Regarding those minerals, Li, Ni, Co and Mn play an important role in electrification, but they don’t have to. It’s just that in recent decades we’ve built the production chains necessary for producing LIBs (Li-ion batteries), and now we’re kinda stuck with that technology. Recently, NIBs (Na-ion batteries) started to become viable, and I really hope they manage to ramp up production quickly. Seems like the author of that article was thinking of LIBs all the time and forgot about NIBs. The problem is, it takes a long time to build the production capacity and production chains.

Then there’s also copper. It’s kinda hard to ignore that one, since we can’t really electrify things when the grid can’t handle the load. Also, electric motors require lots of copper, so I can imagine that the demand for copper will remain high in the coming decades.