They uses rare metals.

They use an utterly insignificant amount compared to an EV though...

So if we have 7.2 millions PEVs (all-electric + hybrid)[0] how does that compare to the 4.8 billion phone users (smart + feature)[1]? If we assume only 1 phone per person (and ignore how many are in landfills) that's 667 phones per electric vehicle. I wonder how that compares in terms of rare earth metal usage.

The lifecycle of a vehicle is probably ~2-20 times that of a phone so let's say a single magnitude. That gives us 6600 phones per vehicle lifetime. Granted - the smartphone market will stay within a magnitude (not everyone can be an HK taxi driver with 7 phones)

Now global EV adoption will increase by ~3 magnitudes by the time the market saturates and there might be a magnitude separating phone count from EVs.

[0] https://evstatistics.com/2020/06/global-electric-vehicle-sto...

[1] https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-w...