Recycling has its limits. I've mostly looked at this with regards to lithium (critical in Tesla's EVs, though other rare earths are also limiting, perhaps moreso).

With present known reserves (including recent finds in South America -- Bolivia as I recall), there's not enough lithium to build batteries for an EV for the entire world's population. I believe the number I came up was about 1 in 10. And that's for one generation of vehicles.

Turns out that you can recycle batteries. But the process recovers only 90% of the lithium. After about 7 generations, you've lost over half your original stock.

With sufficient energy, you can extract virtually anything from seawater (even stuff like uranium). But that "with sufficient energy" prerequisite is pretty much specifically the challenge we're looking at.

"With sufficient energy, you can extract virtually anything from seawater (even stuff like uranium). But that "with sufficient energy" prerequisite is pretty much specifically the challenge we're looking at."

Not so much. There is plenty of energy... I mean tons... with one caveat: it's not always on.

But there's no reason that extraction of minerals from sea water couldn't be a daytime-only thing.