Abundant doesn't mean available in location. It can be concentrated in one spot and more economic to mine there and ship where needed.
Australia also exports a billion tons of iron ore to China. Iron ore is everywhere, but easier to mine good ore in Australia and ship it. Shipping is really efficient.
None of those are either rare earth metals or especially rare, graphite isn't a metal at all, and lithium iron phosphate batteries contain neither nickel nor manganese.
No, those batteries do not use rare earth elements. I don't know of any battery type that uses rare earth elements. Where did you get that idea?
This is not an issue. Lithium, iron, and phosphate are all abundant.
If lithium was as abundant as you claim, why is the Lithium Triangle a thing?
The largest exporter is Australia and the largest importer is China. Were lithium abundant, why does China import most of its lithium?
Abundant doesn't mean available in location. It can be concentrated in one spot and more economic to mine there and ship where needed.
Australia also exports a billion tons of iron ore to China. Iron ore is everywhere, but easier to mine good ore in Australia and ship it. Shipping is really efficient.
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I think because we weren't doing a whole lot of looking until recently. I think a bunch of lithium has been recently discovered in Arkansas.
Because processing it is a value added service, and China doesn't have an incentive to build lithium processing plants in Australia.
... cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite...
Grid-scale storage (and increasingly EVs) use lithium-iron-phosphate battery cells, which don't require cobalt/nickel/manganese.
None of those are either rare earth metals or especially rare, graphite isn't a metal at all, and lithium iron phosphate batteries contain neither nickel nor manganese.
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Okay, next periodical table elements...