase vehicle range and do so more cost-effectively than lithium.

Increase in the cost of lithium – and oil – will stimulate commercial development of substitutes which are cheaper and more efficient.

There are I believe better batteries for off grid and solar buffering
purposes for domestic and industrial purposes.
I have been reading about Nickle Iron batteries.
They are very rugged, can be completely discharged, then just
recharged back to normal operation. They can be not used for years
and then just recharged and away they go.
Depending on the physical construction they can be refurnished with
new electrolyte if needs be and are reputed to last for 40 years plus.
There are companies supplying them in Sydney for domestic solar
uses. They seem ideal to me.