Lithium car battery weighs 450kg. It has about 11 kg of lithium, 14 kg of cobalt, 27 kg of nickel, more than 40 kg of copper, and 50 kg of graphite as well as about 181 kg of steel, aluminum, and plastics.
LFP batteries are becoming much more common in EVs, mostly due to lower cost. They are a bit lower performance than NMC and NCA cells, but cheaper - and they don't use cobalt.
EDIT: for example Tesla Model 3 Standard Range uses LFP chemistry.
There are also some sodium ion batteries on the road now. Their performance isn't stellar but it keeps cost down. LFP is indeed getting more popular. A lot of the more advanced chemistries also don't use cobalt, or use less of it.
Cobalt sourcing is of course an issue. But it's worth noting that it's usage is not unique to just lithium batteries. A lot of cobalt is consumed and not recycled in the oil industry and it's used in a variety of other industries as well. Why is it that child labor is only ever an issue in the context of batteries?
And another point is that of course not all cobalt mines are operated by child labor. Sourcing responsibly is an option if you need cobalt. You might have to pay extra for it.
And another point is that cobalt isn't by far the only thing that is commonly sourced in ways that perhaps aren't that nice. There's a wide variety of minerals, oil, etc. that are also produced under circumstances that you might rightfully criticize for being similarly inhumane, dirty, etc. And a lot of that finds its ways into global supply chains.
There's a bit of selection bias going on here. When it's batteries it's an outrage. When it's fuel you buy at the pump, you don't give it a second thought. Was it maybe some Nigerian oil or did it come from Iran, Russia, or some Canadian tar field? Did they use some Cobalt from the Congo to refine it? Most people neither know nor care. The point isn't whether there is or isn't child labor involved but that mostly people don't care enough to bother finding out.
The beauty of the financial and many others ( see oil, tobacco, cable, health ) industry is that they have a bad reputation but still manage to be politically favored. Once you have achieved the status where your broad reputation doesn’t matter as long you keep political leadership in check you really have won the game.
"Understanding is more important than memorization! Schools should teach the students how to understand, think, doubt, and question. They should be made open to imagination and creativity" --Feynman
