Over a lifetime, the fuel a petrol car burns outweighs the battery metal an electric car permanently loses by 300 to 400 times

Building an electric car takes more mineral, not less

Building a typical electric car requires about 6 times the minerals that building a typical petrol or diesel car requires, according to the International Energy Agency, an intergovernmental agency that tracks world energy supplies. That figure covers the whole car, the motor and a battery of about 75 kilowatt hours, against everything a conventional car is built from. Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, wrote this in the report.

The response from policy makers and companies will determine whether critical minerals remain a vital enabler for clean energy transitions or become a bottleneck in the process.

Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency. Source 1.

A petrol car keeps burning fuel long after it leaves the factory

An average combustion engine car burns about 17,000 liters of petrol over its life, according to Transport and Environment, a nonprofit research organization. Stacked as barrels, that much fuel would reach 70 to 90 meters into the air, about the height of a 25 story building, a comparison the organization itself makes. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency assumes an average gasoline car gets 22.2 miles to the gallon and drives 11,500 miles a year, which comes to about 518 gallons a year, arithmetic the agency prints on its own page, a figure a reader can check against their own car.

A battery gets its minerals once, and recycling recovers most of them

An average electric car battery contains about 160 kilograms of metal in its cells, Transport and Environment finds. Even after recycling, about 30 kilograms of that metal is never recovered, permanently lost, roughly the weight of a football, a comparison the organization makes itself. That leaves about 130 kilograms recovered and available for reuse, arithmetic on the 2 figures above rather than a number the organization prints directly.

Weighed over a lifetime, the fuel outweighs the metal by up to 400 times

Over an average car life, the petrol or diesel burned outweighs the battery metal permanently lost by 300 to 400 times, Transport and Environment finds. Lucien Mathieu, the analyst who wrote that 2021 report, was still citing the same 30 kilogram figure and the same barrel stack comparison more than 3 years later, in October 2024, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. Mining that metal still carries real cost and harm, but weighed by mass over a full lifetime, fuel is not close.

Demand for those minerals is growing fast

World lithium production reached 290,000 tons in 2025, up from 222,000 tons in 2024, according to the United States Geological Survey, the government agency that counts world mineral supply. Under a climate aligned scenario, the International Energy Agency projects lithium demand growing 42 times between 2020 and 2040, with graphite growing 25 times, cobalt 21 times, nickel 19 times and rare earth elements 7 times.

More than 100 lithium mining and refining projects are underway across the United States and its trade partners, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation, an independent research organization.