It requires tonnes of ore processed to produce ounces of gold (I read roughly 13 tonnes on average, but it's highly dependent on the quality of the deposit and refinement difficulty), there are metrics and studies: https://www.businessinsider.com/tons-of-rock-for-an-ounce-of...

Edit as I'm curious myself, this study shows it's about 150 tonnes of ore input for one ton of copper output (with other minerals reclaimed during the process): https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk2/1988/8808/880811.PDF

Keep in mind your conventional car’s catalytic converter contains grams of platinum group metals, worth about $1000 or so now ($3000 for older, larger catalytic converters). Due in large part to the spike in rhodium prices.

Platinum is extracted as a by-product of nickel and copper mining (as are other elements) as it's primary source, unlike gold and copper which are mined for their element directly. Not arguing your point (45% of platinum is used in auto) only that how we get Pt and Pd is already in progress to get at the other elements like Cu, Au and Ag.

But IS it a mere byproduct? If it adds significant revenue, it’s no longer a mere byproduct but now part of the business proposition of the mine. About $30 billion of nickel is mined per year. About $8 billion in platinum mined per year. 30 tons of rhodium are mined per year, which at current >$900/gram prices, means the revenue from rhodium is actually HIGHER than platinum and on par with nickel.

So you could as well argue that nickel is a byproduct of rhodium (and platinum group metal) production.

The USA mints alone use roughly 4,400 tonnes of nickel to produce coins every year (one specific industry with one type of output in one country). Around 133 tonnes of platinum and 1,800 tonnes of gold are mined per year in total for all use globally.