Unlike oil, rare earth minerals can be recycled to a degree. What is today your car battery may end up in 10+ years as someone's house battery, or a power bank or other low-load energy store. The raw materials can eventually be recovered to an extent as well.
A resource disaster is inevitable either way as nobody wants to give up the convenience that we have become accustomed to. Encouraging affluent economies to adopt EVs is pure damage limitation at this point, our biosphere is already fucked from over a century of waste emissions, the least we can do is try and find solutions that don't involve burning fossilized plant matter for every car journey.
Kevin and Toby as O'Brien and Barclay fixing the transporter again.