"Lithium is less of a concern because, even though the demand will significantly increase in the near future, it can be mined from a variety of sources, including rock and sea brine, and is abundant in several countries including Australia, Chile, and Argentina."


The reason why these sources aren't being tapped is because the price is too low to justify starting production. When demand goes up, price goes up, and it starts to make sense to produce lithium out of these sources.

But at the same time, if the price goes up then there will be no market for electric vehicles or the other gadgets because the batteries cost too much to make. They already cost too much for electric cars to be a viable mainstream option, and the price should go down, but then the availability of raw materials goes down.

Indeed, the problem isn't resource availability, but cost of extraction. You can get lithium out of sea water, but nobody will buy the electric car you make with that.