$3,000+ of raw materials is not the same thing as $3,000+ of lithium. The batteries are already recycled to recover the cobalt and manganese, which are valuable. The numbers I've heard suggest that less than 1% of the material cost is lithium, but that number sounds a bit low—maybe less than 1% of the total cost is the cost of lithium, perhaps. Battery grade lithium is around $5/kg.